Patna: A railway station that remained shut for 42 years over fears of being a haunted place has now turned into a tourist destination.
Begunkodar railway halt, which falls between Jhalda and Kotshila railway stations under the Ranchi rail division in eastern India, has been drawing hordes of people who want to see the ghosts in white clothes and with flowing hair walking on the tracks. The ghosts are believed to come out once evening falls.
Authorities said the railway station was shut in 1967 after being described as a “haunted place” shortly when a railway officer died in his office.
As per the story doing the rounds, the said officer died when he reportedly saw the “shadow of a ghost dressed in white clothes and walking on the tracks in the dead of night”.
This caused panic among the railway staff as no one wanted to be posted there. Eventually the station had to be shut down.
Reports said in the early 1960s Lachan Kumari, a queen of the Santal tribe that inhabited the area, donated a large chunk of her land to the Railways for the upliftment of her people.
Subsequently, works started for its upliftment, but sometime later the queen died and the local villagers say the said ghost could be of that queen.
The station remained closed for over four decades until the Trinamool Congress chief Miss Mamata Banerjee became the federal railway minister in 2009 and got it reopened.
“Aami bhoote biswas korina (I don’t believe in ghost),” was her reported comment while ordering reopening of this station.
Today, however, the fear of ghosts is completely gone, as people describe the ghost story as “useless talks”.
“All talk of ghosts is rubbish. I have never seen anything since I was posted there. But yes, the station is drawing crowds of curious travellers who come here to see ‘ghosts’,” a local villager Bhola Mahato told Gulf News.
He said the place had emerged as a tourist destination as people want go there to see “ghosts”.
