Horrific Hauntings : A Haunted Banyan Tree Part I

 You might have heard about serial killers who killed 20-odd people but, have you ever heard about a tree that took the life of more than 3 dozen people? This is the story of one such Tree.

 Ganesan, a 60-year-old man from Andhra Pradesh is the protagonist of this story. The year was 1992 and he was 30 years old back then. He owned a Teak groove which, was his main source of income. The groove had over 300 Teak trees with one Banyan tree planted in the middle and it was located in close proximity to his house. This Groove was his ancestral property and he revered it a lot as it was established by his father himself.

 He used to guard the groove all by himself and as there were a lot of wood thieves during those times, he used to spend most of the time inside that groove guarding it. One night, when he went to the washroom outside his house to relieve his urge at around 3:00 AM, he saw fire amidst the grove. Thinking that someone was intentionally trying to set his groove on fire, he rushed into the groove making a lot of noise. He followed the light of the fire and it led him to the Banyan tree in the middle of the groove.

 As he neared the place of fire he shouted, “Hey, get the hell out of my groove or else…..” but, his shouts abruptly stopped as soon as he had a view of that fire. He was shell-shocked to see a burning figure that appeared to be a man on fire. He ran towards that man to help him but, as he neared, he saw that the man was not even flinching in spite of the heat of the flame. That man slowly went behind the banyan tree and when Ganesan followed him to know what was happening, he saw nothing. Ganesh was caught completely off-guard by what he had just seen and he stood there motionless. He was bought back to his sense by a sharp pain in his wrist and when he looked at his wrist to see what was causing the pain, he saw red handprints on them.

 Sensing something was terribly wrong, he decided to leave the groove as soon as possible and started to walk back. While walking back, he saw someone on the banyan tree in his peripheral. When he turned, he saw the burning figure he had seen before, hanging from the tree. He was completely petrified by the scene and ran back to his house in fear. With a lot of questions clogging his mind, he did not sleep for the rest of the night. The next morning, he told his friends about what had happened the previous day and he took them into the groove to see if the figure was still there. But when they reached the place where Ganesan saw the figure, they noticed that everything looked normal. But on deeper inspection, they found a few burnt leaves lying near the banyan tree. Despite seeing this, his friends did not believe him and told him that these burnt leaves could be the work of a bunch of robbers.

 They suggested appointing a separate security guard for the night and Ganesan agreed to it as he had no other choice. The next night he was woken up at around 2:00 AM, by the knocking on the house door. When he opened the door to see who it was, he saw the weeping face of his new security guard. When he asked what went wrong, he said, “Did I wrong you in any way? Why did you put me in the guard of those wretched trees? I saw 4 men burning there. I went to help them but I.. I was wrong. Those are not humans. Those are something else”. Ganesan calmed him down and convinced the security guard to accompany him to the grooves. 

 As they entered the groove and neared the Banyan tree, Ganesan saw a young woman performing some ritual near that tree and she was surrounded by 3 burning figures. When he asked the security guard, “You told me there were 4 figures but I see only three. Are you sure there were 4?”  he got no answer. When he turned to see why the security guard was not speaking up, he saw his face turn pale. That watchman seemed to be frozen with fear looking at something right next to Ganesan. When he slowly rotated his head to see what he was looking at, he saw another burning figure standing right next to him. With its gouged-out eyes and completely burnt face, it kept staring at him for a few moments and it slowly moved near the other 3 figures.

 Ganesan and his security guard were so scared that despite their attempts to shout, their voice never came out of their throats. With their wobbly shivering legs, they rushed out of that groove to save their lives. After sending the security guard back to his house, Ganesan went back to his house and slept. The next morning, he was woken up by the wailing of the security guard’s family. He got to know from them that, the security guard had hung himself from the banyan tree in his groove and died.

 Why did the watchman go to the groove again? What was the reason for his death? Know the answer to these questions in the second part.