It was the most bloodcurdling scream I had ever heard! I lay wide awake in my bed at the Inginiyagala Rest House shuddering in fear. The piercing sound was that of a woman being strangled and it seemed to be coming from the room at the end of the row in which I had the middle one. Somebody’s being attacked in that room, I thought, there’s a maniac in the place! Then, in the chilling silence that followed I suddenly felt a desperate need to protect myself. I got up as quietly as I could and reached for my hunting knife in the bedside locker!
After a very hard afternoon of trekking in the Galoya National Park I had returned to the Rest House dead tired. Then, refreshed after a shower and sumptuous dinner, I sat down at a table in the verandah outside my room to write my notes for the day before hitting the sack.
I don’t know how long it was after I fell asleep that something woke me up and it was just as I was dozing off again that I heard that awful scream.
Clutching the knife I sat on the bed and waited for some lights to come on. Surely, I thought, that loud, eerie sound would most certainly cause a stir in the place. But no, just darkness and dead silence!
I began to wonder if what I thought I heard was just part of a bad dream. I was so shaken by the experience that I got up, switched the light on in my room and reached for the bottle of arrack on the locker. After a couple of large swigs I was able to summon up enough courage to go out on the dark verandah to see if I could find something to explain that horrible scream.
After a few moments I heard it again! This time that awful sound came from a distance, way off in a patch of jungle opposite the Rest House. And then it dawned on me that what I heard was the cry of the Ulama or Devil Bird, a cryptid of the Sri Lankan jungles. It has never been positively identified and is most likely a nocturnal bird of prey like an owl.
I looked at my watch and saw that it was just after 2.00 am. Suddenly I felt very stupid standing there with perspiration oozing from me and still holding the hunting knife! Returning to the room, I took a short shower and slipped back into bed. But so thoroughly unnerving was the experience of hearing the eerie cries of the Ulama that I just couldn't go back to sleep.
Even to this day the very memory of those unearthly screams in the night gives me goose bumps!
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