For centuries now, folk tales and popular imagination has been inundated with myths, legends and most of all ghost stories. Every country has them; curiosities that stem from hearsay or from histories that don’t fit explanations.
But what makes our minds conjure these fantastical images, these metaphors for memory, for things hidden and buried, for things that haunt. How do these tales find their way to common people years later? What makes a town haunted?
While these are all larger questions that perhaps have no definitive answer, no matter where you go, there’s a story to be found. In the village town of Dagshai that is located 11 km from the Himachal town Solan, one such myth prevails.
Not a typical tourist village, the old cantonment town of India has an awe-inspiring history and a haunted one at that.
If we trace our way back in history, the region was previously a place where Mughal rulers would send criminals for capital punishment. The term Daag-e-Shahi which translates to ‘a royal stain’ therefore seems like an apt name for the area. Over the years, the name weathered down to Dagshai and as the British gained more power it was converted into an army cantonment.
It is in the British era that the myth of Dagshai found its footing. The green mountainous army cantonment area mainly consists of some army buildings, a couple of schools, local homes, and a cemetery.
It is specifically this cemetery that has garnered everyone’s attention. If the story is to be trusted, it goes something like this. In the cantonment lived Major George Weston, a British medicine practitioner with his wife Mary who was a nursing assistant. The couple remained childless for many years and were finally able to conceive due to a blessed amulet by a wandering saint.
It is believed that Mary died eight months into the pregnancy and to grieve the death of his wife and unborn child, the Major built a beautiful grave with marble for the resting place shipped directly from England.
As is with myths and legends, as time passed, rumours of Mary’s grave being capable of bestowing boons started to spread. Many pregnant women would visit the grave and cut pieces of the marble in hopes of giving birth to a male child.
As more and more people started to believe this misconception, the grave started to lose its integrity and the beautiful marble structure built in memory of a loving wife was almost destroyed by ignorant visitors.
Many people now believe that they’ve sighted Mary’s spectre wandering around the cemetery trying to defend her grave. Whether or not these sightings can be believed is uncertain.
Though it is not just the cemetery that is believed to be haunted. Many people have also reported witnessing paranormal activity at the Dagshai Central Jail that was built in 1849 and has now been converted into a museum. Given its gory past and the history of killings and tortures there it is alleged to be among the most haunted places of India.
We leave you with a question. Are these places are truly haunted or are they just the subconscious guilt and conscience of a people manifesting itself into spectral myths and legends.
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