Sayantani Das, a student in the fourth grade, shares the tale of a group of friends visiting a remote village in Assam who encounters a haunting spirit with a tragic past. The ghost of Chaya, a young girl killed by a drunk train driver, seeks vengeance from the living.
It was a cold December morning, the kind where the fog hung low and thick, blurring the world into a ghostly white. My friends Saanvi, Dhriya, Shuvabi, and I were on our way to my uncle’s house in Kalgachia, a small, tucked-away village in Assam. The train had dropped us off just as the first light of dawn was attempting to break through the mist. My uncle’s house, with its familiar, comforting structure, was visible from the station, a mere walking distance away.
After a warm welcome and a hearty dinner that night, we gathered in the living room, the glow of the fireplace casting flickering shadows on the walls. The conversation drifted towards the topic of ghosts, as such talks often do in the eerie quiet of a winter night.
“Ghosts don’t even exist on this planet!” Saanvi declared, her voice full of certainty.
Shuvabi nodded in agreement, “It’s all just in people’s heads.”
But Dhriya, my uncle, and I exchanged a glance and remained silent, letting their skepticism hang in the air.
That night, as the household fell into a deep slumber, Shuvabi suddenly awoke to a strange noise. It was faint, almost like a whisper, but it was enough to draw her out of bed. The source of the sound seemed to be coming from outside. Curious, and perhaps a little unnerved, she made her way downstairs to the balcony, which offered a clear view of the train station.
In the moonlight that filtered through the fog, Shuvabi noticed a figure—a girl, no older than thirteen, walking slowly towards the house from the station. The girl’s dress was old-fashioned, tattered, and stained. For a moment, Shuvabi blinked, trying to make sense of what she was seeing. When she looked again, the girl was no longer walking. She was hovering, her feet inches off the ground, and her body was bloodied, as if she had been in a terrible accident.
The girl’s eyes locked onto Shuvabi’s, and in a voice that was both soft and chilling, she asked, “Are you the one who ran me over with the train?”
Terror gripped Shuvabi, rendering her mute, and she screamed before collapsing on the floor.
Her scream shattered the silence of the night. We all bolted from our rooms and rushed to the balcony, finding Shuvabi unconscious and alone. The air was still, and the only sound was the wind rustling through the trees. There was no sign of the girl Shuvabi described.
When she came to, Shuvabi insisted it wasn’t a dream. “I swear I saw a shadow, a chaya!” she exclaimed, her voice shaking.
But the rest of us, not wanting to feed into her fear, assured her it was just a nightmare and helped her back to bed. Only my uncle seemed troubled, his face shadowed with a worry that deepened the creases in his brow.
The next day, curiosity and a bit of unease got the better of us. We decided to revisit the balcony at the exact time Shuvabi claimed to have seen the ghost. The fog had returned, thicker than ever, as we stood huddled together, our breaths mingling in the cold air.
And then, just as Shuvabi had described, the girl appeared again, emerging from the mist. This time, all of us saw her, her spectral form drifting towards us, her eyes filled with sorrow and something far more unsettling—anger.
“See! I told you all!” Shuvabi whispered, her voice barely above a breath.
The next morning, we approached my uncle, demanding an explanation. He sighed deeply, the weight of a long-held secret heavy on his shoulders.
“That must be Chaya,”‘ he said.
“Who is Chaya?”
“Let me tell you a story,” he began.
Eleven years earlier, my uncle had worked at the very station we had arrived at. One day, a 13-year-old girl named Chaya was trying to cross the tracks. A train was approaching, driven by a man too drunk to control the vehicle properly. The train struck Chaya, taking her life instantly. Since that tragic day, her spirit has been bound to the station, searching for the person who took her life. But there’s more to it—she doesn’t just search. Any drunkard she finds near the tracks… she takes her revenge on them.”
The story left us chilled to the bone. We realised that what we had witnessed was more than just a ghostly apparition; it was a cry for justice that would never be answered, a soul lost in time, forever tied to the place of her tragic end. We left Kalgachia soon after, but the memory of Chaya’s ghostly figure has stayed with us, a reminder that some stories are never truly over.
