The funeral of Mr. Rajan – the patriarch of an entire clan – was conducted in quiet solemnity, just as he had wished before his death:
“No extravagance, no crying, carry me out during the night for the auspicious hour.”

The family had everything prepared down to the minute. The coffin was tightly sealed, scheduled to be transported to the burial ground at midnight.

But precisely at 12:00 AM, everyone was startled when the family’s black cat – usually kept around to catch mice – suddenly let out a blood-curdling cry and bolted straight through the prayer hall, knocking over a red candle still burning on the altar.

A gust of cold wind swept in.

Assuming it was just the breeze, everyone quietly cleaned up. Until about 30 minutes later, Mr. Arjun – Rajan’s younger brother – who was having a quiet drink before the procession, suddenly collapsed to the floor, foaming at the mouth, his eyes rolled back in terror.

The entire household panicked and called for help. But just as one of the nephews carried Arjun to the car, a click echoed behind them—the coffin creaked open slightly, prompting the man holding the torch to turn back and check.

And at that moment…
Everyone froze in horror.

Inside the coffin was not Mr. Rajan.

The body inside was that of a completely unknown man, crudely wrapped in a mat, utterly violating the clan’s funeral customs. Even worse, the man’s face was bruised and twisted, as if he had died in agony—his fingernails still bore traces of dried blood.

The police were called immediately.

Upon investigation, the CCTV camera at the back of the house had been disabled two hours earlier. The main gate showed no signs of forced entry. Only a narrow trail near the canal showed fresh wet footprints—indicating a highly skilled intruder.

Then came the shocking twist:
Mr. Arjun—who had collapsed—wasn’t suffering from heatstroke. He had been poisoned.

The forensic report confirmed it: Arjun had a clear motive to switch the body. Just three days before Rajan’s death, he had mortgaged the family’s ancestral property due to gambling debts. Had this been discovered, he would have been stripped of his inheritance rights.

Arjun had conspired with a small group to swap the body, staging a fake funeral in order to fast-track inheritance division, planning to claim Rajan’s assets while fabricating a story about the corpse going missing.

But the black cat—sensitive to strange changes—had sensed the deception.

While Arjun confidently waited for the plan to succeed, he was betrayed and silenced by his own accomplices.

The final arrest?
The hired funeral driver—paid double the normal rate—was caught fleeing the area.

As for the real Mr. Rajan, after a two-day search, he was found alive—abandoned inside an old house five kilometers away, lying next to his actual coffin, but miraculously unharmed.

From that day on, the entire village banned the tradition of holding midnight funerals—not because of superstition, but because the darkness inside people is far more terrifying than the dark of night.