Ghost stories from India

The Night the House Rehearsed

I’m not a superstitious person. I grew up in a small flat in the outskirts of Nagpur, where the walls were thin and the neighbors talked louder than the television....

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The Mango Thief’s Bargain

My father, Arun, grew up in the dusty village of Barabanki, where the summer heat cracked the earth and the mango orchards were the only source of life and mischief....

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The Bitter Root

The antiseptic air of St. Jude’s Memorial clung to my skin like a second layer. My name is Elias Thorne, and I had been adrift in a chemical sleep for...

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The Painted Pattern

My name is Arjun, and this happened when I was twelve, in the winter of 1998. We had gone to my grandmother’s ancestral home in a remote village in the...

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The Pillar’s Photograph

Last winter, I had just started a new job at the Meridian Corporate Park in Pune. The office complex was a maze of glass and concrete, and my daily ritual...

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The Wall of Painted Birds

I was eleven when we moved from the clatter of Mumbai to the sleepy town of Malgudi Road. Our new home was a low, sprawling house with a garden that...

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The Last Clock in Room 14

The rain had been falling since Tuesday, a steady, drowning rhythm that blurred the lines between the sky and the gutter. I lay in a hospital bed in the North...

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The Monsoon Widow

The first thing I remember about grandmother’s house was the smell of damp earth and fried spices, a combination that clung to everything like a second skin. The monsoon had...

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The Cartographer’s Last Ridge

In the sweltering summer of 2004, I fled the city’s choking smog for my grandfather’s remote farmhouse nestled in the rolling hills of the Appalachian foothills. Grandfather, a retired geologist...

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The Pull of the Loam

In 2011, I moved into a ground-floor flat in an old Victorian house that had been converted into apartments. The place had high ceilings and a damp smell that no...

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The Lizard’s Lament

Three months into my first semester at the Nilgiri Hills Institute, I shared a drafty cottage with two others: my cousin Mira, a nervous sophomore, and our senior, Professor Anika,...

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The Ward of Unfinished Hours

In the winter of 2014, my father lay in a small, dimly lit room at the edge of a sprawling medical complex in Pune. The building was old, its corridors...

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The Lantern of the Leaping Falls

The rain had been relentless for hours, a gray curtain that swallowed the world beyond the windshield. I gripped the steering wheel, knuckles white, as the wipers fought a losing...

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The Gilded Keyhole

I was in Jaipur for a photography gig, documenting the restoration of an ancient haveli that had been converted into a boutique hotel. The place was a labyrinth of courtyards...

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The Phantom Dial Tone

In the autumn of 2015, I bought a sleek, glass-and-metal smartphone from a secondhand electronics stall in the sprawling Nagpur market. The vendor, a twitchy man with hollow eyes, sold...

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The Last Bus at Juniper Crossing

The rain had been falling since noon, a steady, gray curtain that turned the city into a blurred watercolor. Mira had watched it from her office window, a tedious background...

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The Breeze That Breathed

I moved into the ground-floor unit of a converted warehouse in the port district of Merrow. The rent was a steal, and the industrial-chic aesthetic—exposed brick, iron pillars—felt like a...

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The Creaking of the Stairwell

When my sister Mira and I first saw the flat on the top floor of a converted Victorian house in the old port district of Bristol, we were charmed by...

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The River’s Ledger

The old man leaned back in his chair, the creak of the wood echoing in the dim kitchen. Outside, the rain pattered against the window, a steady rhythm that matched...

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The Bone Whistle

The school was a compound of red brick and iron gates, and the forest pressed against its boundaries like a held breath. I was a junior, a new boy in...

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The Ash and the Unfinished Circle

The rain had stopped by the time we reached the cremation grounds, but the air remained thick with the smell of wet earth and burnt offerings. I stood beside my...

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The Hollow in the Hill

I remember the first time the ground spoke to me. It was the summer I turned fifteen, the summer my parents dragged me to the old farmhouse my great-uncle had...

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The Hollow Knocking

I never paid much attention to the Vasquez family. They were the kind of neighbors who kept to themselves, their curtains always drawn, their voices rarely heard beyond a muffled...

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The Room of Unfinished Things

The first time Marta noticed something wrong was not with the house itself, but with the light. It had a certain quality, a sickly amber tint that clung to the...

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