A Vasistha ghost story has stayed with me because it was told as a memory, not a certainty. It begins with a young man, a violent village punishment and the fear that followed his death. What happened next is an account passed from one witness to another. I can preserve the unease of it without pretending that it proves the supernatural.
A Village Exorcism Remembered
This is one of the strangest tales I have heard. I still cannot explain it. Someone told me this tale recently and I wish to bring you all up to speed at once. It is about an incident that took place in a rural area once. The narrator placed it more than fifty years in the past. and this leaflet, even though finds its way from history, comes out clear as a crystal. Primarily because my narrator could never forget the events of his uncanny past. I surmise, it is hard to forget horror.
The Vasistha Ghost Story Begins
The setting unsettles me. A violent crime lies beneath the haunting. Though there is peculiarity entailed in the crime proffered here, I do understand that given the chance, one could easily convert it into a good script or a movie. I don’t hold anyone from doing that. Go ahead, make it into something more beautiful. The world should know about this.
There was a guy called Vasistha. Even though I heard a warning against using his name, since it could summon the unearthly, I choose to do that nevertheless, since I consider such statements sheer horse-crap. So, getting back on the saddle again, there was a guy called Vasistha, nay make that ill-fated Vasistha, a young chap who happened to live in an unruly rural area where crime used to get answered by merciless beatings. He used to play cricket with his friends on empty plots. and barren fields. They were young friends on their way to become adults.
Love and a Brutal Punishment
He fell in love with a girl, a young lass who preferred going for an extra marital affair as an answer to escape her miserable life. She was the second wife of a landlord who had turned a widower owing to a mishap that took away his first. Capering on the same-age bridge, falling in love wasn’t hard for Vasistha. and the damsel in distress got on the escapade pretty quick herself.
Love, something that doesn’t behold barriers that conventions make, kept decimating dams until one day their story was out in the open. The villagers thrashed him mercilessly for the transgression, the crime that was inexcusable in front of the eyes of the society. The same societal laws that still give poetic justice taking enough care to not blow things out of proportion. Stories that pass under their gavels never make it to the papers. Their names never go public. They are the real vigilantes that societies hide hitherto.
So love happened and then the ruthless beating that followed left him half dead. Last moments of Vasistha were recalled by saying:
“He got up to have some water from the pot. and then returned to bed only to leave his body without a sound.”
Some blamed internal bleeding after the beating. No medical record accompanies this account. Anyhow in betwixt elusive love and humiliation he passed away, a silent yet restless death.
After Vasistha’s Death
The village erupted in remorse the next day. But I doubt if anyone was too mournful, his crime taking the vanguard to prevent tears from falling down. Truest tears came from Vasistha’s friends. They cried the most. They had lost a friend and a teammate. Their grief needed no explanation. They took his steep fall as if they had fallen themselves.
Rituals asked of them to accompany the cadaver to the burning grounds where the body would burn on the funeral pyre. Now this is claimed even though we question its relation and tangibility. but it does manage to give some interesting crises to the story. After the body burned, as one of the guys who carried the body returned home, someone from the family ended up asking him:
“So you came!”
My narrator pressed on this fact that it was because of the statement the dead decided to stay. While it is customary in some funerals (preferably in Antyesti) that the guy who carries the body to the cremation ground should only be interacted with after he has had his bath, purged off and been purified properly. Little did the person who inquired know he sent out an invitation to the dead land.
The Night Subodh Fell Ill
In some societal laws, where rules aren’t that stringent, people allow you to go insanely drunk after funeral chores are carried out successfully. So all the friends of the deceased drank like drunkards. Subodh, one of Vasistha’s friends, who had tagged along to help the needy ones to successfully carry out those final rituals wasn’t feeling so good after all that drinking.
It was quite late when he returned home, along with Pramod one of his closest friends, to accompany him through all those dreary routes of darkness. No bulbs shimmered in the dead of the night. No streetlights broke the darkness. There was no electricity there. For ages the villagers had learnt to embrace the dark and so everyone lived unperturbed amongst forces they didn’t understand.
Subodh’s family already knew all about those funeral drinks. and they were fine with that too. As they encircled around him to listen to his blather about the day, they began noticing a strange comportment building up in his talks. Since Pramod and Subodh were close, the former would always hang around for a while before retiring into the night of his own house. So, they yelped for Pramod who was busy washing his face near the hand-pump.
Vexed by his recently found demeanour, Pramod inquired what was wrong. The inebriated Subodh answered that his head was spinning and that he wasn’t feeling that good. He sat on the floor cross legged imploring his mother to get him some lime juice to get rid of that punishing hangover. To bring him up to speed Pramod asked him to punch his hands, to which he reluctantly agreed. But after a jab or two he gave up.
The Vasistha Ghost Story: A Familiar Voice
Meanwhile Pramod summoned for some oil to ease his buddy’s stress out. But the moment he pressed his palm against Subodh’s head after pouring oil, he felt the boiling heat followed by a changed voice grumble, that shriveled him up.
At that very moment Subodh’s mother had entered the room. Gawking at her he spoke in a demoniac twist,
“So you came Aunty!”
Taken aback by what had just happened, Pramod tried to look at his friend. His friend was long gone, he could make out with that unique voice that it was none other than Vasistha himself who had embodied the poor chap and successfully wrapped him up in his shackles. Anything that came out of his mouth was an altered note, a different tone altogether, that matched him perfectly with the dead guy. Whatever he said took Subodh more aloof placing a different persona altogether.
Pramod was the boldest friend. He did not believe in ghosts. Yet he shivered in doubt, fear and trepidation.
“Didn’t we bury this guy today?”
The only solution that dangled in front of him slept in a comfy bed some 2 kms from their home. Pramod grabbed a torch and hurried into the night. He went to find the Pundit, the man the village trusted with such troubles.
Running for Help
Battling bazillion thoughts as he made his way into the darkened streets smelling fear at every corner, he was one of those souls that silently fought the rural repose in an endeavour to bring his friend back at any cost. On reaching the Pundit’s abode, he went straight up to his bed to wake him up. While a miffed Pundit retorted “five more minutes” amidst his constant yawning, Pramod kept beseeching him to tend to the unexplained matter at hand at once. That they were living one hell of a ghost story among those ghost stories in real life he had only heard about. Coaxing him up on his feet, they both hurried to see the victim.
The Vasistha Ghost Story: The Pundit Arrives
A chair stood in front of Subodh, or must I say Vasistha, who recognized Pundit the moment he made his way into the hall. He blared:
“How are you today Punditji?”
“I am fine. What are you doing here?”
The Pundit coolly responded. While this real exorcism began taking place the Pundit started off with his exorcism prayers, rubbing tobacco in his hands.
“Why are you troubling this little chap?” he added.
Vasistha responded that Subodh had peed on him, which was apparently an accident, since the living can’t see the dead. But Subodh was paying the price nevertheless. Vasistha had a statement to make. and so he stormed in an eruptive voice saying that he had died at their hands. It was so unfair on their part.
“What you did was fair?”
The Pundit responded wittingly trying to reason with the dead. Then the reasoning followed. Pundit was trying to push him into the well of guilt. While he was defending himself saying love is blind. and that punishment should be left to the law. There were questions and answers, flowing from both ends as the Pundit rubbed his tobacco religiously, chanting the exorcism prayer secretively as the demon spoke.
The Night Comes to an End
The Pundit challenged the need for vengeance. Why punish Subodh, who had done nothing to hurt his friend? He didn’t do any harm after all he was just his friend. He ordered the ghost to spare him. So, the ghost of Vasistha, understandingly concurred and decided to leave.
With a final chant of a mantra, the exorcism prayer that the Pundit kept preparing against the supernatural, Pundit blew his tobacco in the air. Just as that happened, Subodh fell flat on his back and uttered a doleful cry of pang. Everyone became sure that the body held only Subodh again. Right after that Subodh sprang up back to life, he began recognizing everybody and calling them by just what he used to call them by.
Days later, Subodh still feared walking alone. He worried that the presence would return. Pramod fathomed every bit of it. and the skeptic lights in him began to flicker. He beheld everything firsthand. So, it scared him too.
Why the Vasistha Ghost Story Still Lingers
This Vasistha ghost story does not need a final verdict to remain unsettling. A grieving village, a frightened friend, alcohol, ritual and memory can all shape an account. The people who told it believed they had seen Vasistha return. another reader may see grief and fear finding a voice.
That uncertainty is why the Vasistha ghost story has stayed with me. As a Vasistha ghost story, it is less interested in proving a haunting than in preserving the fear its witnesses carried home.
I have left the Vasistha ghost story in the language of a remembered village account, with its doubts intact. Readers may disagree about what happened without dismissing why the night felt frightening to the people inside it.
If this Vasistha ghost story leaves you wanting another uneasy, unresolved tale, continue through the horror stories archive.