The Girl On the Balcony

I am one of those people who are skeptical about the paranormal. However last winter I had a strange experience which made me think once more.

This is indeed a true story. I took a job and had to leave my hometown last year. Soon after I reached my destination, I was lodged in the company guest house. The room was great and had white walls and red carpet. It also had a nice balcony. My roommate and I used to stand for quite sometime on the balcony chatting about this and that.

I stayed there for about a month after which I moved to my apartment. My roommate was a very pretty girl in her early 20s. Maybe that was the reason why she was targeted? One night, when I was away on duty she woke up in the early hours of the morning to see a faint figure standing at her bedside staring at her. Through her sleepy eyes she thought it was me and went to sleep again. It was much later, when she realised that it could'nt have been me since I had no duplicate key to enter.

Another night, she woke up again, this time to find a young woman with long silky hair standing on the balcony!! Even though she was tremendously frightened, she had me beside her this time. By the time I made my way to the balcony it was gone. However the place felt very cold but what was very startling was this. I felt an overwhelming urge to jump from the balcony. My roommate was quite angry and said that whoever it is should back off.

This must have annoyed the thing. Soon after, one night my roommate woke up to the feeling of someone kicking or hitting the end of her wooden bed frame with a hard object. Thinking that it was just her imagination, she just ignored it and went back to sleep. The next day, she found marks on the end of her bed frame that appeared as though it was caused by something hard! After all these horrifying incidents, she finally decided to talk to the owner of the guesthouse who lived next door.

It was only long after we had moved out from there that we learned of a possible explanation to all those disturbances. A girl of about 24 who was staying in that very room had fallen from the balcony and died. This incident did not happen a long time back before we had arrived at the guesthouse. Alcohol was found in her stomach and it was assumed to be an accident. Many people however thought that there was some foul play but did not open their mouth in public.

In the new year our office threw up a grand party at a local boating club. As I was standing on one of the balconies overlooking the lake a girl turned up. She was in her 20s, beautiful with long silky hair. She was wearing a green suit and was sipping from a goblet. I wondered who she was since I had never seen her in office before.

"Shonali Malhotra", she said and suddenly left but not before a warning. She told me, "Don't go so much towards the edge of the railing."

I was to make the shocking discovery the next morning when I was cleaning up my drawer in my office cubicle. There I found a card with the name "Shonali Malhotra". The designation of the person was the same as mine. So I thought that this person was working in my position before me. Thinking she was promoted, I asked my boss about it. His face became dark and he asked that how did I know. I told him of the balcony encounter with her. His eyes stared at me with disbelief. He said," Someone played a joke on you or you were drunk. Shonali died a year back."

When I asked how, he told me that she fell from the balcony of a room of the very guesthouse I had stayed. He even said that he was present there along with other colleagues and they were invited by her." Was she wearing a green dress ?" I asked. At this he shuddered and whispered-" Who told you?"

Still unsolved mysteries remain. Why did I feel like jumping from the balcony that night? How was Shonali killed actually? Was it a conspiracy? Did she want to tell me something? Why did she appear to me during the party?