When my daughter Ankita was 8 and my son Aniket was four it was my pleasurable ‘duty’ to tell them a story every night. While Ankita liked the once upon a time tales, Aniket was fond of ‘dishum-dishum’ types! They frequently had arguments over the genre but on one topic, they were in complete agreement - ghost stories! They simply loved spooky tales and would pester me to dish out one as often as I could.
When I would start the story, with both audio and visual effects of my own, Aniket would be sitting a few feet away looking at me - his eyes wide open. As the story progressed and got spookier and spookier, he would edge forward. And finally, by the time the vampire dug its teeth into the hapless victim, or the ghoul woke up the dead, Aniket would be sitting on my lap, looking up at me and holding me tight.
This little journey and the hug at the end was worth all the effort. I had to cook up new kinds of paranormal fiends of every variety to satisfy the palate of my own darling little ‘monsters’.
Some of the stories in this book owe their origin to tale-telling on winter twilights, summer nights, or rain-drenched evenings. There is a tale titled ‘The Stranger’ which has an interesting back story to it.
My wife Madhavi had gone to the picaresque ‘town’ of Landour to meet, the master craftsman, Ruskin Bond. We had a lovely session with the great man and I asked him a question on Aniket’s behalf. “Sir, can you write more ghost stories?”
“I have run out of ghosts, but I'll try. Actually, I write ghost stories when I run out of people and I have nothing else left to write,” he replied, his eyes twinkling & his boyish smile perfectly in place.
As we were walking back to Devdar Woods, our little ‘hotel’, I looked around trying to soak in the ambience.
It was a dark and lonely night. The lights hadn’t come on and I couldn’t see more than a few metres ahead. Apparently, there had been a drizzle. Though the rain had stopped, the dampness hung heavy in the air. The leaves of the trees were still laden with raindrops that fell when the breeze caressed them. It was quiet, very quiet and the only sound he could hear was the echo of our own footsteps.
The road was wide with an embankment on one side and a valley on the other. All I could make out were silhouettes of the imposing devdar trees punctuating the thick blanket of blackness that seemed to have enveloped Landour. With the rain and night coming together it was getting chilly. I shivered involuntarily. I looked at Madhavi walking beside me and suddenly a thought struck me – what if she suddenly turned into a ghost!!!
That is how the idea of the story ‘The Stranger’ was born.
I have always believed that the setting or milieu in a ghost story is often as important as the characters or the content. Like ‘The Stranger’ another tale where the milieu is a key element is ‘The Chess Players’ set in Rourkela where I worked for more than three decades. The entire ‘action’ takes place in a deserted and dilapidated church, which was a favourite ‘haunt’ of my kids.
I have written in many genres: sports, reality fiction, humour, folk tales, fantasies, biographies but nothing has been as challenging as penning ghost stories. In the last some years with the audio-visual medium getting all-pervasive, intrusive, and in-your-face there is really very little out there left to the imagination. And the envelope of horror has been pushed so much that this genre has often morphed into the ludicrous. In such a scenario, it is a challenge to create something new which would scare, spook and shock the reader.
These eleven stories were written over a period of time. I made every effort to ensure that the themes and the denouement are as different as possible. In some of these stories retribution, camouflaged in horror, is the main thread while in others it is simply an encounter with stark, primal fear! Also, that the characters are not outlandish and over the top. Even if I was sketching the persona of a ghost, I tried to make it believable and rooted in reality.
Ramendra Kumar (Ramen) is an award-winning writer for children and young adults. He also dabbles in satire, poetry, fiction, and travelogues. 27 books written by him have been brought out by well known names and translated into several Indian and foreign languages. You can explore Shriek and Other Spooky Tales here.
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