I’m terrified of horror movies. And until a few years ago you could switch off lights in a room and go “boo” for me to be absolutely petrified. (My brother and husband have used this to great advantage, I may add.) Now of course I hide my fears efficiently and try to act very brave for my daughter! But all those old fears came gushing back last night when I caught a glimpse of my husband watching a ‘ghost’ movie. I remembered the time we saw a ‘real ghost’. It was a bone chilling experience and frightened me beyond words…

This happened nearly 8 years ago when we used to live in Muscat. Some friends were visiting us and a long weekend on account of Eid was approaching. So we planned an outing to a remote beach in the southernmost corner of the country. The beach is in a town called Raas Al Hadd and is a world famous nesting ground for Olive Ridley Turtles. You need to understand a little about the topography of the place to understand why this experience was so scary. There are no pucca roads to the beach. One needs to do off road driving with craggy, brown, dry hills on one side and the ocean on the other side. The drive is breathtaking and you are literally miles away from civilization. There are no settlements there. Not even little hamlets. It’s just miles and miles of hills and ocean. It’s so quiet and peaceful. And scary – if you are there at the wrong time of the day.

Now we’ve visited this beach very often and always reached our destination in broad day light. This time it so happened that our friends were delayed in arriving and our start was delayed. By the time we reached the off road spot – it was already pitch dark. This in itself was frightening because a wrong turn could mean we get flung into the sea on one side or crash into the mountains on the other! My husband is a good driver – and that was the only reassurance. As we drove it got quieter and darker (if that’s possible). With no landmarks in sight we were not very confident of actually finding our camp site. We drove on cracking crude jokes to keep our spirits high.

Suddenly there it was. In the middle of the road. An apparition in white. Sparkling white. Standing out even more in the stark darkness. It was raising its hands and waving out to us. I think I screamed. I can’t remember. And I also held my friends had so tight her bone almost cracked! There was a sense of collective horror in the car. I mean it was so dark and so silent. There no sign of civilization anywhere. Where did this apparition come from? Was it human at all? My husband casually suggested stopping the car. I think I screamed again and urged him to go on without stopping. But the question was how do we go on? Either we run the thing down. Or the car swerves to the left or right…We had no way to go. Luckily the apparition started moving and it moved to a side. My husband stepped on the accelerator and we sped past the apparition. As we crossed the ‘thing’ it tried to reach for the door and open it.

We crossed the thing. And a stunned silence followed.

An animated discussion followed. Everyone, except me of course, realized that it was no ghost. It was a drunk Omani.Omani’s are the local people of Oman and their national attire is called ‘Kandura’. It’s this white pillow case like thing with flappy arms. You know the types the sheikhs wear. So obviously this man had got a new one for Eid and celebrated by getting drunk (though it is strictly forbidden for Muslims to drink – especially in Islamic countries).

Everyone was chiding me for over reacting and screaming ghost and what not. In all this confusion we seemed to have lost our way. We had to turn and go back. “You’ll see your friendly ghost again.” Everyone teased me.

We retraced and kept our eyes open for this apparition to suddenly pounce on us from any side. The last thing we wanted to do was to crush a local man!!

We were alert. And so we spotted him. He was lying down on the road. We would have run over him had we not been alert! Horrified, my husband quickly reversed. We thanked our lucky stars as we saw another vehicle approaching from behind us. My husband and friend got out of our car and stopped that car to warn them of this man on the road. That car was full of young Omanis who could fortunately speak English. They got off their vehicle and hauled up the drunk man from the road. They then shoved him into their vehicle and drove away after telling us the way to get to our camp…

For days after that I was the butt of everyone’s jokes. For days, I was jumpy and scared of everything. To this day I cannot forget that sight of the stark white figure on that dark, moonless night. Shudder…