Imagine being sound asleep when suddenly your bed starts shaking and you wake up to see it is not an earthquake but a "ghost".
This is what happened to Pakistani all-rounder Haris Sohail in his New Zealand hotel room. It left him so shaken that he refused to return to his room at the Rydges Latimer in Christchurch.
The 26-year-old claimed that "a supernatural presence" woke him up by shaking his bed, reported BBC.
Team manager Naveed Akram Cheema said Sohail was found "shaken and feverish" when the coach rushed to his room after he reported what had happened.
"He had a fever," Cheema said according to AP in a report published on Sport24. "We think it was the fever that caused it but the player still believes his bed was shaken by something and it was a supernatural something."
Although Pakistan media reported that Sohail was forced to miss a warm-up match because of the ghostly incident, Cheema said the cricketer was examined and is in good health.
Caption: Pakistani batsman Haris Sohail plays a shot during the fifth and final day-night international match between Pakistan and New Zealand at the Zayed International Cricket Stadium in Abu Dhabi on December 19, 2014. (Aamir Qureshi/AFP/Getty Images)
Health24 resident doctor Heidi Van Deventer said you can see things that are unreal when you are suffering from a fever.
"Fever can make one hallucinate, seeing things that are not real."
You are said to be suffering from a fever if your body temperature is over 37°C (37.8°C or more when measured rectally).
Dehydration, overexertion, mosquito bites, bee stings, allergic or toxic reactions and viral or bacterial infections are just a few factors that can cause a fever.
Van Deventer said to treat fever, one should take a luke warm sponge bath to bring down the body temp. "If this does not help, turn to the antipyretics."
In most cases, a fever is the body's natural reaction to an acute viral or bacterial infection and is not necessarily considered a dangerous condition in itself. Rather, a fever is a sign that the body is defending itself against the infectious invader.
Since viruses and bacteria do not survive as well in a body with an elevated temperature, fever is actually an ally in fighting infection. An elevated temperature also increases the production of infection-fighting white blood cells and even increases their speed of response and enhances their killing capacity.
Here are some tweets about the incident:
16 days to go till #WC2015 and Pakistan's Haris Sohail is seeing ghosts ??????
— Kejal (@Kejal1) January 28, 2015
I think he saw @mitchjohnson398 in his dream http://t.co/m4S8yyWTAD
— iqbal theba (@iqbaltheba) January 28, 2015
"@pakistaninews: Pakistan cricketer Haris Sohail sees ghost in hotel - http://t.co/hhE3AfjSEG http://t.co/AnpGpdqchz" Bob Wolmer, is dat u?
— Zaid Hamid (@SirZaidHamid) January 27, 2015
Stop making fun of Haris Sohail. He is really....... Shaken up.... After the incident.
— Jibby (@JibbyD) January 26, 2015
Through out my career no ghost or black magic wala came near to any of my Pakistan team mates. Engage me with team. #HarisSohail
— Mohammad Yousuf (@MoyoTalks) January 26, 2015
Jokes apart, I'm sure it must have been a very traumatising ordeal for Haris Sohail, as it would have been for any of us. Hope he recovers.
— N. Hasan (@tubzhoney) January 26, 2015
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