Ghost stories from India

The Lamplight Recurrence

It was the monsoon season in the hill town of Kasauli, and the old hostel building, named ‘Villa D’Silva’, clung to the mountainside like a damp secret. I was Ananya,...

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The Last Lantern

I never believed in ghosts. Growing up in a household of doctors and scientists, the paranormal was dismissed as superstition, a relic of our rural ancestors. My parents, both rationalists,...

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The Marble Game

In the winter of 2019, I was a physics student at a small university in the Midwest, known for its endless cornfields and the occasional tornado siren. I had always...

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The Porcelain Promise

In the autumn of my twelfth year, I was entrusted with the keys to the old storage wing of Ashwick Academy, a sprawling Victorian manor that had been converted into...

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The Eucalyptus Coats

At twenty-five, I still wake in a cold sweat, my fingers clawing at the air for a softness that isn’t there. It’s the memory of that summer in the hill...

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The Visitor at the Threshold

In the summer of 2005, I was nineteen, living with my mother and two younger sisters in a small house on the outskirts of a town that had forgotten its...

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The Dust That Listens

In 2009, I was employed as a night archivist at the old Meridian Public Library, a building that had stood for over a century and was said to be built...

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The Unwritten Chapter

In the old farmhouse on Whistler’s Lane, there was a room that had belonged to me since I could crawl. I’d spent countless nights drifting off to sleep to the...

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The Bell That Wept

In the foothills of the Western Ghats, where mist clung to the jak trees like a second skin, our village of Kodumudi slumbered. The temple of the Serpent Mother had...

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The Custodian of the Ninth Floor

During my tenure as an amateur paranormal investigator, I encountered many entities, but one class of manifestation never made it into any of my published works. I’ve dubbed them ‘Shynil’...

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The Mule Cart Incident

I have spent my entire adult life chasing anomalies, cataloging the strange and the unexplained, all because of a single morning that rewired my understanding of the world. It happened...

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The Fruit That Waited

Mina was twenty-three when she moved into the converted attic of an old colonial bungalow in Pune. The room was cheap, and the landlord, a wrinkled woman named Mrs. Kulkarni,...

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The Sunday Palm

I’d been staying at my grandmother’s place in the hill town of Brindlewick for a month, recovering from a bad breakup and the kind of work burnout that leaves you...

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The Mandala of the Buried Bell

My name is Arjun Mehta, and for two decades I have walked the razor’s edge between our world and the next. As a paranormal investigator, I have faced poltergeists, exorcised...

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The Transient’s Ledger

In the autumn of 2014, I took a position as a field auditor for a logistics firm. My territory stretched across the dusty plains of Kansas, and I often found...

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The Weaver of the Willow Creek

At twenty-two, I thought I had outgrown the fears of childhood. I worked a sterile desk job in the city, my life a grid of spreadsheets and deadlines. But the...

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The Cartographer’s Ledger

I was seventeen when I first saw the map that wasn’t a map. My grandmother had just passed, and I was tasked with clearing out her study in the old...

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The Crooked Blueprint

I grew up in a small town in the hills, where the fog liked to seep through the pine trees like a slow tide. Our house sat on a narrow...

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The Man with the Iron-Handled Shears

My grandfather, Arjun Mehta, was a man of rigid routine. A lawyer by trade, he spent his days in the dusty district courts of Madhya Pradesh, but his heart belonged...

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The Last Lantern of Kudremukh

The memory of that week still clings to me like damp mist, even after all these years. It was during a break from my grueling urban routine that my friend...

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The Hollow Floor

The night the power went out, I was crouched over my CFA textbooks, the glow of my laptop the only steady light in the room. The hostel, a converted nineteenth-century...

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The Polished Oak Invitation

I still remember the weight of that summer evening, the air thick with the smell of jasmine and impending rain. We were at Rhea’s place, a sprawling old bungalow on...

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The Consequence of Empty Rooms

The old farmhouse sat at the end of a gravel lane, half-swallowed by weeds and a sagging porch. When Mara and her husband, Theo, first showed it to their fourteen-year-old,...

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The Gilded Frame

I first met Colin during our freshman year at the university. He was a methodical thinker, the type who dissected every puzzle until its logical bones lay bare. Yet, beneath...

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