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hair. She wears a red sari."
She insisted, "I don't believe in ghosts." But I saw she was looking nervously this way and that.
I said, "I am telling you all this because tonight you are staying here for the first time. Whenever somebody new is staying in the house, the first night the washerwoman comes in the middle of the night and pulls off their blanket to see if her man has come back."
At this point her face started going pale. She said, "What are you talking about? An educated man like you believes in ghosts and such like?"
I said, "It is not a question of believing. But it is necessary to warn you otherwise you might be too frightened. Now I have told you, if a one eyed, light skinned woman in a red sari pulls off your blanket don't be afraid. She never harms anybody, just throws off the blanket, stamps the floor in disappointment and goes away.
"And I will tell you one more characteristic of hers..." The owner of the house I was staying at in those days had the habit of grinding his teeth at night. Several times in the night he would start grinding his teeth. So I said, "I will tell you one more habit of the woman, when she comes into the room she will be grinding her teeth. Naturally, she has waited so long. Ages have past. She had loved him, she comes in anger now, the washerman deceived her, he never came back. So she gnashes her teeth you may hear the sound of gnashing teeth at first."
She said, "What are you going on about? I simply don't believe in them. You please stop this talk. You are unnecessarily trying to scare me."
I said, " If you don't believe in them there is nothing to be afraid of."
We kept talking this way until it was twelve o'clock. I said, "Now you better go to bed." She went to her room. It happened that no sooner did she lie down, the owner gnashed his teeth. He was sleeping in the next room. I was confident, he could be relied upon. During the night he will do it at least ten times. He will grind them once in a while. She went, lay down on the bed turned out the light and he gnashed his teeth. She screamed. I rushed to her room, turned on the lights. She was almost paralyzed
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