Ghost stories from India

The Mannequin’s Smile

The afternoon sun bled through the grimy windows of the fabric store, casting long, dusty light across bolts of cloth. I was hunting for a particular shade of crimson for...

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The Eternal Chat

My name is Arjun, and I’m 23, living in a cramped flat in the outskirts of Bhubaneswar, a city that has its own share of old, half-remembered tales. I work...

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The Vermilion Thumbprint

I never used to believe in ghosts, not really. Even after everything, I still tell myself there must be a rational explanation. But some things leave a mark that can’t...

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The Tally in the Attic

Three years ago, we moved into a sprawling farmhouse on the edge of a deciduous forest. The house had stood empty for a decade, and its bones were sound, but...

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The Crimson Room

My family has always prided itself on logic. My father, a retired engineer, would say, ‘There is a scientific explanation for everything, if you look hard enough.’ My mother, a...

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The Persistent Flicker

The first time I noticed it, I was reading a novel on the couch, the one with the worn spine and the tea stain on page forty-two. It was the...

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The Ring of Iron

On a sweltering Tuesday afternoon, Detective Mara Voss sat in her precinct office, the air conditioner wheezing like a dying man. She rubbed her temples, a migraine blooming behind her...

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The Knitting Woman

The house on Bramble Lane had always felt wrong, even before we moved in. The walls were thick with old wallpaper peeling in strips like dead skin, and the basement...

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The Last Paper

The last paper ended at noon. I remember the way the sun felt on my face as I walked out of the examination hall, the weight of months lifting with...

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The Weeping Pipal

It was the summer after my final exams, and my family decided to spend a few weeks at my grandmother’s old farmhouse in the village of Nandgaon, nestled at the...

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The Glowing Tide

It was the summer of 2019, and I had come to stay with my great-uncle in the remote coastal village of Karwar, nestled between dense cashew forests and a stretch...

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The Clay-Cold Embrace

The summer I turned seventeen, my family moved into a house that had never been lived in. The walls were still sweating the scent of fresh paint, and the floors...

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The Mango Tree’s Witness

It was the summer of ’95 and the air was thick with the scent of rain that hadn’t yet fallen. I was thirteen, and my name is Arjun. I lived...

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The Countertenor of the Desiccated Grove

My name is Arjun Mehta, and in the autumn of 1998, I was twelve years old, a student in the seventh standard at the government middle school in the dusty...

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The Cold Spot on the Sixth Floor

The morning routine had become a ritual of quiet acceptance. I’d moved into the old St. Agatha’s apartment building six months ago, and aside from the occasional creak of settling...

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The Fan That Fell

My name is Rohan and I am twenty-two now. I grew up in a small town in the hills of northern India, but when I was twelve, my father’s job...

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The Concrete Ribbon

The monsoon had been playing hide-and-seek all evening, leaving the asphalt slick with a deceptive sheen. Our car, a beat-up white Honda, hummed along the empty stretch of the Coastal...

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The Unfinished Argument

My grandfather, Elias, was a man of routine. At ninety-three, he still insisted on winding the old grandfather clock in the hallway every evening, a ritual he’d performed for sixty...

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The River’s Bargain

In the hushed hours of an autumn morning, when the mist clung to the water like a second skin, Elara lay in her bed, listening to the rhythm of her...

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The Quiet Between Footsteps

The change in our house was subtle at first, like a photograph slowly developing in a tray of chemicals. I used to live for the creaks and groans of the...

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The Wall Between

In the quiet town of Ashford, nestled among pine forests and gray skies, stood the old Whitmore house. It had been in my wife’s family for generations, and after her...

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The Saltless Diet

It began with a heartbeat that stumbled. Marcus, a middle-aged archivist, collapsed in his cluttered study on a rain-soaked evening in late autumn. The cardiac arrest was sudden, a fist...

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The Ledger of Hollow Steps

The afternoon heat clung to the corridors of the Regional Records Office in Jabalpur like a damp shroud. I had been transferred there six months ago, and my assignment was...

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