On my way to the last house of the village - Haunted House in a small village of Garhwal hills
On the way to the Haunted House
I had to visit this small village near 'New Tehri' for pilot testing before the start of primary research in the Garhwal region of Uttarakhand.
This village had only 13-15 households as per our secondary research information and was only accessible by walking down 15-30 minutes from the main highway connecting New Tehri to Tehri dam.
On 4th June; 'Sarpanch' or the head of the village whom we met in New Tehri was insisting there were only 10-12 households in the village and was not ready to accept there might be more than 60 residents in the village; whereas per our report, it was mentioned 80 was the present population of village.
He did mention to us that do feel free to roam around and visit every house in the village but he also made us beware & warned us not to visit this last house of the village since it's a haunted place and no one has come back alive after going to this house.
I took it up as a challenge and made sure I had to visit this last house (in the picture; which was at least a kilometre away from the rest of the group of houses and down below into a gorge) of the village, the name I am not disclosing it for obvious reasons.
My colleagues tell me when they took this photograph they were able to hear lots of barks of dogs and they run back when I got closer to the house and the sounds of the barks increased.
The same evening when we all were back to our hotel rooms; they all coaxing me to tell them what happened when I reached the house. I just to told them, "Nothing in life is to be feared, it's only to be understood. It's up to us, so we decided that we want it more than we are afraid of."
