Places & Portals

Amidst a sea of over 7.5 crore pilgrims gathered for Mauni Amavasya at the sacred Triveni Sangam during Mahakumbh, India in 2025, one mystic’s experience stood out — and turned terrifying. 

Vishwa,  a spiritual seeker had been practising daily sky gazing, had  meticulously planned this pilgrimage. For years, he believed the sky  whispered truths — each sunrise and twilight carrying deeper messages.  (Note: Sky Gazing is the practice of observing the sky—often during  specific times like Brahma Muhurat (just before sunrise)—as a meditative  or intuitive tool to connect with higher consciousness, divine energy,  or subtle signs from the universe. Practitioners believe the sky holds  cosmic vibrations and that its patterns—cloud movements, colors,  celestial alignments—can mirror inner truths or coming events)

But  nothing prepared Vishwa for what he witnessed that night. Having  prepared for months, he arrived in Prayagraj on the auspicious occasion  of Mauni Amavasya—a day when millions gather to bathe at the confluence  of the Ganga, Yamuna, and the mythical Saraswati during Brahma Muhurat—a  powerful celestial window just before sunrise. He had even done a recce  a day before to understand how best to reach the Samgam in time on the  Mauni Amavasya. 

At around 11:30  PM, Vishwa joined the surging crowd heading toward the holy waters. By  1:30 AM, he was trapped in a dense human tide, where stampede-like  conditions were erupting unpredictably. People stumbled, got trampled,  stood up again—driven by faith, unaware of the dangers unfurling.

Ambulances sped by. Police sirens echoed. The air vibrated with tension.

“I  was caught in a stretch of 700-800 meters where people were crushed  together,” Vishwa recalled. “The police kept yelling they couldn't  control the crowd. The fear in their voices was real. Something felt  very wrong.”

Moments later,  Vishwa was knocked to the ground. Others stepped over him as he  struggled to breathe. Dragged back to his feet, bruised but unrelenting,  he managed to climb over a barricade and push through the masses.  Moments later, he entered the freezing waters of the Sangam, shivering,  overwhelmed—but determined to complete his ritual.

As he stepped into the freezing water and took his first few dips, he looked up to the sky and then it happened.

The sky had changed. The sky turned ominous. 

“The  clouds moved unnaturally fast, churning like a vortex. The sky didn’t  just look angry—it felt like it was tearing open,” recalls Vishwa. The  dark expanse above no longer felt familiar. “I felt like I was staring  into a different realm. A different Loka—like the veil between the  worlds had split open. It wasn’t just a weather shift—it was a cosmic  disturbance,” he recalls. Vishwa, who had spent years reading patterns  in the sky as part of his spiritual discipline, said this was the first  time he felt fear. A powerful planetary alignment—Sun, Moon, Jupiter,  and Saturn—had already marked the day as astrologically significant. But  this… this felt like a rupture in energy. 

Minutes  after emerging from the waters, news spread: a deadly stampede had  taken place. Dozens were injured. Lives were lost. The sense of dread  he’d felt was not imagined.

Two  decades ago, when Whitefield in Bangalore was still a remote patch of  dense greenery, far from the IT metropolis it is today, two young  students—Sanjay and Reyansh—began their academic journey at an Engineering College, nestled deep in an almost-forgotten stretch of  land.

The hostel stood like a lone outpost in the middle of nowhere—surrounded by forests, dimly lit streets, and an eerie silence after sunset. Public transport was rare and by 8 PM, the area would descend into stillness. There were no nearby markets or coffee shops, just the soft hum of insects and the  occasional flicker of hostel lights.

To  shake off the growing loneliness, Sanjay and Reyansh often hung out with fellow hostel mates, chatting, walking on the terrace, or, once in a  while, sharing a bottle of whisky smuggled in with the help of a friendly canteen worker. One such night, as six of them gathered with  drinks and stories but the night stood apart.

It wasn’t just the drinks or the stories they told.

It was the room.

The  very room they were gathered in had a strange history—it had remained  locked for several years and had only been reopened that same year.  Rumors surrounded its dark past, but no one really knew the full story.  That night, six boys including Sanjay, Reyansh, and the canteen helper gathered in that long-abandoned room, eager to make the most of their  “haunted” hangout spot.

As the  drinks flowed, so did the stories. When the conversation turned to the supernatural, the canteen helper spoke in a lower voice: “Do you know this is the very room where a student was found dead in a mysterious  way. The ones who were around then say that it wasn’t a natural death-  there was something sinister at play.” 

The words sank in like cold water.

Despite their questions, the helper refused to divulge any more details. By 1:30 AM, the  gathering ended. The others returned to their rooms. Only Sanjay and  Reyansh remained.

Reyansh,  unable to sleep, decided to step out for a terrace walk. Sanjay  unnerved by the story and slightly tipsy, locked the door from inside  and fell into a restless sleep.

Around  2 AM, Sanjay woke up to a knock. He opened the door. Reyansh stood  outside. Without much thought, Sanjay let him in and fell asleep again.

At 4:30 AM, he woke up to find Reyansh getting dressed.

“Where are you going so early?”

“Just a walk,” Reyansh replied, and left again.

At  5:30 AM, Sanjay got up for the day, showered, and opened the door—only  to find Reyansh fast asleep on the floor outside the room.

Baffled, he shook him awake.

“If you didn’t want to really walk at 4 AM, why step out and then sleep here?”

Reyansh looked at him with disbelief.

“What are you talking about? I  slept here after returning from the terrace. I knocked for a while and gave up. I slept here all night.”

Sanjay froze.

He remembered opening the door. He remembered someone entering.

He remembered sleeping beside someone.

So then—who was in the room with him?

Was he dreaming? But he had kicked the mat to one side after opening the door for Reyash to step in and the mat was lying on the side. 

Could it be that Reyansh was pulling a joke?  But he swore he was not and he did not look like he had just slept on the corridor some time back or was faking it. He was indeed in deep slumber when Sanjay woke him up. 

Till date, both men recall the incident the exact same way. Reyansh continues to  say it wasn’t a joke that he pulled on Sanjay and Sanjay continues  to wonder with dread-

Was it a ghost from the room’s dark past?

Or something older that never left?