Bhairahawa lies in the southwest of Nepal and it is where our first children's refuge was located. It's now home to around 50 children and teenagers in the care of the Trust, a mixture of dependent children of prisoners, former street children and children that we have rescued from the circus. They are accommodated in the so called "White House", "Red House" and "Blue House" buildings. Based on information I received today it seems also to be home to some ghouls...
Undoubtedly Bhairahawa is a creepy place. Bev and I lived there for the first year and a half of being in Nepal and we felt very isolated as the only foreigners for miles around. It was a case of lights out at 6 p.m., bolt the doors and wait for dawn. We had the company of one another and when the electricity didn't fail us (as it did very often) also of Hindi television. If I went back to the UK for charity duties Bev was left on her own, with only the dog, Bryher, as a comfort. Had there been an incident during the night no one would have helped, least of all the police, who refused to leave the station after dark. On occasion in the small hours you'd hear foxes howling outside in the very human way that they do. At times like that it felt rather like Rorke's Drift.
Today I learned that the Red House apparently has a ghost. The story of this began a couple of months' back when something happened there that spooked the security guard. A similar incident - undescribed - occurred the following evening such that he ran away and slept in one of our other premises. A change of guard happened and that was that. Until about a month ago when the former circus girls staying at the house reported hauntings in the upstairs of the building and began sleeping downstairs. Our poor local Director, who'd probably thought he'd seen everything by this stage in his career, called in an exorcist last evening. This seems to have had little effect (unsurprisingly). Magam, our staff male chef, stayed with the girls until midnight with nothing happening. But between midnight and 2 a.m. one of the girls felt something touching her leg, like a caress. She screamed and all the girls were terrified. They huddled in a group with lit candles around them until 4 a.m. when fatigue forced them to sleep.
My colleague, Nick Sankey, has told the local Director that the chef shouldn't be staying in the same room as the girls. He's right. But I've deliberately made light of this by agreeing and writing to the Director that I'd hate the ghost to end up caressing his leg by mistake. Seriously though, this is a problem and the girls have now been moved to one of our other buildings. I do believe in presences from the afterlife, some pleasant (see my interview with the Times in the link at the bottom of the page) and some highly unpleasant. Personally I think there are rather more of the latter in Nepal.
