"7 feet door" = Fake story.
These hill huts have tiny doors barely taller than 5 feet.
There is one incident my mother doesnβt like to talk about. I heard it only once, when I was a child, while she was talking to her sister. So some of the details might be inaccurate, I am just narrating it the way I remember :
When my mother was around 8-10 years old, she used to spend holidays at her uncleβs house in a village in the hills of Garhwal, Uttarakhand. During one such visit, most of the men & boys from the village had gone away to attend a local festival. The women would often go into the nearby forest to collect firewood. One day, a small group of women were heading into the forest to gather wood. My mother, being young & curious, insisted her aunt to take her along. Her aunt initially hesitated but agreed later, as there was no one to look after her while she was away.
So the group set off into the forest, with my mother accompanying them. They began collecting & chopping firewood, but the work took much longer than they had expected. Before they knew it, it was dark already (anyone who has spent time in the hills knows how quickly daylight disappears there). They realised it was too late to return safely to the village. Fortunately, there were a few small wooden huts scattered around the forest. The villagers used them as temporary shelters for anyone who happened to be in the forest after dark and could not make it back to the village before nightfall.
So they decided to spend the night in one of these wooden huts and return home in the morning. They settled inside, closed the door and eventually tried to sleep. My mother woke up in the middle of the night, partly because she was thirsty but mainly because she heard something outside. Someone was banging on the door. And then came scratching. Slow, deliberate scratching against the wooden door β¦. My mother was terrified. They were in the middle of a forest, miles away from the village, with nothing but darkness surrounding them. And now someone β or something βwas standing outside their shelter in the middle of the night.
She immediately woke her aunt and the others. Being a rather bold lady, her aunt called out loudly :
βKaun hai waha?β (Who is there?)
There was silence for a moment. And then, a creepy female voice replied from the other side :
βMai aauu? Mai aauuuu?β (Shall I come in? Shall I come in?)
Everyone inside the hut froze with fear. Imagine being alone in a forest in the middle of the night, with something scratching & banging on your door β and then hearing a menacing voice calmly ask if it should come inside.
But her aunt didnβt back down. She shouted back :
βNahi! Chali jaa!β (No! Go away!)
And then everything stopped. The banging. The scratching. The voice disappeared and entire forest seemed to fall silent. But there was no chance of anyone sleeping after that. They all stayed awake for the rest of the night, huddled together inside that tiny wooden shelter, praying for the night to get over. Finally, morning came. As soon as there was enough sunlight, they gathered the courage to step outside. And thatβs when they saw something which made the entire experience even more terrifying β¦.
All over the other side of the wooden door were long, deep scratches left by claw marks. Huge ones. They didnβt look like ordinary scratches and certainly didnβt resemble the marks of any animal they knew. But what frightened them most was their position. The door was nearly 7 foot tall but some of the marks were so high up that it was difficult to imagine how an ordinary animal could have made them. And that was it. The women returned to the village as fast as they could.
My mother never found out who β or what β had been outside the hut that night. Neither do I. Maybe there is a perfectly ordinary explanation. Maybe there isnβt. All I know is that I still remember the way my mother described that voice asking menacingly :
βMai aauu? Mai aauuuu?β
And honestly, even after all these years, thatβs the part of the story which gives me the chills β¦.