The concept of haunted places/ houses is pretty much straightforward & similar to that of haunted objects. If a person dies in a place/ house, that person’s spirit remains in the place/ house haunting the people in that area/ new occupants & causing mayhem in general.
Haunted Houses
The concept of a horror house is pretty common & quite effective in creating horror storylines. Many good movies have their plots based around a haunted house. The more gruesome the tale of the death/s in the house, the scarier the ghost. While movies like the Ju-On (the original Grudge) & the Conjuring succeed in pulling off the haunted house scares well enough, there are some like Open House (don’t even think of watching it, yes it’s that bad) & the Grudge (2020) which fail miserably in doing the same.
We’ve heard much about ghosts residing in old buildings, especially heritage & vintage homes constructed in the Victorian era. However, with the recent spate of modernization & redevelopment, these old buildings are being torn down to build malls, multiplexes & skyscrapers. A question arises – What about the ghosts living in those buildings? They are practically left homeless. Thrown out of their homes with not even any temporary housing provided, no future, where would they go? Obviously they’d be pissed off. With nowhere else to go, they’d be forced to come back to the new houses built in place. And obviously they’d be stomping around & making noises in your home. And then there come the priests. As if throwing them out once wasn’t enough. They have to start calling them names – evil spirits, poltergeists, demons & what not. Like seriously!!! How would you feel if I called you a bitch for living in your own house?? Now you gettin it, right?Movies like The Others & Bhooter bhobishyat have tackled similar topics in their own unique style making them both must-watch movies.
I’ve always wondered another thing about haunted houses. Why do ghosts have to haunt only big houses with attics & basements & the lot. Why don’t we ever hear about middle-class small houses being haunted? Like in the case of Mumbai, a majority of the population, being middle-class people live in small 1-Room-Kitchen apartments. Imagine ghosts haunting such small houses. After a few days of being haunted, the family-mom be like –
“Jo todna hai todo, par meri maa ki di hui crockery ko haath lagane ki himmat ki toh yehi chaaku leke marugi”
You may break what you wish to, but don’t you dare touch my mother’s crockery or I’ll hit you with this same knife.
Haunted Places
If you live in a city, any decent sized city just Google haunted places – ‘your city name’ & you’re bound to get dozens of results with top ten lists of haunted places. Every country, every state, every city, even smallest of all villages, each have their own list of haunted places. What can we do? Suicides, murders, mass killings what’s new? People die all the time, you can’t stop it.
The worst, scariest & most dangerous of all scary places are places of mass suicides. Just imagine, you walk into the place & suddenly start banging your head against a wall? That’s considering there’s no cliff to jump off from around.
There’s a lot of famous haunted places in India like Bhangarh, Dumas Beach, Kuldhara & many more. However, the more interesting stories are those of lesser known haunted places like Cabo de Rama. Somewhere around here (click Menu–》My Stories–》The Boundary of Crosses), you will find an interesting story about a lesser known haunted place in South Goa. The author has done a good amount of research & written it fairly decently (wink wink). You should read that too, if you’ve not already.
Fight or Flight
In the case of a house being haunted, despite the rights of the ghosts, we can try to fight them in various ways. However, try cleansing entire neighbourhoods. Imagine the amount of incense & sage that would require to be burnt for that big an area. I don’t know whether ghosts would run away from all that, but I’m pretty sure the mosquitoes would definitely be either killed or scared away.
So, Fight in case of a haunted home, if you can & Flight for haunted places.
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