Under the Banyan Tree

  One night, my Taya (uncle) and I were driving back from Bahria Town, Karachi. It was stupid o’clock, like 1:30 a.m., and just our luck, the tire blew out in the middle of the highway. We pulled over on one of those endless, dusty patches with zero lights and even less civilization. While he got out to change the tire, I sat there—nervously glancing at the side mirror, the rearview mirror, my Taya, my own reflection—basically on edge for no good reason (except every reason). Then my Taya looked at me, grinning, and said, “Agar koi aurat aaye na, paer dekh lena. Ulte huay toh churail hogi.” (“If a woman shows up, look at her feet. If they’re backwards, it’s a churail.”) I didn’t even laugh. I just locked the car door and stared harder into the darkness like I was preparing for a Pokémon battle with the undead. It’s funny… but also, it’s not . Because that one image— a woman in white with backward feet lurking near a forest or a road —is so deeply rooted in South Asian horror ...

  There’s a reason my Nani used to cover mirrors after Maghrib. As a child, I never questioned it. Every evening, just as the sun dipped and the sky turned that strange, unsettling blue, she’d toss a dupatta over the big vanity mirror in her room. “ Is waqt na dekha karo—cheezain nikalti hain ,” she’d warn. (“Don’t look at mirrors at this time—things come out.”) Things come out. Not things you can see, necessarily. But things that see you back . Now, older—and more obsessed with the paranormal than ever—I think about those warnings constantly. Because it turns out we’re not the only culture that believes mirrors are more than glass and silver. Across the world, from Pakistan to suburban America, there’s a deep-rooted fear that mirrors are portals —not just to parallel worlds, but to something darker. Something watching. Something waiting. In South Asian households, the fear is spiritual. Post-Maghrib, the veil between worlds is said to thin. That’s when jinns roam more freely, s...

  There’s something strangely comforting—and terrifying—about driving alone through the city at night. The quiet road hums beneath your wheels, headlights carve paths through the dark, and your mind drifts into that liminal space between wakefulness and dream. That’s when the stories come alive—the ones whispered late at night over hot tea, or shared in hushed tones on Reddit. And as someone who believes in the paranormal, having witnessed inexplicable things myself, these tales resonate with an unshakable sense of reality—enough to make your heart pound when the impact of a ghostly passenger becomes all too real. Let’s begin with Karachi’s most famous spooky encounter: the Bride of Karsaz . They say she’s a newlywed whose life ended in tragedy on Dalmia Road, near Karsaz Chowrangi. One viral version holds that a tragic accident in the 1960s killed her and severely injured her husband. While he breathed his last on the spot, the bride, still clothed in her red wedding dress, stag...