It was the summer of 2015, and I had just moved to Jaipur for my job at an MNC. The sweltering heat was unrelenting, and the only relief I could find was in the cool, artificial breeze of the air conditioner in the living room. The bedroom, unfortunately, lacked such luxury. As a result, on most nights, I would choose to sleep on the sofa in the hall to enjoy the cool air while battling the oppressive heat.
One particular night, the heat seemed unbearable. The clock had just struck 3:30 a.m., and the silence of the night seemed to wrap the entire apartment in an eerie stillness. I lay there, on the sofa, staring at the dark ceiling, my mind half-lost in a haze of exhaustion. The AC hummed softly in the background, and the only sound in the room was the occasional creak of the old building settling. Sleep had taken its hold on me, but I couldn’t shake the sensation of something being wrong—an unsettling feeling that I couldn’t quite place.
Suddenly, I felt a soft, almost imperceptible touch on my forehead. It was so gentle, yet it sent a shock of cold terror straight through me. My eyes shot open, heart pounding in my chest, and I was frozen, unable to move. I blinked, trying to clear my vision, but the room remained pitch dark, and my mind began to race with thoughts of what I was experiencing. It didn’t feel like a dream, and it didn’t feel like a normal sensation either. I was wide awake, yet something supernatural was happening.
As I lay there, paralyzed with fear, a figure began to materialize before me. Slowly, as if stepping out of the very darkness, I saw her—a woman in the form of a goddess, dressed in traditional attire, her features glowing faintly, as if illuminated by an ethereal light. She hovered above me, her form radiating a divine presence, and I could see her eyes piercing through the darkness, staring directly into mine.
I wanted to scream, to run, to break free from the grip of terror that held me, but my body wouldn’t obey. The touch on my forehead had been so soft, yet it felt like a heavy weight pressing down on me, trapping me in place. My breath came in shallow gasps, and my heart raced uncontrollably. What was this? Who was she?
In a daze, I reached out, my hand trembling, attempting to catch hold of her hand. The moment my fingers neared her, she vanished. It was as though she had never been there at all. One moment, she was right in front of me, and the next, there was nothing but the pitch-black darkness of the room. I blinked again, my breath still shallow, and I tried to make sense of what I had just witnessed. Was it a dream? A hallucination brought on by exhaustion?
I immediately sat up, gasping for air, my pulse racing. The room around me was still dark and silent, except for the hum of the air conditioner. The goddess – if that’s what she had been – was gone. I glanced nervously around, trying to find something familiar, anything that would help me make sense of the bizarre experience. But there was nothing.
I stayed there for what felt like hours, too terrified to move, questioning my sanity. I didn’t know if it was the heat, stress from work, or something far beyond my understanding, but one thing was certain: whatever I had seen—or felt—was real. It was no dream. The presence of the goddess had been undeniable.
As the hours ticked on, the morning light began to creep into the room, and the terrifying encounter started to feel like a distant memory. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that something had shifted. That night, in that rented apartment in Jaipur, I had come face-to-face with something beyond the realm of the living – something divine, yet terrifying.
To this day, I don’t know who or what that goddess was, or why she chose to appear to me in that moment. But every time I sleep on a couch in the living room, I can’t help but feel the faintest presence in the air, as if she’s still watching.
