The lead investigator of the country’s first paranormal society says 90 per cent of the cases are false. Rationalists argue that the remaining 10 per cent are also bunkum. While the debate rages on, Avantika Bhuyan goes ghostbusting
It is on a balmy Saturday afternoon that Gaurav Tiwari heads to Delhi’s Ferozshah Kotla cricket stadium armed with a bagful of fancy gadgets. The grounds are eerily quiet, with not a soul around. He is here not to watch a match or to soak in the wintry sunshine; rather he is on a special mission. As the lead “investigator” with the two-year-old Indian Paranormal Society — one of the country’s first ever associations dedicated to paranormal “investigation”— he wants to sense the presence of spirits or ghosts in the area. According to myths and legends, this historical area has been the playground of djinns for centuries. Not far from here William Hodson, at the head of his Sikh cavalry, had shot dead the three sons of Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Mughal, in 1857. It was the kind of incident that has for centuries in India produced restless souls.
However, as Tiwari tests a section of Kotla with his KII meters and infrared thermometers — special gadgets that are the key tools used in the detection of spirits — there seems to be no evidence of paranormal activity whatsoever. He would have liked to take us around to more such ‘so-called’ haunted places in the capital but “one needs permission from the police and the Archaeological Survey of India to carry out such investigations there”. Red tape prevails in the other world too.
Stories about ghosts and spirits are nothing new to India where every street and alley resounds with such myths and legends. However, over the last two years, fascination with paranormal activity has reached a crescendo of sorts with television channels planning shows around this theme. Take for instance the immensely popular India’s Most Haunted hosted by Rocky and Mayur of Highway on My Plate fame on NDTV Good Times. Then there is MTV’s Girls Night Out, for which Tiwari was one of the mentors, where a bevy of young women are left alone in a spooky location to deal with their fear of the unknown.
Witch doctors and shamans can still be found in some jungle and hill tribes. Their trade, though, is under threat from the spread of education. But, Tiwari claims that he and his 34 “investigators” get calls mostly from cities like Delhi, Patna, Mumbai, Panaji, Hyderabad and Pune. “Most of the times, our clients are more concerned about what the neighbours will think of them than of any ghosts in the house. They are also very concerned that we don’t consider them crazy. On the basis of our “investigations”, we give them counselling or help communicate with the spirits,” says Tiwari.
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Tiwari himself hails from a family of non-believers. However, he claims that an experience in the United States where he was training to be a commercial pilot changed his belief forever. “I was sitting alone in my apartment when I heard footsteps. Someone spoke my name in my ear; I thought I was hallucinating. But then another girl who stayed there saw an apparition soon after. There were five of us who lived together and each of us had some paranormal experience in that house,” he claims. That prompted Tiwari to find out more about such incidents and he joined a course at ParaNexus Association, an organisation that “focuses on researching and understanding the human condition through scientific study of aerial, physical and anomalous phenomenon.” After completing 80 field “investigations”, Tiwari became a certified paranormal investigator. “Such courses are very common in the United States. People there are more open about paranormal experiences. In India, people think that either you are superstitious or that you are illiterate,” he says.
However, he does admit 99 per cent of the people who claim to be experts in this field are actually scamsters. Tiwari says he recently met a clairvoyant who claimed that all his dreams come true. “I have been observing him for the past six months and none of his claims is true. There are a lot of godmen around; it is very easy to convince people about anything that deals with spirituality and the paranormal,” he says.
In his experience, Tiwari says he has come across very few genuine cases of paranormal activity. Most of the times people make up stories to get media attention. Tiwari claims to have “investigated” cases all across the country. “In Delhi there is a graveyard near Paharganj where a lot of genuine paranormal activity takes place. I went there in the night and I could hear a girl howling and a man shouting out in pain. But be assured when people talk about ghosts and paranormal, in 90 per cent of the cases, there is a scientific explanation behind it. Maybe it is due to a natural occurrence or due to some logical explanation. We consider only those phenomena as paranormal or beyond normal which can’t be replicated in a science lab,” he elaborates.
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One of the most popular cases that Tiwari says he handled was in Bhangarh, Rajasthan. Considered one of the most haunted places in the country, it was believed that whoever visited the area in the night would not live to see the light of the day. “I have been there twice, in the middle of the night, and here I am sitting in front of you,” says he.
Tiwari believes that all the ghost stories in that area originate from people’s beliefs. “People there are so superstitious that if someone falls ill, they would rather call a tantrik than visit a doctor,” he says. On speaking with the local police, Tiwari also found out that the youngsters who visit Bhangarh are mostly drunk and want to see ghosts. “So in their inebriated state, they imagine a presence of sorts. Also, Bhangarh is the water source for the animals in Sariska; so when the wild animals visit the place in the dead of the night, people think that they are hearing ghosts. It is all in the imagination.” His team also “investigated” a case at a Pune school where students were seeing ghostly faces on the blackboard — it was nothing more than ‘matrixing’ or the human brain’s tendency to find a familiar image out of complex shapes.
There are also a lot of myths attached with old and abandoned buildings. “Most historical buildings come with a history of war and violence. Hence it is believed that such spaces are home to evil spirits. But we have debunked many such myths. There are only few places like Kuldhara in Rajasthan where we have received positive indications of paranormal activity on our equipment,” says Tiwari. Helping him on such expeditions is a host of gadgets like night vision cameras, geophones, full spectrum cameras, FHRs or thermal cameras and audio recorders with high sensitivity microphones. Most of these devices detect manipulations in electromagnetic fields and temperatures in order to trace paranormal activity. For instance, it is believed that spirits are also made of energy, so if there is a disruption in the electromagnetic field there is usually an anomaly present, he says. That is what the KII meters are designed to detect, Tiwari adds.
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The only few times that Tiwari says he got scared or startled was during his early “investigations” at a girls’ hostel in Houston, United States. There had been a constant complaint that someone would slap the girls at night. The team of investigators tried to communicate with the spirit through energy burst protocols and tried to take recordings in the place. When the recordings were played back in the office, Tiwari says he heard a faint voice saying “Margaret”. On finding out the history of the hostel, Tiwari and the team learnt that some forty years back a hostel warden called Margaret had died there. She was known for her strict discipline and would slap the girls who would come back late. Apparently, she was continuing the same practice even after death.
However, there are several critics of his theory, including Sanal Edamaruku of the Indian Rationalist Association who says these theories about ghosts and spirits are nothing but hogwash. “The whole thing that fluctuations in electromagnetic field suggest a ghostly presence is such a stupid idea. These fields can be influenced by any electronic activity in the area. Even a student can tell you that!” he says. According to Edamaruku, paranormal science is a much abused word; it is something that can’t be substantiated and is based on people’s imagination. “These people claim that spirits have energy. But for this to be a scientific fact, there need to be theories to prove it. There are none. I feel that all these investigators who hear footsteps in the night or sounds are just pretenders and need help.”
