Whispers in the night: a Jinn story

Can we see ghosts? Or is ghost just a general term given to horrifying creatures? Some people believe in supernatural creatures and I’m one of them. I briefly remember this horror story my grandmom told my cousins and me as kids. Not one for children honestly. But before I dive deep into the story I’d like to make mention that in my culture, we consider Jinns to be real and living. Jinns, although not visible are supernatural creatures made of fire. They are categorized as good and bad jinns. Moreover, they live a life just like humans and in some circumstances can interact with humans too. There are many cases where humans have been possessed by jinns, influencing their thoughts and actions and disastrously causing harm.

Long long ago, in the City of Palaces, Mysore was a huge, desolated mansion built on ancestral land. This abode looked no less than a haunted house depicted in movies. With long corridors and dull lighting, it signified an eerie atmosphere and a feeling of uneasiness. One stormy, dark night, my grandmom’s sister was out in the backyard when she heard whispers coming from the bushes. Curious to determine who or what it was, she followed the loud whispers and went further ahead. She was baffled to find a figure covered in a white cloth that glowed in her eyes. The figure’s face wasn’t clear but its eyes gleamed with a red light indicating some sort of strange mystery. It looked like an unnatural being, with hands and legs unidentified. But what's more surprising is the fact that only my grandmom’s sister was able to spot this strange figure and nobody else from the house.

Since that day, strange events would occur in the house. Random and unexplained noises coming from nowhere and the disappearance of objects from the house. The frequent fluctuation of lights and just the feeling of discomfort and bad energy throughout. Moreover, dogs would bark for hours on end at night as if to indicate that the mansion is entrapped with an evil spirit lurking around. It is believed in my culture that if dogs bark loudly, especially at night, it is because they have encountered “Shaytaan” or rather the devil. Eventually, all these signs led my family to believe that a jinn was inhabiting the house. To this day, my family assumes the house to be unsafe and abandoned. But what’s fascinating is that I’ve been to the house as a kid, so have I seen it?

More about jinns..

We're all intrigued by supernatural creatures, aren't we? I remember me and my friends back in school pestering our ustad( Islamic teacher) to narrate scary Jinn stories. Looking up "human possessed by jinn" videos on YouTube to contemplating whether or not to try the Ouija board. But what we fail to realize is that matters can get quite serious if certain precautions are not taken. I heard somewhere that if you leave your hair open at night, then the chances of you getting possessed by a jinn are quite high.

Another interesting fact about jinns is that they're enchanted by good-looking, beautiful, or rather the best-looking person in a room and might enter his/her body.

They're everywhere, probably looking you in the eye while you read this. Moreover, practicing exorcism on a possessed person is not everyone's cup of tea. It is performed by a righteous, pious scholar or imam with spiritual authority who knows the methods of expelling the jinn. One of the methods to expel the jinn out of the person's body, as told by my ustad, is to hit him/her hard until their face turns bright red while threatening it to leave the body. To end it all, reciting duas for protection and practicing ruqyah helps in keeping the jinns and the evil away from us.

I hope y'all like my first prompt and looking forward to more :)