u/raptorswold

So what is a time slip? Does it count as “paranormal”?

The year was 2005. The time of the year was June-July. It was hot and humid as hell. Generally due to this scorching weather, tourists avoid travelling during this period.

Hazarduari - meaning a palace with 1000 doors. This is now a national monument and a cultural
Heritage of Bengal. Located around 220 Kms from Kolkata, the state capital, it is one of the key remnants of Bengal sultanate. Built in 1800s, this was a palace designed by the British Engineers for the “Nawab” or Emperor of Bengal.

So let’s go back to the story.

The person - we will call him Mr X. He was a banker and a family man. During one such trip to Hazarduari palace in the hot summer of 2005, he had encountered something which is nothing but extraordinary.

So the story goes like this. The palace has been a national property since 1977 and the closing time stands between 4:30-5PM.

Mr X, along with his wife and few friends had hired a tour guide to take them through the palace and show them things in detail. Mr X, being an amateur photographer had the habit of stopping by things and photographing them. The summer heat at that day was also unbearable - leading to a very handful of visitors to the palace at around 2:30PM.

During one such stopover, he requested the guide to proceed with the group while he claimed that he will catch up with them very soon after photograph.

He could hear their muffled voice vanish after sometime indicating they had moved to another part of the palace. While he was about to leave, he heard some distinct footsteps of heavy leather boots. Since he was alone in this part, curiosity took him to know what was happening.

He quickly followed the footsteps and he could hear a group of people talking. As he reached a hallway, he could see what was people in old attires - of people who used to wear in 1800s. There were few “British” men in uniform and Indians dressed in flowing garments which looked royal. There was a throne type structure and there was a man who sat there while the British officers talked.

He thought some kind of movie set. And those people were actors of some sort. Movies in historical places is not uncommon.

He left casually and met up with his group in the ground floor. When he narrated, half of the people laughed at him. The administration confirmed no such movie or serial was underway. The guide told him it was the ghosts of the palace whom he had seen it. But he still maintains that the people didn’t look pale or had some ghostly appearance. They were real people in blood and flesh.

Now you decide - if this was a well told hoax? Don’t think so as he is a senior and serious guy. Or this was a truly paranormal and unexplained phenomenon? Or this was a time slip.

It was the summer of 2022 when I had first been to UK as part of my deputation. It was just at the onset of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and post Covid that getting a decent house was extremely difficult.

The city was Southampton. A nice decent place with very polite and kind people. The city has both modern and mixed architecture to begin with.

While we(me and my friend, also a college junior) were house hunting from a B&B, we contacted a trusted “broker” from our contacts.

He called us to a house in a road called the Burlington Road. It was summer and I clearly remember UK was experiencing a heatwave in that summer. So it was pretty hot.

We had reached the location by walking from where we were staying - Shirley.

There is something quietly stubborn about this house.

It does not demand attention with polished glass or modern lines. It stands in weathered brick, carrying the colour of old winters and forgotten conversations. The roof, worn by countless rains, slopes upward like the spine of an old storyteller, each tile holding a memory of seasons that came and went without ceremony. The windows are tall and patient. Their white frames are not merely painted borders but pauses in the long sentence of the building’s life.

The chimney, stained by time, hints at fires that once chased away the cold. Yet they do not diminish the house’s character, they simply add another chapter to its story.

So this guy, our broker comes and opens the door and tells us he will be back in a minute but asks us to go and visit the house. When the door opened, a brittle cold air washed our faces. It was cold at a time when UK was simmering with heat.

There were electricity bills piled up on the floor, as if they were being regularly pushed by the postman through the door’s mail slot.

We managed to jump over the pile and enter the main causeway.

At the first right is the stairs. Below the stairs is a small room where termites have made their own home. At the first left turn, was a bathroom where the bath curtains had fallen off and it was a mess. I can easily imagine someone could have drowned there.

We went up the stairs. Every stair made a cracking sound. When we reached the first floor, it was the most atrocious site we had seen. The room had worn out bedsheets and pillows. One of them had blood stains which our broker told was from a guy whose hand cut from a “broken” glass. The bedroom had a wash basin and a window. From the window you can watch the backyard and I can assure you, you will see a figure at night like Conjuring playing the swing.

The bathroom was wet and smelly. But the smell was of rotten mass. The broker told he will give us the house at a “heavy” discount and he wants us to confirm immediately. We didn’t. We left. The house always felt as if it was watching our every move. Every damn move. When we left, the UK heat seemed more pleasant than the five minutes we spent inside it. Pure evil and negative energy.

Last time we checked in 2023, it still was unoccupied. :)

This story is from my collection of true paranormal stories that have been experienced in Bengal region over the years.

The place is a very small village, around 150KMs from the state capital Kolkata (erstwhile Calcutta). The author happened to be a distant relative of mine. Quite distant. But nonetheless he was an honest man. I don’t remember the year but he told it was somewhere in late 70s or very early 80s. He was just 20 at that time.

He was working as an assistant headmaster in one of the schools in Kolkata. During the summer holidays, he had travelled to his village. Unlike now, those days the journey to the village included multiple stops. He had to first board the train from Kolkata and reach his district. From there he had to board a bus to reach the village. Finally he had to cross the river in a boat to reach the other side from where it was like 1-1.5 kms walk through a bamboo forest.

So one such time he had travelled to his village after changing modes multiple times. When he finally crossed the river, it was almost dusk. As it was village, there was no electricity. So he wanted to quickly bypass the forest and reach his home.

When he had reached, he saw two men walking around 100-150 meters before him through the jungle. He was very pleased to see them. He waved his hand and shouted as he thought they might be one of his neighbours. After all the village had around 400 people at that time.

The strange this is those guys didn’t respond. They simply didn’t care. He shouted again. They didn’t respond. When he started to run to catchup with them, they started running too. He was stopping, they stopped. All this in a dimly lit bamboo forest on both sides. He understood something was wrong.

In Indian culture, many people tend to carry certain objects which can be attributed to Gods like amulets or talisman etc. He also had one of the local tutelary goddess. He held it like his life dependent on him.

Once he again made the run now, those men jumped like Spider-Man and climbed the tree and vanished. He fainted.

He was rescued after sometime by another group which was returning back via the same route.

There is absolutely no explanation for this weird and strange behaviour. He doesn’t look like a guy who will joke. He was a communist and rationalist if you all want to know.

That’s it. I will comeback with another story.

This happened in June 2020, during peak covid. My grandmother was staying like 3.5kms from where we were staying and my father used to visit her every week x 2 days. She never really wanted to live with any of his children (my father has a younger brother and a younger sister). She used to stay with her nurse and our house help who had been in our house since 1967. Just before the morning she had peacefully died (due to age related complications), she had visited my father exactly around 4:30 AM in the morning in dreams. She talked to him for few mins and bid goodbye. My father has sleep apnea, so he immediately sprang off. Mom gave him some water and had asked what happened when he narrated the story. We were having tea at around 6:30 AM when he got a call that my grandmother had passed away between 4:30-5am and the nurse only got to know once she didn’t respond to her for medicine in the morning.

Make of what you want to make. But not a single lie I wrote. My only first hand near to paranormal experience.

I will be back with some of the most insane stories from Bengal.

Dear friends,

What happens when your company doesn’t furnish Experience letter until you have left the company and UPSC asks for it for interview round for UPSC Assistant Systems Director, Income tax in the event of one getting selected in the recruitment test?

Does UPSC accept any substitute like offer letter, payslip, bank statements etc?

This is not a first hand experience by me. But a very close friend of mine had experienced this like some years back. He swears by it. Wanted to share it.

The place is one of the hill stations in West Bengal, India called Kalimpong. This hill station was once the top summer retreat for many British and Europeans who used to stay during the period of the British Raj.

In the laps of the Himalayas, this town is a very comfortable place with moderate to cold temperatures around the year.

So my friend and three of his college friends decided to go on a college trip few years back. They were staying in a hotel which was an old guesthouse owned by a British Couple from Sussex. They had sold their properties around 1946-47 and had left for UK. They had a large Afghan Hound which was very close the couple, specially the man. The dog had died two years before they had left India. The hotel still had the portrait of the couple and their dog.

So when my friends reach the guest house, they were allotted two different rooms opposite to each other but on the same floor. Since power often goes out at around 8/9m-ish, they had their dinner quite early.

They all sat playing cards with candles on when my friend had to go to washroom (nature’s call). He took one of the candles and since he was staying in the other room, he went alone to his room to address the natures call. While passing the dark corridor, he could hear a faint growl of what seemed a dog. He didn’t care and he entered his room. The room was pitch black. After coming out of the washroom finally, he tripped over and fell down and the candle also lit off. Hurriedly he switched on his mobile phone’s flash light when he saw the silhouette of a dog which was sitting on the floor and was probably busy eating something.

He immediately recognised the dog from the portrait outside and he immediately shouted and ran towards the door. He somehow managed to go to the dark corridor only to hear violent growls. When all the other buddies came outside with torch, they called the manager who came rushing to their floor.

Voila, there were no dogs in the hotels. No guest had brought one at that time. They all looked into my friend’s room only to find a pillow on the floor but quite away from the bathroom entrance. Other guys told he might have been hallucinating. He still swears by the fact that it was the dog that he had seen downstairs.

But one thing, next morning a couple in the next room had heard dog growling but that too was rejected as some “street” dog might have caused the menace.

Only God knows what had happened that day. But he still swears by it.