Horror movies of Bollywood / Image- IMDb

Every year, at least a dozen scary movies come to the screen, some of which turn out to be surprise hits. A just-released book on Bollywood’s paranormal encounters takes viewers behind the scenes to recount stories that few had heard before

Vikrant Massey and Sara Ali Khan’s Gaslight found its space on OTT, Jungiemahal: The Awakening was feted on the festival circuit while 1920: Horrors of the Heart was the surprise hit of 2023. The latter, penned by Mahesh Bhatt, produced by Vikram Bhatt and directed by his daughter Krishna Bhatt, is the fourth film in the 1920 franchise, after 1920 (2008), 1920: The Evil Returns (2012) and 1920 London (2016). While it’s been a successful series for its makers, what makes 1920 doubly interesting is that the terror spilled out into real life.

The original film was shot in UK, at Allerton Castle in North Yorkshire, which is believed to be haunted. While many would laugh off the rumour, leading man Rajniesh Duggall, who plays an architect, Arjun Singh Rathod, whose British-Indian wife shares her soul with a dead woman, admits that some of the rooms in the 19th century castle spooked his co-stars, Adah Sharma and Anjorie Alagh, and him when they were shooting 1920 there. The actor informs that they had been specifically instructed not to go to a particular washroom alone and when their executive producer deliberately disregarded the warning,he returned disheveled, shivering and stuttering. 

Vikram Bhatt himself had an eerie adventure when he was on his way to the men’s room. He was followed all the way by someone he presumed to be his attendant, only to turn around and find there was no one there even though he had distinctly heard footsteps ringing on the marble and granite floor after him. This incident happened not at AllertonCastle, but at Wentworth Woodhouse, which also has the reputation of being among the most haunted mansions in UK,while they were filming 1921, the sequel of 1920.

Dinesh Vijan who produced Stree, Roohi and Bhediya is also expanding his horror universe with Part 2 of his superhithorror-comedy Stree, which is scheduled to open in the theatres on August 31. Rajkummar Rao, who returns to reprise his role of the ladies’ tailor Vikrant Parashar aka Vicky, admits that to this day a chill runs down his spine when he recalls a night shoot of the 2018 original at an old fort in Bhopal, which has the reputation of being haunted. Though the actor himself was not present when the incident happened and only heard about it from colleagues later, he is still wondering who pushed the light man perched high on a wall that night when they were filming Stree.

A senior actor Biswajit recounts a frightening tale while filming the 1963 suspense thriller Bin Badal Barsaat, in which the father of a reincarnated gypsy girl uses his powers of blackmagic to bring his character, Prabhat, to her in her sleep. One night, Biswajit, who had been diligently rehearsing the sleep-walking sequences, climbed out of bed and walked out of his house, dazed and disoriented, still in his pyjamas. He claimed that he was about to step out into the street when the security guard spotted him and came running. Guard, Ram Singh’s concerned questions broke the spell and he came awake with a jolt. Fortunately for everyone, nothing untoward happened that night, but Biswajit, who came to be known as the ‘suspense hero from Bengal’ after films like Bees Saal Baad and Kohraa, still wonders what brought the episode on since he had never sleep walked before or since. 

The book has many such stories, some eerie, some enigmatic and some emotional, like Juhi Chawla flashbacking to a surreal, out-of-the-body experience in a hospital when she was looking down at the lifeless body of the one person she had loved the most in the world.

True-life accounts from Esha Deol, Neil Nitin Mukesh, Divya Dutta, Tannishtha Chatterjee, Ranjeeta Kaur, Sonal Sehgal,Joy Bimal Roy, Ananth Narayan Mahadevan, Arunaraje Patil, Vishal Furia, Abhishek Kapoor, Shantanu Moitra and JeetGanguli among many others talk about black magic and exorcism, auto-writing and messages from the dead,chakwas, yakshis and an omnipresence that go beyond the bhootiya kahaanis we have seen on screen.