There Was a Ghost in My Room

The air was warm, the sun was up, and life was moving normally in the sprawling campus of the National Institute of Engineering Studies. Birds chirped, and the rhythmic shuffle of slippers on the hostel corridor floor echoed faintly. It was supposed to be a typical morning. But Dr. Dhrishti was called early that day. Something had happened.

The message was short: A student attempted suicide. Needs counselling immediately.

Dr. Dhrishti, a clinical psychologist with ten years of experience, had seen her share of psychological trauma. But nothing had quite prepared her for the story of Praveen.

As she walked through the gates of the college that morning, the sky was painted in soft amber hues. The sunlight was gentle, golden, hopeful. The staff who greeted her looked up from under the shade of neem trees, their expressions respectful, grateful. She was the warmth they needed.

Before meeting him, she looked at his file. Praveen. Male. 22 years old. Final year B.Tech student, Computer Science. Good academic record until the third semester. Then began the fall. His CGPA dropped, semester after semester. Class attendance dipped below the mandatory 75%. Assignment submissions became irregular. Notes from professors mentioned disengagement and withdrawal. His hostel warden had written that he had become isolated. Friends said he was no longer the Praveen they once knew. Girls complained he stared at them weirdly in the mess. There were food delivery bills worth thousands lying in his room. He barely stepped out.

This wasn't the classic case of an overwhelmed student. Something else was going on.

She was intrigued. She walked into the counselling room with a professional calm. The room had one long window. At this hour, sunlight streamed through, laying honey-coloured patterns across the table and floor. It was bright and warm - oddly symbolic of how Praveen’s academic life must have once been.

Praveen sat in front of her, eyes dull, but not lifeless. His wrist was bandaged. His posture was defensive.

"Hi Praveen. I'm Dr. Dhrishti and I want you to know that I’m not here to judge. I'm here to listen. You can talk to me."

He looked at her. Then looked away.

"I was doing well, you know? I liked studying. I liked building stuff...coding, designing, even debugging. But it changed. Something changed."

She waited. Silence was always an invitation.

"There was a ghost in my room."

Dr. Dhrishti raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. It wasn't uncommon for patients with certain psychotic disorders to report hallucinations. But she let him continue.

"It first came after a long assignment. I had barely slept in three days. I was lying on the bed, just wanting to close my eyes. And then I saw it. Hanging from the ceiling. Just... staring at me."

"Did it say anything?"

He nodded. Tears welled in his eyes. "It said... its name was 'You Fool'."

Dr. Dhrishti blinked. Was this symbolic? Or delusional? Or was he mocking her?

"So what did 'You Fool' do?"

He sighed. "It stayed. Until I fell asleep. The next morning, it was gone. I thought it was a dream. Went to class like normal. But the next night, it came again."

"And what did it want from you, Praveen?"

"It wanted my body. My hands. My eyes. It wanted to see what I see. Eat what I eat. Waste my time on the so called cool stuff of social media. Watch stuff. Sleep endlessly. And it... it wanted to look at women."

She took a breath. This was layered.

"Did you let it?"

"I didn’t have a choice. I tried resisting. But the more I resisted, the heavier my body felt. The more pointless it felt. I... just gave in."

She leaned in slightly. "And what did it do when it took over?"

"It made me eat a lot. Ordered the best food online. Watched the funniest videos. Made me sleep. Day after day. I didn’t go out. Didn’t meet anyone. And the ghost... he wouldn’t leave until the day before my assignment was due or an exam came close. Then he would disappear. I would be left in panic, trying to study everything in a night. Sometimes I succeeded. Most times I didn’t."

The room now was bathed in a stronger light. Noon was approaching. The brightness of the day poured in uninvited, highlighting dust motes in the air, casting sharp shadows beneath the chairs. It was as though the sun was determined to expose every detail, burn away every illusion. Dr. Dhrishti felt her scepticism rise with the heat.

"Why didn’t you ask for help earlier, Praveen?"

"Because he also took care of me."

"How?"

"He... made me feel okay. Safe. Inside the room, with the curtains drawn, snacks in one hand, phone in the other. There were no expectations there. No judgment."

She tapped her pen slowly. Her mind was beginning to wander. She thought about other patients she had treated - some with deep trauma, others with elaborate stories. Praveen was somewhere in between. Too functional to be written off, too broken to be dismissed.

"Then why did you try to end your life?"

Praveen’s face changed. It twisted with pain, regret, and shame.

"Because he turned on me. As the final semester came, he started reminding me of all my failures. He mocked me. He showed me how my friends-my poor friends from villages-were topping the class. Getting internships. And me? Sitting in a dark room eating chips, watching reels, wasting my parents’ dreams."

His voice cracked.

"He called me names. Disgusting ones. He said... I wasn’t even worth haunting anymore."

The sun was at its peak. Outside, there were no clouds. Inside, the room had become too bright — painfully honest. It reflected the moment when Dhrishti began to wonder. Was Praveen telling the truth? Or was he constructing a detailed metaphor to excuse his choices?

She closed her notebook and softened her tone. "What did you do next?"

"I lied to my parents. Told them I was ready for the exams. I wasn't. That night, the ghost just laughed and laughed and laughed. It wouldn’t stop. I couldn’t take it. So I... tried. I wasn’t even sure. I was confused. I left the door open. Maybe... I didn’t want to die."

Later that evening, Dr. Dhrishti sat in the faculty lounge sipping coffee, staring at the setting sun through the glass pane. The orange light filtered through the blinds, casting tired shadows on the floor. The warmth of the morning had faded. Gloom stretched across the walls. It was the kind of light that made things look older than they were.

She opened her notebook again and scribbled: Delusion? Depression-induced personification? Conscious metaphor? Or a manipulative lie?

She thought of his details. Nothing about him screamed pathological liar. His story was consistent. Emotional. Intimate. But it was too... poetic.

She remembered his description of the ghost. The name "You Fool." Was it a hallucination? Or a manifestation of something more subtle — a split between who he was and who he wished to be? An internal war played out on the ceiling of his room.

When she met his parents that evening, the room was dim. The sky outside had gone from orange to steel blue. One tube light flickered. It was a room meant for serious conversations.

"Praveen’s described behaviour is very much like someone dealing with chronic procrastination and escapism. But the ghost he mentions-‘You Fool’-could be a symbolic manifestation of guilt, shame, and internal self-hatred. He may believe it’s real. Or he may be externalizing his guilt. Or... he could be deceiving us." His mother sobbed quietly. His father stared at the floor.

"Is he sick?" they asked.

"He needs help. Therapy. Structure. Maybe even medication. Whether he made a fool of me, or whether he really believes it... either way, the pain is real."

She left at sunset. The sky, once golden, now smudged with grey. Shadows had stretched long across the corridor as she walked out. The warmth of morning had turned cool.

In her notes, she wrote one last sentence: Perhaps the ghost was never in the room. Perhaps it was in the mirror.

She never saw Praveen again. But sometimes, when she scrolled through her own feed late at night, having ignored her papers and skipped her yoga, she felt a weight on her chest.

A whisper.

"You fool."