My grandmother came to London in the mid 1970s. Luckily for them, the council flats that they had lived in had other Bangladeshi families living there. New to the country and language, these families stuck together and looked out for one another.

The flat on level below my grandmother was occupied by on of these families. At the time of this story, the woman in the flat below was pregnant, she already had two younger sons and one older one called Jaqir. Jaqir and his father both worked in restaurants, and some nights if it got too late they would stay on the restaurant premises, as the owners of the restaurants were all Bengali. This meant that Jaqir’s mum and and her two children were often alone in the flat.

The morning of the incident, my grandmother was spending the whole morning with Jaqir’s mum whilst all the children were at school. The next that my grandmother saw her was very early the next morning, before Fajr Namaaz, when one of her sons came crying to my grandmother’s flat and started knocking on the door, crying that his mother was bleeding.

My grandmother, left her sleeping children and her husband and ran to the flat downstairs. She found out that woman had miscarried. There was blood over all the bed sheets, and the woman, looking terrified, was babbling something about the toilet light. An ambulance as well as her elder son was called and things were sorted out from there.

It was only afterwards that the full story was told. As they were all alone in the flat, Jaqir’s mum and the two small children all slept in one bed. Very late at night, the lady felt she needed to use the toilet, so she rushed out of the bedroom to the toilet. In her hurry and after seeing that the hallway light was on, she left the door to the toilet open and didn’t bother turning the toilet light on. (They say that all spirits shy away from fire or light) Anyway, she sat down on the toilet and began to pee when, from directly behind her, she felt something immensely heavy fall onto her back.

Instinctively she turned to look. She saw a man who was already sitting on their toilet, who had lunged forward so that his weight fell on her back and his arms and legs dangled side by side her arms and legs. She screamed – and as the door was already open got off the toilet and ran out to her room.

She miscarried shortly afterwards. Well, you know what happens after that.