Bhangarh: The Most Haunted Place in India Abutting the Sariska National Park in the Alwar district of eastern Rajasthan are the intriguing and well-preserved ruins of the Bhangarh Fort. The entire area is currently abandoned, has no resident population and is at present under the control of the Archaeological Survey of India. It is claimed to be the most haunted place in India. The clearly discernible buildings in the fort include a fortified perimeter wall with huge entrance gates, a palatial residence of the ruler, wells and tanks for water supply, houses big and small and a jauhari bazar or a market area. However, none of the structures have any roofs that gives an overall eerie feeling to the place. The only exception to the roofless structures are the several temples within its precincts that are perfectly intact and receive a regular stream of worshippers. The sinister atmosphere hanging like a dark cloud over the fort has led many, including the locals, to believe that the only remaining inhabitants of this fort are ghosts. Stories of bangles jingling in the night, sounds of women sobbing and drifts of unexpected fragrance are often told and believed. The reputation of the spookiness of the Bhangarh Fort is well entrenched in public consciousness. One of the imposing gates of the fort Lending credence to these macabre tales is the notice board put up by the ASI that permits entry into the fort and its buildings only between sunrise and sunset. Any ingress into the premises after sundown has been made a punishable offence by Government order. That gives the impression of an official acknowledgement of the haunted character of this place. There are also many stories of people who surreptitiously defied the night curfew and entered into the fort premises, but all such defiant transgressors are believed to have mysteriously died soon after; never to share their experience of the night spent within those ghostly ramparts. These stories tend to magnify the uneasy consciousness that certain mysterious and malign powers are at work in this place. The local folklore ascribes the haunted character of the fort to one of the two incidents from its unfortunate past. The first is that of an ascetic Bala Nath who had his hermitage on this hillock even before the fort was constructed. His permission was sought for building the fort at that location and was granted by him on the condition that never should the shadow of the fort fall on his hermitage. The king, as the construction proceeded, ignored his condition and raised the height of the construction so that its shadow fell on Bala Nath. The furious ascetic, angered by the arrogance of the king, gave a curse that no roof will hereafter remain intact in the entire place. Since then, the locals believe that any roof put up on a building there collapses immediately after completion. The second folklore seeking to explain the genesis of haunted reputation of the fort is that of unrequited love. There was a princess Ratnavati who was as beautiful as her name. Another version claims that she was the queen of Bhangarh. Whatever her status may have been in Bhangarh, a local tantrik or a sorcerer named Singhia was totally enamoured by her, but also realised that given his low social status he could never win over her love for him. Therefore, he resorted to a subterfuge. Spying her maid buying a bottle of perfumed oil in the market for the princess, he put the ‘mohini mantra’ or an enchantment spell on that bottle. Unfortunately for him, the princess got to know of his ploy and threw the bottle out of the window. The oil fell on a boulder of rock that got enchanted, instead of the princess, and flew off towards the tantrik, crushing him under its weight. Before dying, the disappointed tantrik cursed the whole population of the fort that they would all die soon and that their souls would never be reborn but were condemned to drift eternally in the middle world. Soon after, the cousins of the ruling family from the neighbouring Ajabgarh Fort, who did not get along well with Bhangarh, attacked the fort. Most, including Ratnavati, were killed in that battle and the survivors fled the place. Bhangarh has been abandoned by living beings ever since and till date it remains inhabited only by the souls of its dead that are permanently trapped in the nether world. They continue to express the agony of their fate by crying through the night. The Jauhari Bazar or the Market Street Personally, I do not believe in ghosts, while I do believe in a strict observance of the rules laid down by the concerned authorities. So, we left the fort well before sunset. Perhaps there was also a lingering doubt in the subconscious layers of our minds, prompting us to reconsider, what if even some parts of the commonly held beliefs were true. The eeriness of the environment of the abandoned ruins of the fort turns out to be a fertile ground to encourage the involuntary emergence of such negative thoughts. Whatever the case, once safely away from the place, I remained intrigued enough to try and find out more of the facts behind the current haunted atmosphere prevailing in the vicinity of the fort. Recorded history tells us that the Bhangarh Fort was built in 1573 by the Kachhwaha ruler of Amer, Bhagwant Das, for his younger son Madho Singh. This Madho Singh, a Diwan or a nobleman in the Mughal Empire was the younger brother of the more famous Man Singh who was one of the Navratnas or the Nine Gems of the court of Emperor Akbar. Ajab Singh, a grandson of Madho Singh, founded the neighbouring fort of Ajabgarh that was often locked in fraternal animosity with Bhangarh. The story of Ajab Singh attacking and destroying Bhangarh, as related in the local folklore, could very well be true. All the buildings of the Bhangarh fort may have been ransacked by the forces of Ajabgarh, except the temples that were possibly left intact out of the fear of the resident Gods. The traumatised survivors of Bhangarh may have been apprehensive of coming back to the fort that lay in ruins. In any case, there are records of a local famine caused by a drought in 1783. That may have further discouraged the people from trying to resettle in Bhangarh. With the passage of time, spine-chilling myths developed around the abandoned fort among the local population and ensured that the place remains deserted till date. In contrast, the worshippers coming in to pray at its temples during daytime possibly feel divinely protected from the resident evil spirits. The more recent incidents of deaths, believed to have been the unfortunate fate of the transgressors of the night curfew imposed on the fort, are all vague with no names or any other specific details that could be independently authenticated. On the internet it is common to come across accounts of young boys, who in their bravado, claim to have spent the night within the fort with no adverse outcomes for them. Even the ban on entry imposed by the ASI appears to be more on account of the possibility of encounters with dangerous predators that may drift in at night from the adjoining Sariska National Park. ASI patrolling goes on in the Bhangarh Fort even at late hours and no sightings of ghosts has ever been reported by them. However, what does remain intriguing is that all the buildings have partly broken-down walls and staircases but there are no roofs even partly remaining in any of the buildings. Maybe the Ajabgarh soldiers consciously broke down the roofs of all the buildings or, for safety reasons, the damaged roofs were brought down subsequently by the authorities. We may never have all the answers. The notorious reputation of Bhangarh as a haunted place will perhaps be difficult to shake off for a long time to come. Till then the stories around it will continue to charm us. .