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"It was a
dark stormy night.."
By Kasun
Ubayasiri.
It was a dark stormy night
in mid-November. The wind howled through the
corridors of the main block, wailing as it passed
through crevices of the old colonial building. Out
side the rain beat on the window panes forming
puddles on the sill, which shimmered as they caught
the flashes of lightning.
Far across the main block,
the cross on the chapel roof silhouetted against
the stormy sky cast a long eerie shadow wrapping
half of the quadrangle in its darkness.
As the wind grew stronger,
twisting the branches of the trees into a furious
devil dance, across the main block the last
remaining lights on the dormitory corridor
flickered with momentary brightness before giving
in to the haunting blackness that was snapping at
the fringes of the ill lit building which housed
the only enclave of human warmth. It was a night
that belonged to the dead.
Most of the young students
had wrapped themselves up in the linen and crawled
deeper under their bed cloths to escape from the
sound of the howling wind and rain which battered
the windows. As the sky rumbled, a few of the
braver boys ventured to peer out from under their
warm covers into the gloom of the night.
As they stared into the
darkness their eyes widened at the sight of faint
flickering lights on the top floor of the main
block. No one could understand how a candle came to
be lit in every class room when the steel gates
were pulled shut, and secured with heavy brass
padlocks.
One by one the whispering
youngsters gathered closer to the window to catch a
glimpse of the ghostly lights.
As dozens of pairs of eyes
focused on the strange glow, non of them saw the
stealthy movement of the black shadows crawling
along the down pipes of the main block.
The glass on the windows
rattled as the wind blew stronger against the old
wooden frames, one of the rusty nails gave way a
pane of glass crashed to the
ground….
The ghostly shadows were
stilled for a moment before continuing on their
descent, and making their escape
unnoticed.
Being one of the night's
shadows was an experience only a few of the senior
boarders had. But for the rest of us, the presence
of ghosts and the fascinating yarns that surrounded
them were always a part of our Thomian
life.
An old colonial college
which survived through a world war, rooms which
once housed dead bodies, spooky corners and big old
trees, combined with the imagination of young boys
provided ample fodder for stories of ghosts and
ghouls.
One of the most well worn
stories was that of the two second world war
Japanese fighter pilots who crashed on the college
grounds during the Easter Sunday attack on Colombo
harbour.
For over fifty years,
generation after generation of Thomians claim to
have seen the two airmen standing under the shade
of the huge tree planted in place of their graves,
near what is now the new scout room, after their
remains were exhumed and finally laid to rest in
the cemetery.
But although the legend of
the two fighter pilots is the most well known of
all these ghost stories, close encounters with the
air men or any other tales surrounding the pilots
was never recorded by any of us during our time at
College.
But there were loads of
other horror stories which had no historic
reference like the Japanese pilots.
While we were still in the
lower school those of us who took part in an
occasional College drama rehearsed at the College
hall, and it was during one such visit some one
came up with an extraordinary tale of a ghost which
haunted the main hall.
A senior student had
decided to work late into the night with some tests
at the chemistry lab. It was almost nearing
midnight when his work was done, but by this time
he was feeling stressed out after a long days work.
So he made his way to the hall balcony where the
tennis tables were set up to play some ping pong to
relax his aching brain.
He had been playing for
less than ten minutes when he felt a strange
sensation in his stomach. It was as if his stomach
was churning, his shirt was drenched in sweat, and
the world seem to spin around him. At once he
realised what had gone wrong, the chemicals he was
working with had entered his body through a
neglected cut on one of his fingers. But it was too
late for any thing, every muscle in his body
tightened, his throat tasted of blood, and before
long he was gasping for breath.
He crouched holding his
stomach and as he stumbled on to the ground dying
with chemical poisoning he knocked the bowl of ping
pong balls, sending them bouncing across the room
and down the stairway leading to the balcony. And
the story goes on to say that to this day on that
fateful night any one who is sleeping in the top
floor of the boarding can hear the sound of ping
pong balls bouncing down the steps.
Continuing with the sports
theme our very own Thambi once claimed he felt the
presence of ghost at the far end of the main block
one evening after sports
practice…..
But to this day the
ghostly flickers of the candle lights in the main
block remains the best of the ghost stories kept
live through Thomian dedication.
However what happened at
the main block on that stormy November night is
unclear not only to all those young boarders who
peer through their window but even to the seniors
who became, for one brief moment, a part of the
night's darkness.
As the shadowy figures
moved in the light of the stormy sky, they stopped
before creeping back into the boarding and glanced
at the main block for one last time. They scanned
the building from one end to the other and looked
at one another in surprise, no one could remember
lighting a candle inside the last classroom above
the old military morgue.
And finally there was that
famous story of the middle school boy from the
college boarding who ran into the main block
drenched in sweat over half an hour late for the
evening prep, mumbling some thing about a great big
chimp….
Anyway he was more
fortunate than most of those who were believed to
have had close encounters with a drunk
Primate.
He was so unharmed, most
of his friend still say it was a total fabrication,
which he came up with to avoid punishment for
getting late&endash; but to this day the guy would
vouch that the dark black shadow of a rather skinny
chimp who quite contentedly sat behind the Sub
warden's desk in the old office, with a bottle in
one hand was really another Thomian ghost and had
nothing to do with the boring maths lesson that lay
ahead.
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