Tales: Of The 1995 Ghost

Accidents happen all the time, but the tale I am writing today will be unlike anything you have ever read before. May I present, the tale of the 1995 Ghost...

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Inspecting a brand-new retort stand with both hands, 'he' roared triumphantly. 

“Aha! I can finally work this out perfectly. I’m definitely gonna be the-one-and-only-physics high achiever this year!”

'He' was a one of the few brilliant students, and the subject physics was his forte. Little did he know that his obsession with physics would eventually cost him his very own life.    

It was the year in 1995, when ‘he’ was supposed to sit for the AVI Exam (a.k.a. A Very Important Exam). As usual, when darkness fell, he broke into his college’s lab to practice “The Experiment”.

In “The Experiment”, two springs with several masses of 100g each were used. But lurking in the darkness at the corner of the lab was the apparatus most important, an apparatus with a vengeance. And that apparatus was ‘his’ most precious Rest (Rest = Retort Stand, get it?).

But why had Rest wanted ‘his’ master and best friend dead? They were inseparable since the first day ‘he’ stepped into the lab, and ever since, ‘he’ had been Rest’s secret crush. This had all boiled down with a green-eye disease called jealousy.

And Rest was extremely jealous. Rest felt used, cheated and abandoned by ‘him’ when ‘he’ made Rest fell in love with ‘him’, and then dumped it for Nert (Nert = New Retort Stand).

 [Featured song~ All by myself by Celine Dion]

All~ By ~Myself ~...

Don't wanna be,

All ~ By ~ Myself~....

Before Nert, Rest was ‘his’ only love, or so at least Rest had assumed. [See what assumptions can lead to? Murder!]. Every night without fail, ‘he’ would break into college and dance with Rest.

‘He’ was the one who taught Rest what passion was. [Ahem … I mean a passion for Physics. What are you people thinking?]; the one who kissed Rest when ‘he’ made some discovery through his experiments with Rest; the one who said ‘he’ would never thought of moving on without Rest; the one who would never kissed Rest goodbye…

“Liar!” Rest resisted the urge to scream at ‘his’ face.

Rest tried. Tried to convert its love for ‘him’ into hatred and anger. Tried to amplify its thirst for revenge. And so that night came. On the eve of the AVI Exam, ‘he’ would finally meet his doom.

Rest rolled out its first plan, emitting a copious amount of “restamones” [something like pheromones?] to attract ‘his’ attention. Just one look would do the job. And it proved to work as ‘he’ subconsciously took a casual glance toward Rest’s direction and was hooked by it.

And nostalgia became ‘his’ downfall as ‘he’ thought about the good old days with Rest and decided to practice his experiment with Rest that night.

Leaving Nert aside, ‘he’ went over to the corner and touched clamps with Rest. ‘He’ felt a strong surge of emotions from Rest and he quickly picked it up to prepare for the experiment.

Focusing on the negative emotions Rest had been experiencing with ‘his’ abandonment, Rest strengthened its resolve to seal ‘his’ doom by loosening its “grasp” on 1 Kg mass ‘he’ had just hooked on its clamp.

And drop it did, the mass went straight to ‘his’ poorly protected right foot. The impact was so great that blood splattered instantly within ‘his’ shoe, painting it crimson from inside out. The cracking sound signifying bone protrusions from his mangled flesh followed a millisecond later, mirrored closely with his involuntary scream of excruciating pain.

It was in the middle of the night when the “accident” happened, and ‘he’ was alone in the lab. No choice, he crawled his way slowly to the hospital by himself, leaving a creepy trail of blood as he did. And by the time he reached the hospital, both his feet and arms were badly damaged. He was covered in dirt, pus and his own blood.

The emergency quickly sprang into action, salvaging what they could. But alas, the doctor had to make a cruel decision to amputate his right foot and left arm to stop the spread of infection.

‘He’ resisted the idea and refused against the suggestion. And he paid for it the next day, at 9.50 am, when he was pronounced dead from internal bleeding and wound infection.

Far from the hospital, in a college lab, a lone retort got what it wanted. But it mourned the lost of its former friend and love when it came into contact with anything to do with 9, 5 and 0. Until this day, it mourned.

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So, are you all spooked out yet?

I think this is Rest (Third from left)

I know I would be delusional to even think it’s a spooky tale at all, but stay awhile longer because here comes the real creepy part. [Yeah, I admit I sucked at writing horror stuff]

Yesterday, I was asked to do a physics practical in my college’s Dell Lab. The experiment was about the investigation of the phase relationship between two oscillating mass-spring systems which have similar natural frequencies.

Together with two of my lab partners, we set up 2 retort stands 10 cm apart, with a spring added to each stand. One of the stands was hung with a fixed mass of 1 kg (mass A) which acted as the control, and the other stand would be hung with a variable mass (mass B). And our job was to record the total time taken by the spring to go from in phase to out phase, and then back to in phase.

And so we started our experiment with a mass of 950 g (mass B). It came as a surprised as even after a few repetitions, we recorded a mean time of 35.7 seconds. That was, unexpectedly too long for an oscillation cycle.

After that, we continued with a mass of 900 g (mass B). We raised a red flag at the results as we recorded a mean time of 15 seconds for the whole oscillation cycle. This is about half time of the cycle from 950 g mass, which made no sense to us. Could a difference of only 50 g mass shortened the cycle so much?

We proceeded with 850 g, 800 g, 750 g and 700 g mass oscillations in that order, and there was a clear pattern – the mean time for a complete cycle was about 15 seconds, 10 seconds, 8 seconds, and 6 seconds respectively. But the 950 g mass took 35 seconds to complete a cycle, what an anomaly!

Our lecturer decided to help us out and repeat the experiment with the 950 g mass, because it seemed other groups recorded a mean time of about 17 seconds only. [17 seconds totally fit the pattern, so why ours took 35 seconds!?].

Nevertheless after 3 attempts, he too gave up! [Mamma Mia!]. Some members from other groups then offered to try the experiment at our place, but to no avail. We decided perhaps our place had bad “Feng Shui” and moved all our apparatus to another bench. It did not work still.  

But our scientific spirit refused to give up. We decided to approach this problem using the process of elimination. Changing the springs, we repeated the cycle – and we got 44 seconds this time. Seemed to more anomalous than before.

Not satisfied with the lack of logical explanation, we then changed the masses but retained the same springs – still the same results. We were ecstatic when our last attempt was successful. We changed the retort stand, and we finally got around 17 seconds per cycle for the 950 g mass!

I really felt like congratulating every single one of us who were present in the lab that day, to have that unwavering spirit of determination to find out what caused the anomaly. High five to all of us, Physics Lab 2 mates!

However, it did seem that solving this one problem led to more questions. If, that particular retort stand was the root of all “evil”, how was it logical for us to get accurate readings for the rest of the masses? If one reading was out, shouldn’t the rest follow that pattern? Yet the retort stand seemed to only have issues with the 950 g mass.

One of my friends suggested perhaps “something” was attached to the retort stand. Another suggested it probably happened in 1995, and that was why it only had issues with the 950 g mass. And that was how the idea of the tale of the 1995 ghost story was born.

Perhaps my story was true, a sliver of it. And perhaps the retort stand I had used that day was Rest with ‘his’ soul in it. Who knows? We have no way of unravelling this mystery.  

[Smiles]