Ghost stories from India

The Lantern in the Glass

When I was six, we spent a summer at my great-aunt’s estate, a rambling Victorian house called Thornwood, perched on a cliff above the sea. The house was a labyrinth...

Read Story →

The Bone Orchard

During my final year at the old coastal college, I found myself living with my father and his new wife, a woman who filled our home with the cloying scent...

Read Story →

The Marble Loop Staircase

It has been three months since I last touched the board. After the incident with ‘Zen’—or whatever it was—I promised myself I’d never again invite unseen presences into my life....

Read Story →

The Persistence of Static

I never believed in ghosts. Not really. I was a man of science, a programmer who dealt in logic and code. When my grandmother passed away, I inherited her old...

Read Story →

The Glass That Held the Dark

My name is Anya, and at fourteen, I was the only one in our family who believed in ghosts. My mother, my father, my older brother—they all laughed at my...

Read Story →

The Cistern’s Thirst

My mother, Elara, told me this story, and it has haunted me since childhood. It happened in the red-earth highlands of the Nilgiris, in a sprawling plantation bungalow that had...

Read Story →

The Lantern Keeper’s Vigil

In the autumn of 1968, in a small village nestled between the wheat fields and the Tamarind groves, the air was thick with the scent of rain and the promise...

Read Story →

The Hearthstone Pact

During the blackout years of the war, my great-grandfather, Elias Thorne, moved his family far from the coastal bombing runs to the quiet inland village of Ashwood. The house he...

Read Story →

The Static in the Alder House

The night the power lines began to sing, I was wiping down the counters of my aunt’s farmhouse kitchen, the one she’d left to me in her will. It was...

Read Story →

The Beaded Chant

Mira and her husband, Arjun, had returned from the funeral of her beloved grandmother, Amma, two months ago. They lived in a modest flat on the third floor of an...

Read Story →

The Tallyman’s Ledger

Mara had always prided herself on being a light sleeper. In the old house on Harlow Street, with its creaking floors and drafty windows, it was a necessity. The house...

Read Story →

The Locked Turn

I never thought much about the little room behind the pantry. It was just there, a door we never opened, with a brass knob that had tarnished to a dull...

Read Story →

The Night the Lamplight Died

I was a child who feared the dark and the flickering shapes that moved just beyond the edge of sleep. My sanctuary was our home in the quiet town of...

Read Story →

The Vermilion Door

The train screeched to a halt at Kalyan station, and I stepped onto the platform, the familiar smell of rain-soaked earth and diesel filling my lungs. It had been twenty-five...

Read Story →

The Lamplight on Hollow Row

In our town, there was a stretch of road known as Hollow Row. It wasn’t a cemetery, but an old, winding lane lined with gnarled oaks and abandoned mansions that...

Read Story →

The Night the Black Volga Ran Dry

It was a night I will never shake, the kind that burrows into your bones and stays. My cousins, Rhea and Arjun, and I had gone to our Uncle Prakash’s...

Read Story →

The Third Passenger

The clock on the dashboard read 2:37 AM as I pulled into the gravel driveway of my rented farmhouse. The headlights swept across the weather-beaten siding, and I killed the...

Read Story →

The Cartographer of the Unseen

My name is Arin, and I am seventeen. I live in the salt-worn coastal town of Duskhollow, where the fog rolls in like a tide and the old lighthouse, long...

Read Story →

The Grinning Door

It was the last week of November when Arjun, a final-year engineering student, realized with creeping dread that his differential equations paper was in three weeks. He had coasted through...

Read Story →

The Ashoka Pillar’s Vigil

The old fort had been a part of my life for as long as I could remember. Perched on a hill overlooking the city, it was a relic from another...

Read Story →

The Bell Tower at Dusk

My mother passed when I was eleven, a fact that sat in my chest like a cold stone. My sister went to live with our aunt in the city, but...

Read Story →

The Final Warning

The old farmhouse on Cedar Lane had always felt heavy, but after the séance, the weight became unbearable. My friend, Mara, with her silver tongue and belief in the unseen,...

Read Story →

The Rotunda’s Vigil

It was during my final year of medical school, three years after we had moved into the old carriage house on the grounds of the abandoned St. Emeric’s Asylum. My...

Read Story →

The Lattice of Hollow Rooms

Ravi had grown up hearing the rumors about the old Chatterjee mansion, a sprawling, derelict structure that hunched at the edge of the village like a sick animal. It was...

Read Story →