Is this India’s ‘most haunted’ site? – BBC REEL

BBC Reel, the BBC’s short-documentary strand, published this six-and-a-half-minute film in October 2022. It was made by the video journalist Sankalp Baheti, with Paul I. Harris as commissioning editor, and it sets out to explain why a ruined sixteenth-century town in Rajasthan has a reputation as the most haunted place in India.

According to the BBC’s description, the film starts from the fact every visitor to Bhangarh learns at the gate: entry between sunset and sunrise is strictly forbidden. It then goes back to the fort’s beginnings as the capital of Raja Madho Singh’s small kingdom in the sixteenth century, and to the belief, widely held locally, that the town emptied so quickly because a tantric — a practitioner of occult rites — laid a curse on the fort and everyone in it.

Two versions of the curse are told at Bhangarh. In one, the ascetic Guru Balu Nath allowed the town to be built on condition that its shadow never fell on his retreat; in the other, a tantrik named Singhia fell for Princess Ratnavati, tried to bewitch her with an enchanted oil and cursed the town as he died. Neither appears in historical records. The documented decline is gradual: the population drifted to the nearby fort of Ajabgarh, the estate was absorbed by Amber in 1720, and a famine in 1783 drove out most of those who remained.

The night-time ban that gives the film its hook is real, but it is not unique to Bhangarh. The Archaeological Survey of India, which protects the ruins, posts similar restrictions at many remote monuments, and Bhangarh lies on rough, unlit ground at the edge of the Sariska Tiger Reserve. The temples inside the walls are still in use, so visitors are expected to treat them as places of worship.