Real Ghost Stories: The Graveyard Road

This is one of the real ghost stories a listener sent me, and it happened in a village in Comilla Sadar in 1995. Before I begin, let me tell you a little about the man at the centre of it. You may wonder how a man like him could be part of a paranormal story. He had only one bad habit, drinking. But the strange part of this story begins after he left this world. To make it easier to tell, I will call him Charu Mia. That is not his real name.

The Man Called Charu Mia

One day Charu Mia drank far too much. He spent a good part of his daily earnings on alcohol, and the rest stayed in his pocket or fell out somewhere, nobody knew where. That day he came home drunk with nothing for the kitchen, no groceries at all. His wife and children began to shout at him.

He was so drunk that he had lost all sense of right and wrong. He went into the house, picked up the curved blade they use for cutting vegetables, and said he would slaughter everyone. Neighbours rushed in and tried to take it from his hand, while he kept trying to strike someone. Then something happened that nobody there had expected. Unable to hurt anyone else, Charu Mia turned the blade on himself.

Everyone froze in horror. The blade fell from his hand, and he collapsed to the ground, bleeding badly. Two or three men quickly wrapped a gamchha, a thin cotton towel, around his neck and arranged to take him to the hospital. But he died on the road before they could get there.

This is where the real story begins. It was suicide, but he had not been in his right mind that day, so nobody objected to burying him in the village graveyard, and the burial was done quickly. Many of the people who had been standing there were badly shaken by what they had seen with their own eyes.

The Dead Man on the Road

The graveyard where he was buried had a road running beside it. On the other side lay a huge body of water, as big as a dighi, though everybody in the village simply called it a pond. In 1995 very few people used that road after dusk.

From the day after the burial, people from this village and the next one who passed that way late at night began to see Charu Mia. Some saw him walking along the roadside. Some saw him walking on top of the graveyard wall. They called out to him, but he never answered. They thought he must have drunk too much again. Then they reached home, learned that Charu Mia was dead, and wondered who on earth they had seen. People who woke up at night also heard a noise from the graveyard and the barking of many dogs.

About a week later came the most terrifying incident. A man from the house next to Charu Mia’s had been away on business for a long time. On the night he returned, he came close to the graveyard and saw Charu Mia. “Charu bhai, what are you doing here at this hour?” he said. “Come home.” Charu Mia was walking slowly. The man said again, “Come on, I will take you home,” and took his hand.

At that moment Charu Mia raised his head. The neighbour saw a wound on his throat, with blood spurting out of it, while Charu Mia slowly tugged at it with both hands. The man was frozen with fear. Then Charu Mia gave a horrible smile. The man screamed and fell to the ground.

When he came to, he was in the house next to the graveyard, with many people around him. For three days he could not speak, and he had a terrible fever for three or four days. Only after that did he tell everyone what had happened. They said, “But Charu Mia is dead.” In those days communication was poor, and nobody could have phoned him to tell him.

Little by little the news spread, and after sunset nobody dared to go on that road alone. Many people who came to the area waited at a distance until more people arrived, so they could go together. Groups of ten or twelve young people formed, and if one or two people came along, the group would see them across. I am trying to keep this short, because the whole story would be far too long for an email. Among all the real ghost encounters I have heard, this one stays with me the most.

The Night the Grocer’s Bicycle Broke

On another day, a grocer from the area bought goods for his shop, loaded them onto a local rickshaw, and followed behind on his bicycle. It was almost nine at night. In the middle of the road, his bicycle got a puncture. He called to the rickshaw-puller, but the man did not hear and kept going. What could the grocer do at that hour? The repair shop was closed. With no other choice, he started to walk. He was already afraid. He had a long way to go, and what would happen when he passed the graveyard?

Meanwhile the rickshaw-puller came close to the graveyard and saw something far off, like a white human shape moving. He stopped and looked back, but the grocer was not there. He began to worry. Where had he gone? How could he go on alone? He waited a long time, and when nobody came he decided to go alone. Just then the white shape seemed to be slowly coming closer.

He left the rickshaw by the side of the road and set off along the bank of the big pond, planning to reach the far side. I should mention that both banks of the pond have some jungle and a few graves, all of them family graves. Nobody goes there after dusk, though nobody has ever seen anything there. To him now, that jungle path felt far better than the road beside Charu Mia’s grave.

After walking for a long time, he reached the other side, but the local boys were not there. He knew all of them, so he called out to two or three. They did not want to come, but after much begging he gathered them, and they set off together with sticks to fetch the rickshaw. From far away, someone was calling out. Soon they saw the grocer coming. He asked why the rickshaw-puller had been so late, and the rickshaw-puller told him how frightened he had been and how he had taken the jungle path to the other side.

The boys said the same thing. There had been three of them on each side that night. Both groups saw a strange light on the grave, flickering on and off. Then some of them thought that someone was walking along the road, then on top of the graveyard wall. The boys on both sides shouted to each other. People came out of the nearby houses and asked what was wrong. When they were told, they saw nothing. When they saw the boys from the other side being brought over, they were very afraid too. After that, everyone went home, and fear spread through the village.

The Hujur and the Silence

The villagers went to a hujur (Islamic scholar) at a mosque two villages away. He was a very pious man. The next evening, after dusk, he came and told the villagers there was nothing to fear. “Charu Mia’s death was an unnatural death,” he said, “so a mischievous jinn took the opportunity and acted. When people began to be afraid, that jinn deliberately started to frighten everyone even more terribly. And perhaps there were some mistakes in Charu Mia’s burial.”

“Come after the Isha prayer, all of you,” the hujur (Islamic scholar) said. “I will offer the funeral prayer in his absence and make dua. InshaAllah there will be no more trouble.”

The hujur (Islamic scholar) prayed Isha at the village mosque, then offered the funeral prayer and dua according to custom, and left. After that there were no more problems. But even so, people never again walked on that road alone after dusk.