DUBAI She is a former TV actor from India and he is an events director from Pakistan. But if there is one thing that brings the cross-border duo together it’s their unlikely penchant for the paranormal.
Reel vs real
Meet Anjali Sharma and Naushad Ahmad, who could well be the UAE’s real life versions of FBI agents Dana Scully and Fox Mulder of American science fiction drama television series, The X-Files.
In a little over two years, they say, they have together spent over 50 nights at several ‘haunted’ places across the UAE and are now keen to take their stories to a wider audience through a reality TV show. “We have seen so much in such a little time that we can fill up weeks of fascinating content,” says Ahmad, 29, from Karachi, who has lived in Dubai for three years.
“I have seen scratch marks and bruises appear on my body from nowhere. At times I have personally felt tremendous energy run through me, something even registered on an emf metre we frequently use,” claims Sharma, 37. “The worst and the most terrifying experience I had was in a private villa in Ras Al Khaimah. The place was so spooked with spirits that people living there were scared even in daylight,” Sharma adds without wanting to give out details of the location.
“Most of the time it’s people’s imagination. They hear noises from AC vents and ducts and think there must be something. Their mind plays with them and often we have had to come back disappointed. Then there have been situations when we have seen things others couldn’t,” says Sharma, who has lived in Dubai for 18 years, having even worked for a few years here as a banker.
“My journey into the unknown started at the age of five when I began seeing people no longer alive,” she says. “This continued till I was 13 or 14 when I realised that I may have something others don’t – the power to see and feel the other world and that is what makes me venture out even at this age.”
Ahmad says they are working on a script to present to a television production company in Dubai. “We don’t want people to believe us for what we say but if we could present it all in a TV show, I am sure many questions of the sceptics will be answered,” he says.
The two have also been part of Emirates Ghost Investigators Group, an informal forum for like minded people from across the UAE dedicated to studying paranormal activities in the country.
YOUSPEAK: Have you had a paranormal experience?
