It couldn’t be someone knocking on my door, could it?
I was in a building that was over a hundred years old, and it seemed alive. It wore its quaintness like an extra layer, as if its age invited doorways of conversation—a walk through a museum rather than a stay in a building.
I was in one of the many forest rest houses that dot India. This one was in Uttarakhand, and standing next to an old banyan tree, the house creaked just as much as the tree did. It was nighttime, not late by city standards, but in the jungle, mornings are early and so nights must be too.
A spotted owl screeched. Another answered. And there was the sound of shuffling outside my door again. These sounds are normal for old buildings, a part of my head always tells me. This place isn’t historical for nothing, says another.
In another rest house in Raimona, Assam, recently, I was jolted awake because of the particular sound of something walking—many, many steps—in the walls. I had but a few hours of sleep before I had to resume travel, so the interruption was not welcome. Yet, sleep seemed impossible. When seized by the idea that one is not alone, one also (illogically) feels that things will be fine when morning arrives. Light can mean a banishing of spirits, the return of rationality, and a helping hand.
Morning came, gritty and grey, shy of 5am. The “walking” sounds continued, magnified by the wooden components of the rest house. The mystery was revealed as I circled outside the side of the building, unable to take it anymore, and buoyed by the weak sunlight. Scores of bats were returning to a gap in the wall near the corner of the roof. They poured towards their roost from the sky like water, and then they crawled in like infants into that space favoured by horror stories—the space between the walls.
Reading horror stories by Indian authors, I am struck by how many can qualify as nature writing. In The Hungry Septopus, Satyajit Ray writes about an academic with an unusual passion, that of collecting carnivorous plants. Kanti babu collects Nepenthes, the pitcher plants which trap insects. And one day, he brings home a mysterious plant from near Lake Nicaragua which turns out to be more than what he bargained for. The story is flush with descriptions of the countryside, the predator-prey relationship, and the enigma of plants.
In her sensitively translated book, The Phantom’s Howl translator Arundhati Nath brings classic Bengali horror stories to English readers. Penned originally by Rabindranath Tagore, Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay and others, the stories are marked by their settings—bucolic, near large old trees, in buildings with a genteel poverty. Time moves slowly, almost a character in itself. And the settings feel like they are being lost to time, natural places which are enigmas in themselves.
In the story Inside the Water Spinach Forest Marsh, originally written by Amarendranath Munshi, the action takes place in a marsh, in the moonlight. “I stared at the marsh, as if caught in a spell—the moon’s glitter fell in a shower on its waters, a cascade of silver…as the waves broke the bank, they caught the moonlight, and sprayed up a multitude of dazzling diamonds and gems…”. This description rings true for things we spot in the forest in natural light: starlight or moonlight. Things are beguiling and transformative, if not always scary.
The best horror stories have the creeping unknown: something mysterious which transforms from familiar to frightening, and will always remain outside our comprehension. This can also be a parallel for being in nature, especially when circumstances are unusual, such as in a storm, or on a dark night.
Weird things happen regularly. The light of bonfires or candles—lit after batteries run out, in places outside electricity grids—makes small animals leap in size. Everyone has a story of seeing a small-sized mammal, which was a cat one second, and dog-sized the next. Surely, it’s just a trick of the light.
My friend tracked down a haunting wailing in the forests of central India, determined to get to the root of the odd sounds he was hearing. It turned out to be a tree with a hole through the trunk. The wind rushed through the hole, making a feminine, crying sound. In a dark night in a tiger reserve, I listened to the rustle of something in the room on the ground next to me. Each time I’d train my torch in the direction of the sound, there would be an excruciating silence. But a small animal could easily have ducked my torch.
And so that day in Uttarakhand, I put down the creaks and “knocks” to the wind and wildlife. I ventured into the forest, and came back with sightings both haunting and sunlit: a Spotted owlet sitting in the half light of pre-dawn, looking at something only it could see. A Pied hornbill couple sitting on a tree that was long dead. A Changeable hawk-eagle looking like an alien with the sun behind it. Other animals that moved through the bush, and at the side of my eyes, but could never be properly spotted. A shrike with its kill impaled on a thorn, unsentimental in its own way.
I can’t comment on whether remote places are haunted. I can comment on the fact that all hauntings seem to be about yearning. They are about regret—for years lost, for the chances not taken.
This month, the Supreme Court has ordered that tiger safaris (with captive tigers) should not be permitted in core or critical tiger areas. These should be made on non-forest land, or rundown forest land. It asked for the eco-sensitive zones around tiger reserves to be notified. All of this is a bid to ensure tigers don’t get disturbed, a recognition that certain natural areas should stay as they are.
The word “solastalgia” refers to a yearning for a lost place or way of life. With increasing pressure in our lives: screens, more concrete, more travel—staying in an old building without TVs and Wi-Fi can feel like a hearkening back into older, slower ways of living. I get scared sometimes, when doors rattle on ghost breezes. But I also know there are much scarier things in the world.
The other day a wildlifer friend remarked that ghosts must be endangered now, because most old buildings are getting converted to flats; he also said he thinks ghosts are social—that is why they hang around people.
This made me smile. These sound like magical stories, things that conceal realities. Like in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s two-page shocker, Light is Like Water, whimsical, magical retellings often hide starker realities. We might tell ourselves roundabout stories to make sense of the world, but I know it isn’t ghosts that are horrifying; the real horror in the world is apathy.
And so the door rattled, and I sat on the bed, counting the different kinds of creatures it could be, briefly immersed in a forgotten world, trying to remember.
Neha Sinha is a conservation biologist and author of the forthcoming book Wild Capital: Discovering Nature in Delhi (2026). Views expressed are personal.