Ghost stories from India

The Persistent Hum

Maya had always been skeptical of the paranormal, but her niece, Priya, was a different story. Priya had recently moved into a second-floor flat in an old building in the...

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The Measure of the Deep

I am not a writer of fictions. I am a surveyor, a man of measurements and lines. But what I have to report is not a matter of angles or...

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The Marrow Harvest

The house sat at the edge of a town that had long forgotten its own name, a place where the pavement cracked and the streetlights flickered like dying fireflies. I...

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The Fan’s Lullaby

Even now, decades later, the whir of a ceiling fan can send a chill down my spine and pull me back to that sweltering summer in the dusty town of...

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The Lantern in the Basement

Two winters ago, my brother and I had a ritual: every night we’d stay up past midnight, sprawled on the living room floor, trading stories and downloading grainy horror films...

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The Frozen Barn

The blizzard had been howling for two days, trapping our group of thirty in the old Kessler barn on the outskirts of Havenwood. The wooden beams groaned under the weight...

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The Spice Seller’s Bargain

I am Arjun, a 31-year-old marine biologist from Kochi, and for years I dismissed the tales my grandmother told as the fanciful inventions of an old woman raised on folklore....

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The Last Fire We Made

My name is Arjun, and I was born into a family that prayed every morning and evening. My mother would light incense and chant, my father would bow to the...

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The Knocker’s Debt

The monsoon had finally broken, and I, Aarav Mehta, sat alone in my grandmother’s old apartment in the heart of Pune, India. The building, a relic from the British era,...

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The Locket of Salt

My aunt Amala, who lived in the sprawling family home in the village of Gopalpur, often told me about the house across the narrow lane. It was a crumbling zamindari...

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The Glass Room on Kestrel Lane

My name is Arjun, and in 2018 I was a postgraduate student at a technical institute in Pune. During the winter break, I stayed at my aunt’s place in a...

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The Custodian’s Orchard

In the arid outskirts of Jodhpur, there lay an orchard that was the lifeblood of a small hamlet. The trees, heavy with guavas and citrus, were communal property, their fruit...

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The Day the Sun Didn’t Move

It was the last week of June 2016, a Tuesday I think, around three in the afternoon. I was alone in the sunroom, the one with the glass walls that...

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The Inverted Steps

My father, a mechanical engineer, was driving home from a late shift at the factory. It was a chilly November night, and the fog hung like a wet blanket over...

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The Lamppost That Breathed

Rajan had never feared the dark. In his thirty-two years, he had walked through graveyards, slept in abandoned buildings during his college days, and never once felt a chill that...

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The Stillness by the Drain

The night was a shroud of grey, the fog rolling in from the Yamuna like a breath held too long. In the gated community of Sapphire Heights, the streetlights cast...

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The Pomegranate Seed

In the autumn of 2009, the air in the coastal town of Duskhaven carried the salt of the sea and the rot of decaying seaweed. My family had moved into...

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The Lantern in the Fallow Field

My mother, Elara, was born deaf, and in those days, that meant a life of silence and isolation. At the age of seven, her parents sent her to a boarding...

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The Lantern’s Wrong Turn

The summer I turned twelve, the heat in our village was so thick you could chew it. My sister Mira and I were sent to our grandparents’ farm while our...

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The Press of the Sheet

In the autumn of 2014, I lived in a small, second-floor flat in a quiet suburb, sharing it with my mother and younger sister. The flat was old, with creaking...

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The Locked Door

It was the summer of 2004, and my family and I were visiting my grandparents in a remote village. The trip was always long: two train changes, a seventy-kilometer bus...

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The Lantern Keeper’s Bargain

I live in Darjeeling with my family, but every winter break we retreat to our ancestral home in a remote village nestled in the hills. The house itself is old,...

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The Landlord’s Ledger

Renting the ground floor of Mrs. Kettering’s sprawling Victorian house had seemed like a stroke of luck. The town of Hollow Creek was quiet, almost too quiet, and the rent...

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The Last Train to Morrow

I never believed in ghosts. My name is Alex, and I’m a rational man. I’ve always thought that every mystery has a logical explanation, until that summer night in the...

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