CHAPTER 1 The Introduction
THE INTRODUCTION
Once, there was a boy named Satya Soni who lived in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh. He was a highly intelligent and curious student studying in Class 6. While most children of his age spent their time playing games or watching cartoons, Satya was fascinated by things that others feared. Ghosts, spirits, cursed objects, dark energies, haunted places, and supernatural powers were subjects that attracted him more than anything else. He constantly searched for stories, legends, and mysterious incidents connected to the paranormal world. Satya was not only curious but also remarkably brave. Fear seemed to have little effect on him, and whenever he heard rumors about a haunted house, an abandoned building, or a cursed location, he felt an irresistible urge to investigate it. His three best friends—Ramesh Singh, Mohan Das, and Rajesh Rao—shared the same adventurous spirit. They were intelligent, fearless, and eager to uncover mysteries that most people preferred to avoid. Since they all lived close to one another, they spent nearly every day together, exploring forgotten places around the city. Sometimes they sneaked into abandoned houses with broken windows and collapsed roofs. Sometimes they wandered through lonely graveyards at sunset, challenging one another to stay inside after dark. On one occasion, they even played cricket inside an old graveyard without realizing that such reckless behavior might have disturbed forces that should never have been disturbed. Their families knew nothing about these dangerous adventures and believed the boys were simply spending their time like ordinary children.
As the years passed, Satya's obsession with the paranormal grew stronger. He spent countless hours reading about rituals, haunted games, and supernatural experiments. Eventually, inspired by everything he had learned, he decided to create his own paranormal game. For weeks he worked on it in secret, carefully designing rules and conditions that he believed would allow a person to communicate with supernatural entities through mobile. The game seemed harmless to him, nothing more than an exciting experiment. However, he had no idea that this decision would change the course of his life forever. One night, when the entire city slept under a dark and silent sky, Satya decided to test the game by himself. The clock displayed exactly 3:33 A.M., a time often associated with paranormal activity. Sitting alone in his room, he placed a wooden plank in the center of the floor as required by the rules of his game which was downloaded in his own mobile. The atmosphere around him felt unusually heavy. The silence inside the house seemed unnatural, almost as if the world itself had stopped moving. For several minutes, nothing happened. Satya waited patiently, trying to suppress the growing uneasiness inside him. Then, without warning, a loud sound echoed from somewhere downstairs. The sudden noise shattered the silence and sent a chill down his spine. Although fear briefly touched his heart, his curiosity quickly overcame it. Determined to discover the source of the sound, he left his room and carefully walked down the staircase.
As soon as he reached the drawing room, he froze. Lying in the middle of the floor was another wooden plank. It looked exactly like the one he had been using in game. However, there was something disturbing about it. The wood appeared ancient, worn by time, and covered with strange dark stains that resembled dried blood. Even more unsettling was the fact that it seemed completely out of place. No one in the house could have brought it there. Satya slowly approached it and picked it up. The moment his fingers touched the wood, a strange sensation passed through his body. The plank felt unusually warm, almost as though it had been held by someone only moments earlier. Despite the unsettling feeling, he carried it upstairs to examine it more closely. The moment he entered his room and sat down on his bed with the plank in his hands, an intense pain exploded inside his head. His vision blurred instantly. The walls seemed to twist and move around him. The room began spinning uncontrollably, and before he could understand what was happening, darkness swallowed everything.
Approximately one hour later, Satya regained consciousness. At first he thought he was dreaming. The room was darker than before, and the air felt colder. He slowly sat up and immediately noticed something impossible. The wooden plank had disappeared. In its place sat an old wooden box. It appeared to have been crafted from the very same plank he had carried upstairs. The box was covered with strange carvings and symbols unlike anything Satya had ever seen. Looking directly at them made his eyes hurt, and he could have sworn that some of the symbols were moving whenever he looked away. A horrible smell filled the room, a mixture of rusted iron, damp earth, and rotting flesh. Every instinct inside him warned him not to touch the box. Yet his curiosity, the very trait that had led him into so many dangerous situations before, once again overpowered his fear. With trembling hands, he slowly lifted the lid.
The moment the box opened, a freezing gust of air burst into the room. Satya's eyes widened in horror. The box was filled with thick, dark-red blood that appeared horrifyingly fresh. Human bones floated within the blood, many of them still partially covered with decaying flesh and muscle tissue. Fragments of a skull, severed fingers, pieces of ribs, and other unrecognizable remains were scattered inside. The metallic smell of blood became overwhelming. Then Satya noticed something that made his heart stop. Resting in the center of the box was a human heart. It was not dead. It was beating. Slowly and steadily. Thump. Thump. Thump. The sound echoed throughout the room. Every beat seemed louder than the last. Satya stood frozen as terror consumed him. He slammed the lid shut. Without thinking, he grabbed the box and hurled it out of his bedroom window. His entire body shook uncontrollably. He locked his bedroom door and remained awake for the rest of the night, staring into the darkness and expecting the box to return at any moment.
When morning arrived, Satya rushed outside to find the box. To his astonishment, there was nothing there. No box, no blood, no broken wood, and no signs that anything had fallen from the window. It was as if the terrifying object had never existed. Deeply frightened, Satya immediately deleted the paranormal game from his phone and promised himself that he would never attempt another supernatural experiment. Most importantly, he decided never to tell anyone about what had happened. Not his parents. Not his friends. Not even the people he trusted most. He convinced himself that forgetting the incident was the only way to move forward. Unfortunately, some nightmares refuse to be forgotten.
Eight years passed…………..
Satya completed his graduation and moved to Mumbai to prepare for the Indian Police Service examination. Through hard work and determination, he successfully cleared every stage of the process in his very first attempt and proudly became an IPS officer. Outwardly, his life appeared successful. However, the years had not been kind to him. During that period, he lost his parents, his grandfather, and his grandmother. Several of those tragedies occurred under strange and unsettling circumstances that he could never fully explain. Deep inside, he often wondered whether the box had somehow played a role in those losses. Determined to protect himself, he abandoned all interest in ghosts and paranormal investigations. He focused entirely on his career and attempted to live a normal life. Yet one thing continued to haunt him. Almost every night, he experienced the same dream. In the dream, he wandered alone through a dark forest beneath a moonless sky. The trees stretched endlessly in every direction. Somewhere ahead rested the wooden box. Thick streams of blood flowed from beneath it and spread across the forest floor. Every time he approached it, the lid slowly opened by itself. Just before he could see what was inside, he would awaken in terror. The dream repeated itself for years. Eventually, the demands of his profession became so overwhelming that the dreams gradually faded away, and Satya finally believed he had escaped his past.
Then, one night, everything returned. While driving home through a dense forest after completing official work, Satya suddenly experienced an overwhelming sense of familiarity. The atmosphere around him felt exactly like the forest from his recurring dream. A strange coldness filled the air, and an unnatural silence settled over the road. Moments later, his headlights illuminated an object lying near the roadside. His blood turned cold. It was the same wooden box. Every detail matched the box from his childhood and from his dreams. Shocked beyond words, Satya accelerated his vehicle and continued driving. He convinced himself that stress and exhaustion were playing tricks on his mind. However, when he finally arrived home, ate dinner, and opened the door to his bedroom, he discovered something even more terrifying. The box was resting on the center of his bed. For several minutes he simply stared at it, unable to move. Gathering all his courage, he opened the lid and found the same horrifying contents: fresh blood, human bones, pieces of flesh, and the beating human heart. Certain that he could no longer ignore the nightmare, Satya carried the box outside, drenched it with petrol, and set it on fire. The flames consumed the box as he watched. Believing it had finally been destroyed, he returned inside and immediately called his three childhood friends.
When Ramesh, Mohan, and Rajesh arrived, Satya revealed everything he had hidden for eight years. He told them about the haunted game, the mysterious plank, the appearance of the box, the horrifying contents hidden inside it, and its impossible return. His friends were shocked and angry that he had kept such an enormous secret from them. During their discussion, one of them suggested researching the famous Indian paranormal investigator Gaurav Tiwari. Satya opened his laptop and spent hours studying the work of Gaurav Tiwari, learning about his investigations, the Indian Paranormal Society, and the mysterious circumstances surrounding his death on July 7, 2016. He also read about the legendary paranormal investigators Ed Warren and Lorraine Warren. As he explored their cases and experiences, a realization slowly formed in his mind. Running away from the paranormal had never solved his problem. The curse had followed him for years. If he wanted answers, he would have to confront it directly. Within a few weeks, Satya made the most important decision of his life. He resigned from the Indian Police Service. Inspired by his determination, Ramesh, Mohan, and Rajesh also left their careers. Together they established the Indian Ghost Research Center (IGRC), an organization dedicated to investigating haunted locations, cursed objects, supernatural entities, and unexplained phenomena throughout India. None of them realized that this decision had already awakened something ancient, something that had been watching Satya ever since the night he first opened the box.
