Daijiworld Media Network - Kundapur (SP)

Kundapur, Jul 18: Three student inmates of a pre- matric girls hostel at Amasebail in the taluk, who had displayed strange behaviour before collapsing and being shifted to a hospital, have shown considerable improvement in health condition.

These three girls, who were in the hostel room at around 9 pm on Thursday July 16, had suddenly started to behave in a strange manner. They had thereafter, collapsed, after which they were admitted into a private hospital with the help of 108 ambulance.

Within sometime thereafter, assistant cook of the hostel, Ganga (26), too exhibited similar symptoms. She too was admitted into the hospital. All the four have showed remarkable recovery.

This sudden change in behavioural pattern of girls has given rise to a sense of apprehension and fear among the locals as well as parents of the girls. The area where the hostel building is located is surrounded by thick vegetation, and some suggest that the girls might have come under the influence of spirits of deceased persons, while others attribute this phenomenon to mass hysteria and handiwork of miscreants.

The hostel has over 70 inmates, and since the last two weeks, the affected girls said, they have been hearing the sounds of someone knocking at their doors, or of someone running away in the corridor.

District hostel supervisor, Harish Gaonkar, visited the hostel on Friday and encouraged the girls to be courageous and confident. He opined that this is a case of mass hysteria, an opinion with which the doctors to have concurred. He said that CCTV cameras have been fitted in the hostel building, and advised students not to be unduly perturbed over these incidents.

The locals too have been taken back by this sudden change of behaviour among some hostel girls. They have come together and decided to organize night patrolling to identify the problem that has been bothering this hostel.