Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): Havelis, few are aware, were the mansions of yesteryears. Several of them still survive in Bhopal – in the city as well as on its outskirts. Horror stories burgeon around these edifices. Such yarns are spread, partly by anti-social elements who actually occupy these buildings, and partly by those who live around these mansions and wallow in such tales. Such a building existed in Koh-e-Fiza, Bhopal – though spirits did not occupy it. Its inhabitants were criminals and drug addicts. The municipal corporation decided to flatten the edifice to shoo away the criminals. When the demolition squad reached the spot, the residents thought the raging spirits would emerge from nowhere to stop the municipal officials. They anxiously waited for it.
The building soon turned into debris but the ghosts living in the building never emerged from there to punish the officials. This reminds us of a small poem by Christina Georgina Rossetti: Who Has Seen the Wind? “Who has seen the wind? Neither I nor you.” Perhaps, this is true about ghosts. Yet, the word ghost sends chills down your spine. The word ghost, originated from Europe in the 16th century, is associated with the church. But the concept of ghosts is based on the ancient belief that the spirit of each individual survives after corporal death. This is the reason why our ancestors used to burn bodies after death to ensure that the dead person’s spirit did not return to frighten the living.
Who first sighted the ghost?
Famous ghosts One of the most-spun yarns of apparition is related to the second wife of King Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn. Mother of Queen Elizabeth I, Boleyn was executed at the Tower of London in 1536 for treason and incest. Her spectre was sighted. The ghost of one of the founding founders of America Benjamin Franklin was sighted near the library of the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia. Some people have seen the apparition of Abraham Lincoln, 16th president of the USA, around the White House.
Famous ghosts
One of the most-spun yarns of apparition is related to the second wife of King Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn. Mother of Queen Elizabeth I, Boleyn was executed at the Tower of London in 1536 for treason and incest. Her spectre was sighted. The ghost of one of the founding founders of America Benjamin Franklin was sighted near the library of the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia. Some people have seen the apparition of Abraham Lincoln, 16th president of the USA, around the White House.
Spectres in literature
William Shakespeare spoke about spectres in Macbeth, Hamlet and many other plays. We know how the ghost of Banco scared Macbeth. But they don’t scare us. The apparitions that we have so far read about have stemmed from gothic novels scripted in the beginning of the 18th century. Such novels were written against the backdrop of palaces and castles. There used to be an odour of mystery in each page of such novels. The most famous of them is Dracula by Bram Stoker. Classic horror story, Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1818) also became an instant hit. Such fictions have inspired many authors like Charlotte, Anne, and Emily Bronte, Edgar Alan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Charles Dickens to write gothic novels. Oscar Wilde’s The Canterville Ghost has limned a vivid picture of a poltergeist that existed in an old building, Canterville Chase that an American minister bought. Rather than being scary, the story makes you snicker.
The Hungry Stones
Rabindranath Tagore also wrote several ghost stories, and one of them was The Hungry Stones or Khudito Pashan. The story portrays how poltergeists of the Mughal era scare a tax collector who stays in a haunted palace. Tagore wrote the story when he was staying with his elder brother Satyendranath Tagore, an ICS officer, at Shah Jahan’s Moti Shahi Mahal palace Shahibaug near the Sabarmati River. The name of the river has been changed to Susta. But it is a philosophical story which portrays a man’s quest for spiritual life through his struggle for material desires. Jyotirgamay by a Bengali novelist Phalguni Mukhopadhyay also copes with this topic.
Lincoln in the Bardo
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders, which won The Man Booker Prize in 2017, relates the post-death and pre-birth stage of life, a Tibetan Buddhist concept. In the Bardo, spirits stay and meditate on their past life. It tells the tale of Abraham Lincoln’s son Willie who died young.
