Ghost stories from India

The Mogra’s Invitation

The scent of fresh paint and marigold garlands still clung to the walls of our new home in the outskirts of Pune. We had finally moved out of the cramped...

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The Bell That Rang for No One

The year was 1998, and I was a seventeen-year-old boy living in the hill town of Munnar, Kerala. My father, a retired schoolteacher, had bought a small tea estate on...

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The Hour of the Iron Clock

For six years, the events I’m about to describe have haunted me. As a child, I was obsessed with the supernatural, and my fascination grew into a serious study of...

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The Hollow Pines Loop

It was the summer I took the night shift at the Meridian Data Center, buried in the industrial park off Route 9. The commute was a lonely one, a 40-minute...

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The Lantern Man of Marble Road

In 1994, I was in the seventh grade at St. Xavier’s School, which lay at the far end of Marble Road, a stretch of old bungalows and overgrown gardens. My...

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The Cobalt Hour

I work nights in the data vaults of Colossus, a vast server farm buried beneath the old mill district. My shift typically starts at 1 AM and ends at sunrise,...

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The Tenant in Flat 13

In the quiet suburb of Westbrook, our apartment complex, Maple Court, stood as two identical blocks, each with eight flats. I lived on the first floor of Block A, overlooking...

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The Riverside Gift

The summer of 1985 in the hill town of Bhalukpong was heavy with rain and the smell of wet earth. My father, Arjun, was sixteen then, and his younger brother,...

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The Honeycomb of Hollow Pines

The transfer order came through on a Tuesday, typed on brittle yellow paper and smelling faintly of mothballs. I was told to report to the sub-divisional office at Ghoramara, a...

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The Blue Saree

I was twelve when my family attended my uncle’s housewarming in a dusty, half-built colony on the outskirts of town. The house was small, with rooms so cramped you could...

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The Blue Apron

I moved into the top-floor flat of a converted Victorian schoolhouse six months ago. The rent was absurdly low, and the realtor’s smile had a twitch I chose to ignore....

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The Foyer of Forgotten Things

My name is Amara, and I was twenty-two when I moved to a small town called Ravenshade for my postgraduate studies at the Coastal Institute. The campus was a sprawling...

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The Lantern in the Rain

In the autumn of 1996, I was a twenty-two-year-old graduate student hitchhiking from Pune to my ancestral village of Vetalwadi, nestled in the Sahyadri hills. My usual route was through...

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The Lantern Tree

The summer I turned twelve, my family moved to a farmhouse at the edge of a town called Kettlebrook. The house was old, with peeling paint and a wraparound porch...

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The Marble Veins

Three years ago, I lived in the coastal town of Port Blossom, a place where the sea fog crept inland like a living thing. My father, a marine engineer nearing...

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The Last Stop Before the Marsh

In late October, my family and I boarded the night train from Chennai to the Nilgiri Hills, hoping to celebrate Diwali with my grandmother in Coonoor. But the journey turned...

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The Last Incantation

My family has always had a way with the unseen. We are not sorcerers in the common sense, nor do we traffic in the dark arts that bring harm. We...

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The Red Ribbon Ceremony

The morning of the annual Founders’ Day Fair at St. Agatha’s Academy was always a swirl of color and noise, but this year was different. The junior school, from kindergarten...

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The Ledger of Lumen

In the sweltering summer of 1987, when the heat in our cramped Kolkata flat seemed to seep through the very bricks, the world as I knew it tilted on its...

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The Final Errand

It was a humid evening in the coastal town of Vellore, where the sea breeze carried the smell of salt and the distant hum of fishermen’s radios. I was fifteen,...

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The Clockwork Heart of Mangrove House

The invitation came on crested paper, the ink a faded sepia that smelled of old libraries. Eleanor, my colleague from the city archives, had insisted we spend Christmas at her...

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The Glass Garden

The year was 1966, and the world was still reeling from the aftershocks of a war that had reshaped borders and destinies. My father, a retired railway officer, had chosen...

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The Ceiling of Returning Tongues

Elara had lived in the old farmhouse all her life, thirty-three years. It stood on the edge of the marsh, where the fog rolled in like a slow tide, and...

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The Ledger of Ash and Bone

The success of my first account had lit a fire in me, a hunger for something more concrete than cold spots and fleeting shadows. Three months after that night in...

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