A Horror Story For Himalayan Tourists

Runjhun Noopur
4 min readOct 18, 2017

Notes From A Nature Camp

Author’s Note : This is the fortieth installment in my 100 days, 100 blogs challenge. In case you missed it, the previous installment is a all about what happens when two casual misogynists walk into a bar.

Abbott Mount.

Nestled in the far interiors of the Himalayas, there is a sleepy, nondescript town. An enthrallingly beautiful, hauntingly mysterious, fatally dangerous, deceptively simple town.

Its existence is meaningless for the rest of the humanity. Except the parts of the said humanity that choose to be adventurous tourists — a terribly small and ill-informed segment.

Humanity has always had a ridiculous estimation of the things that matter, always ignoring the real deal for pretensions.

If you ever plan to visit Abbott Mount, like every good tourist, you will Google it. And Google will promptly inform you that Abbott Mount happens to harbor one of the most haunted places in the country — the ‘Abbey Bungalow’.

Google will tell you that Abbey Bungalow has a room of horrors called Mukti Kothri. And it will then tell you the story of Dr. Morrison.

Abbey Bungalow was the first building to be ever constructed in Abbott Mount — an act that apparently angered the Gods on the hill-top and the wrath of those Gods is often deemed to be the reason why no real development ever happened in this region.

Circa 1920, Abbey was donated by its long time owners for building a charitable hospital. The hospital was a boon for the locals with its clean environment and excellent facilities. This was until a doctor called Morrison joined hospital.

Here is where the tale gets eerie. Morrison was a self-proclaimed psychic who claimed to be able to foretell the exact day of the death of the patients just by looking at them. One day before the ‘day’ of his death, the ill-fated patient was sent to a separate hospital ward called Mukti Kothri (Freedom Ward). In this Mukti Kothri, the patient would die as predicted by Morrison and his dead body would be discovered the next day.

Many locals believe that Morrison was a fraud and a maniac. He used to conduct crazy experiments on those poor patients and kill them to prove his prophecies right. Locals also believe that the tortured souls of those patients haunt Abbey, particularly Mukti Kothri.

But this is what Google would tell you. And this is what the locals will happily corroborate. What Google doesn’t know and locals won’t tell you is that the ghosts are the least scary entities that hide in the Abbey. That the curse that was cast upon the region when Abbey was constructed is not a rumor. That the septuagenarians of Abbott Mount sometimes talk about a strange stormy night of their childhood, when the clouds roared like feral beasts and the sky seemed to bleed — lit up by sanguine lightning bolts. The strange night when a nameless stranger walked into town and proceeded to lock and magically ward Abbey — to protect Abbott Mount and the rest of the humanity from the evil that lay beneath.

The stranger vanished without a trace. But Abbott Mount was safe. As was the rest of the humanity — the curse contained within the warded walls of Abbey.

No tourist who steps in the mystical premises of Abbey Bungalow, has any clue of the magnitude of danger they are stepping into. Because you see, the walls of Abbey are fragile and more fragile than those walls are the wards that are protecting Abbott Mount and the rest of the humanity from the catastrophic curse.

But the tourists still walk in Abbott Mount unaware of the evil lurking underneath partly because nobody wants to lose business to centuries old horrors. And partly because back in the hills, they believe stories are the keys that can unlock the secrets untold. And one who holds a story in her heart must hold its horrors there too. It is the curse of a story, the destiny of the one who hears things that are not supposed to be heard.

And so, nobody knows what awaits them at Abbott Mount, and what they escape when they walk out of it.

Nobody knows the story of Abbott Mount.

Nobody except me. And you.

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Runjhun Noopur
Runjhun Noopur

Written by Runjhun Noopur

Author. Entrepreneur. Emotional Sustainability Coach. Founder, Almost Spiritual.

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