When someone would read the following story, the first impression that would cross his mind was what once Hamlet told Horatio: “There are more things on heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
The young mother and her eight years old son–climbed a mango tree, scrambled up to the top branch and sat there for whole day. They declined to come down, threw away the ladders and cursed the villagers, policemen and fire fighters. Now, it was being said that both the mother and her son got ‘possessed’ by an evil spirit that lived on that mango tree.
The incident took place at Madhyapara of Birganj GP in Amarpur.
It all started on Tuesday morning when an eight years old boy Ajay Das climbed a tall mango tree. This was nothing unusual. Village boys always loved to climb trees. But what followed was highly unusual.
Ajay’s mother Bina Das while doing her family chores intermittently several times asked to come down but the boy refused. After sometime evidently put at her wit’s end Bina herself climbed up the tree to bring her son down. But it was then something happened to her too. Instead of taking her son to ground, she also got herself settled on the tree sharing the same branch with her son. Now, this was what one would have never expected. Startled by her behaviour others in the family this time started asking her to come down, but Bina like her son Ajay refused . Both said they would live on the tree from now on.
It was not that they were afraid of climbing down the tree. Bina was, in fact, getting angry whenever someone would ask her to come down. In the meantime, as expected, entire village gathered there and soon came the police from Birganj police station when informed. The fire Brigade personnel also arrived with their ladder etc.
Till now Bina and her son were talking incoherently, but now as they saw the police and firefighters they became agitated. Abuses rained from the tree top for about two hours. In the meantime, they also pushed back the ladders that the firemen set for their help. Ultimately, after several hours of struggle at around 6 pm in the evening the firemen went up and managed to forcibly bring them down.
Now, the entire village was high on sensation and, afraid too. Who knows the evil spirit–or whatever it was up there- might like to come down for a walk in the village and pick up some others. After all the resident ghost must be angry missing the mother and the son.
At the face of it though there was no immediate and scientific explanation for the strange behaviour of the mother son duo scientific community ruled out any paranormal or supernatural elements in the incident.
Dr Sajal Gupta , an eminent Psychiatrist of the state said, the case needed to be studied carefully.
“Often there are cases of ‘Shared Psychosis’ in a family- which means if one of the family members is suffering from some sort of psychosis, it would affect other family members too. This angle of the incident should be looked into”, said Dr Gupta. They needed to be examined by the doctors.
