Halloween seems to have quietly entered Indian cities with its pumpkins and cobwebs, as if our own ghosts need an imported festival to feel seen!
The horror genre never ceases to fascinate us, not thrillers or gore as such, but pure, old-fashioned ghost stories. The eerie smiles, the sudden silences and blood-curdling shrieks, have thrilled generations. Why are we humans such gluttons for punishment? We willingly pay to be scared, as if life does not give us enough adrenaline moments. Maybe our love for ghosts isn’t about death at all, maybe it’s about connection: the shared shiver that makes us feel alive together.
The attraction for the surreal and the unknown transcends generations and classes. Ghosts don’t discriminate. The rich and the poor, the believer and the sceptic, all tremble the same before the spirits of the night. Fear, like laughter, is a great equaliser, sometimes even forging childhood friendships. As children, we believed ghosts were real, to be respected and feared. Every school had its chosen storyteller — the one student who had encountered a spirit and lived to tell it. In my school it was Malini, our resident conduit to the other world. On school trips and sleepovers, she came alive once the lights were out. Her voice would drop to a whisper as she spoke of relatives who had met ghosts or summoned spirits. We listened in rapture, half-terrified, half-jealous of her other realm connections. In that darkness, ‘fear’ no longer meant isolation, it meant belonging.
Ghost stories were best told at night in the dark. Light felt like a betrayal of tone. Strangely, no one ever questioned a ghost’s partiality to the dark. Maybe light brings perspective, while darkness feeds on secrecy and imagination. However, some ghosts defied this rule, like the ‘Bandage Ghost’ that haunted Kolkata schools. Wrapped in bandages from head to toe, it was omnipresent in school restrooms across the city for a few months. It effectively stopped students from taking frequent toilet breaks. Everyone saw it and no one saw it. And like all good ghosts, it disappeared quietly once its purpose was served.
As teenagers, our fascination matured with technology. Renting horror movie cassettes was a favourite holiday ritual. A Nightmare on Elm Street had us screaming, clutching at each other, too scared to leave the room alone. The Omen made us wary of cherubic boys, and the Ramsay Brothers’ films taught us to expect grisly endings for beautiful people. Predictable as they were, the audience loved the films.
There was something strangely comforting about being scared together. In a theatre or a school dorm, fear forged quick bonds. For a moment, we were one, breathing, flinching, shuddering together.
For true enthusiasts, ghost stories weren’t just to be savoured in company, but relished alone in the darkness of one’s own home. Late night television shows like Honi Anhoni and Zee Horror Show fuelled those private thrills. Stories of possession and reincarnation spilled through the screen, turning even a fluttering curtain ominous.
We had our own signs to spot a ghost: it would have no reflection, would float above the ground and be dressed in white. Why white? Perhaps it made it more visible in the dark. Even fear had aesthetics.
As we grow older, ghosts lose their credibility but disbelief hasn’t dimmed our appetite for the supernatural. The box office still fills up for ghost stories, from The Sixth Sense, which left audiences questioning what they’d just witnessed, to Bramayugam, which gave the ghost an intellect as formidable as its rage. Horror fiction, be it by Poe or Stephen King, never stops selling. Haunted houses at theme parks draw long queues. For all our science and scepticism, it seems we still crave the safe terror of what we claim not to believe in.
Maybe ghosts are our collective anxieties wearing a sheet. They carry our unresolved guilt, grief and longing, giving shape to what we cannot name. Perhaps every ghost story is a love story, about someone who refuses to leave. Maybe we love ghosts because they let us flirt with danger and return safely. In a world full of invisible fears, a ghost at least comes with a face, a story, and an end.
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Just as I was pondering on the timelessness of ghosts, a message popped up in the residential colony WhatsApp group. An annoyed resident on the fifth floor complained about a screeching swing on a balcony below or above his flat, saying the sound frightened his children. I stared at the message: did he not know both the flats mentioned were empty?
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Published – December 07, 2025 02:43 am IST
