Creeping Shadows: Aruna Chakravarti's Haunting Tales Of Psychological Dread

We tend to be very specific when it comes to ghost stories—usually imagining apparitions in the night, eerie deserted mansions, or forest lodges stretching back in time. Aruna Chakravarti’s clutch of thirteen stories does not quite fit that mould. They are not necessarily ghost stories in the conventional sense, some in fact verge on horror, like The Vendetta and The Necklace.

At its core, the book explores the anxieties that lurk beneath ordinary lives. Chakravarti is less interested in external monsters than in fragile states of mind shaped by memory, guilt, repression and social pressure. Her characters belong to the zamindari, rural and urban middle classes and are frequently caught between tradition and change. The “creeping” quality of the shadows is as much emotional as it is metaphorical: unresolved pasts, strained relationships and moral ambiguities follow the characters into the present, refusing to stay buried.

Although the stories are set in Bengal, the characters do not necessarily belong to the region – Truth is Stranger Than Fiction is one such example of fitting in yet not fitting in. Alongside village doctors, Chakravarti introduces glamorous Anglo-Indians and Chinese families who have settled in Calcutta, each carrying family histories that reach back to another country or state. Readers expecting petnis and shankchunnis from the rich repertoire of Bengal’s traditional ghosts rather on the lines of Goopy Gyne may be slightly disappointed, as might those looking for ghost stories with clear moral lessons as can occasionally be found in the work of MR James.

The harrowing tale of the kindly zamindari doctor, for instance, feels particularly unfair, as he appears to be a man above caste and prejudice. What the stories offer instead is a strong sense of the uncanny, created through carefully detailed atmospheres. And not all the supernatural has its basis in the human world – there is the rage of nature in The Vendetta which has a forest lodge in Bnakura as its backdrop. The Long Road to Karimgunj is clearly inspired by Bibhutibhushan’s story of a child ghost haunting a mansion, especially in the way the apparition reveals itself to chosen relatives. Possession is exactly that set against the backdrop of the Bengal renaissance and the theatre of Girish Ghosh.

One of the collection’s strengths is its restraint. The author takes her time before introducing the uncanny. She lingers over settings, seemingly irrelevant conversations, and the backstories of characters and their descendants, grounding the tales in a sense of reality before that solidity begins to dissolve. Hints of eeriness creep in gradually, growing stronger until the story reaches its climax. Chakravarti avoids melodrama, opting instead for a controlled, economical prose style that suits her themes well. Tension is built through silences, half-understood events and lingering unease rather than overt shocks. In several stories, the unease comes from the familiar turning strange—a domestic space, a childhood memory, a trusted relationship—suggesting how thin the line is between comfort and threat.

Chakravarti’s strength lies in her ability to capture historical atmosphere, a skill evident in her earlier works Jorasanko and The Mendicant Prince. Creeping Shadows is her first work of pure fiction. Two of the stories share a similar theme, both focusing on a young man driven out of his village and trying to make his way to Calcutta.

The thirteen stories do not aim to startle, but instead unsettle slowly, leaving behind a residue of unease. Readers looking for clear resolutions or firmer narrative closure may find some pieces rather inconclusive. At times, the sameness of tone, low-key, introspective and sombre, can also blur the distinctions between individual stories. Even so, Creeping Shadows succeeds as a thoughtful exploration of psychological and atmospheric dread, where the shadows that linger are as much within the mind as outside it.