Indian Ghost Stories

Mukerji, S.Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.2

Word count: 224K words
Chapters: 23

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Indian Ghost Stories by S. MukerjiAuthor: Mukerji, S.,Language: English, Class: BF: Philosophy, Psychology, Religion: Psychology, Philosophy, Psychoanalysis, Release Date: Nov 20, 2005

Editor's review

This collection of short stories presents tales of the supernatural set in India. The author, S. Mookerjee, wrote in English, and Project Gutenberg has released the book as a public-domain e-book. Its appeal lies in the atmosphere of colonial-era Indian folk ghost stories: old houses, lonely roads, rumours, and endings shaped by karmic retribution. The pieces are short and suited to reading in spare moments. The stories rely more on the feel of oral storytelling than on complex deduction, reading more like listening to ghost tales told around a circle. For readers studying colonial-era popular English literature, folk legends, or South Asian cultural imagination, it is a usable primary source; for general readers it can serve as light genre reading, with no need to demand strict logic. Some of the narration carries the limitations of its time, so it is best read with a historian's eye, distinguishing literary interest from folkloric record.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Genre readers who enjoy short supernatural stories and folk legends
Students studying colonial-era popular English literature and writing about South Asia
Learners who want to practise English reading with short, story-driven texts
General readers interested in Indian folklore and ghost lore

Not a good fit for

Readers sensitive to horror who are easily frightened
Readers expecting tight deduction or the structure of modern horror fiction
Serious researchers who need authoritative folkloric annotation and a scholarly introduction

Reading tips

Read one or two stories at a time, then pause to savour the teller's tone and the way each story closes
Note the places, forms of address and notions of cause and effect, and compare them with common knowledge of Indian folklore
If using the book for English study, read first for plot, then choose a passage for reading aloud and retelling
Read with the awareness that this is a text of its time, and watch for colonial perspectives and stereotypes in the narration

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Are these stories very frightening?

On the whole they lean toward the eerie atmosphere of oral legend, creating unease through suggestion, rumour and karmic retribution rather than the dense scare writing of modern horror fiction. Readers sensitive to horror should still sample one or two stories before deciding whether to continue.

Is it suitable for learning English?

It works as story-driven extensive reading. The sentences are not very complex and the pieces are short, so it is easy to finish one and feel a sense of achievement. Read first for plot, then choose passages for close reading and retelling; there is no need to look up every culture-specific proper noun.

Do the stories have folkloric research value?

They can serve as samples of colonial-era popular English literature and of writing about folk legends, helping readers understand how readers of the time imagined Indian ghost stories. But this is not rigorous folklore scholarship; it lacks notes and fieldwork description, so researchers should use it alongside other sources.

Comments

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About the author

Mukerji, S. Author

S. Mukerji is an author about whom little public information is currently available; the collection here includes only one work by this name, Indian Ghost Stories. Judging from the title and genre, the book is a collection of Indian ghost tales, built around supernatural legends and eerie narratives circulating in South Asia and carrying a distinctly Indian folk flavor. Because the author's biography, nationality, and dates of birth and death are absent from the available materials, nothing further can be said about education, career, or literary development. On the evidence of this single work, Mukerji's writing tends toward the collecting and retelling of stories, in plain language, with an emphasis on suspense and local atmosphere. The book suits readers interested in Indian folklore and supernatural literature, and offers a reference point for understanding Indian English ghost-story writing in the early twentieth century.