Bantwal: Rationalist haunts ’Haunted House’ at Nettarakere

Bantwal: Rationalist haunts ’Haunted House’ at Nettarakere

Mangalore Today News Network

By Prof. Narendra Nayak, President, Federation of Indian Rationalists Association(FIRA)
Photos: Prashanth Nayak
Bantwal, May 29, 2014: Nettarakere in Kannada means a tank of blood and this place has its minutes of fame due to the ‘haunted house’ of the couple Koosappa and his spouse Mahadevi. It was just a few days ago that the ‘spiritual’ activity started on the ghostly front. Otherwise the activity in this field was in the evenings, when Koosappa would have his evening drink! He is a wood chopper by profession and like all his brethren the pain of the hard work has to be neutralized with ‘spirtuality’!  In his house a few days ago objects started flying around. Though initially they were seen by his wife Mahadevi and his seven year old son Likhith first, when he dismissed their sightings as nonsense, the unseen spirits decided to demonstrate their presence to him also by throwing around a few objects for good measure. There were sticks, stones, a bottle of perfume and various other things. The spiritual activity was only of transferring things from point A to point B. There were not all harmed or broken. As usual they sought the help of an exorcist who asked them to bundle the most dynamic of these objects and dispose them off in a river which they did promptly. However, the claim was that though this was done the spiritual movements did not stop. When the unknown forces sensed that their favourite objects were missing they started with whatever that was around and though some of these were delicate things like LED lamps they took care not to break them.

 

When the news of this activity spread there were crowds of curious onlookers who also wanted their share of fame.  There were those who were ready to give bytes and there were those who crowded at their back to get themselves on air. In fact when I went to investigate so called abnormal phenomenon there were large crowds around the house and half a dozen TV cameramen and journalists were hanging around and no ‘spiritual’ event was happening- one can expect that these denizens of the underworld to keep away when there are observers and cameras around! When I interviewed the couple individually there were a lot of discrepancies in their narratives and I also found the precocious second standard child interjecting with his own experiences. I found it strange that a nearly sixty year old man and his wife of nine years who is no spring chicken herself, for she said that her age was forty five having a seven year old child, he explained it by saying that it was his second marriage. He claimed that he was a divorcee with three children from his first venture into the marriage field and was keen to brush that matter under the carpet while I was not allowing him to do that.

This ‘haunted house’ as all such go turned out to be damp squib. The crowds who had thronged to see a ‘spiritual’ phenomenon had to be content with sights of clothes strewn around and narratives of those who claimed to have been around when such things did take place. There seem to be various angles to this story which need further investigations there are quite a few places of worship nearby and some attempt was being made to link the deities in them to this so called ‘supernatural’ phenomena. It is my opinion that there needs to be more investigation into this occurrence to find out the exact motives behind this! The only firm conclusion that we can come to in this matter is that it has only human forces behind it.