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India’s Hill Stations and Ghosts of a Colonial Past by Azania Imtiaz Khatri-Patel
There is one experience that is common across South Asian memory. A chilly night. Cousins huddled together- in a barsati or an elder cousin’s bedroom or a hall room littered with roll-out mattresses. Someone speaks up, just a little louder than a whisper.
‘Do you want to hear a ghost story?”
Often these encounters with the paranormal happen on chilly winter nights when the wind is screaming and the windows of deserted old houses are clattering. Hills where the Bengal fox roams, and the seaside where Djinns are rumoured to haunt become places that are rife with tales.
Iconic Indian author, Ruskin Bond, has contributed to some of the most striking ghost stories set in India’s hilly regions. His stories, taking place in Mussoorie are part of the ‘canon’ of desi horror. And the mountainous locations for desi horror stories aren’t a coincidence, in fact, they come as a consequence of the troubled history these hill stations share…
Over the years, scholars and academics have said that ghost stories are common in regions or locales with histories of trauma and pain. I, myself, have worked on examining how this applies to the subcontinent. With hill stations, the reasoning behind them being a set location for ghost stories is a mix. The first part is their colonial roots.