‘Ghostbuster’ teacher sleeps in class at night to bust haunted room myth

HYDERABAD: Do ghosts exist? For these govt school students, it did – in class 5 room at the extreme corner of their school. They were certain, till a teacher busted the belief and freed them of fear by sleeping in the haunted room and coming out smiling the next morning.
The beginning of the end of a well-entrenched school myth began when Nuthal Ravindar joined the Mandal Parishad Upper Primary School at Anandpur in Jainad mandal in Adilabad district last week.
While teaching class 7 students, a tree fell outside and Ravinder saw the students shake in collective fear. A little prodding by Ravindar resulted in the nine students in the classroom telling him about the ghost in class 5.
Though Ravindar tried to convince them that ghosts didn’t exist, the students had none of it. They were sure of the noises they had heard often from an empty class 5. Who but a ghost could do that, they argued.
To prove they were wrong, Ravindar, a rationalist and general secretary of Jana Vignana Vedika, said he would sleep in class 5 room.
The students then insisted that he should do so on July 5, which was Amavasya.
Ravindar had his own condition too. It had to be a secret deal between a teacher and students, neither people outside nor the ghost inside should come to know.
The deal done, Ravindar arrived at the school on the appointed night armed with a bedsheet and torch and entered class 5 at 8pm, watched by the students.
The night passed and the next morning the students were in attendance outside class 5 at 6 am.
The door opened and it was Ravindar, alive and standing.
“The students who came to see me in the morning were finally convinced that there was no ghost. But the fear among the students was for real. There are 87 students in the school and last year one of the boys left to join a private school as he was convinced that there was a ghost in the school building. He also came to see me in the morning,” Ravindar told TOI on Monday.