Roughly 600 students at a government residential school in India’s Amravati district, Maharashtra, have abruptly left their hostel after rumors spread that several female students had been “possessed by ghosts.” The report is sourced to NDTV.
According to the report, the tribal residential school is located in Doma village in Chikhaldara taluka, in the tribal-dominated Melghat region of northern Maharashtra. The school, more than 700 kilometers from Mumbai, currently has 810 boy and girl students, officials said Sunday.
The episode began on July 22, when four female students suddenly began behaving unusually, crying and laughing uncontrollably. Officials believe the behavior may have been triggered by psychological stress.
However, rumors quickly spread that the students had been “possessed by ghosts.” Within a few days, roughly 600 students left the “haunted” hostel, which is run by Maharashtra’s Tribal Development Department. A hostel source said several students had claimed to hear the jingling sound of anklets.
A senior official at the Tribal Development Department said a team of health specialists was sent to the Doma residential school. According to the official, the students’ physical symptoms had no connection to any supernatural event, and instead resembled a case of mass psychogenic illness, a stress-related condition. A psychological assessment prepared by authorities found that after a few students’ unusual behavior, various theories spread rapidly about the cause; similar psychological symptoms later appeared among several women in the village as well.
According to the report, students and local residents believe a “mahua” tree once stood on the site of the residential school and that spirits lived there; after the school authorities cut the tree down, a belief spread that the angered spirits were “tormenting” the students. Another common theory holds that a local deity’s shrine sits behind the school, and that the deity was angered after the school’s drainage system encroached on the shrine’s grounds.
A third theory has also spread locally. According to the report, a young tribal man once died in a field near the school, and a belief developed that his spirit, as a “ghost,” was disturbing the students. The authorities’ report said superstition, fear, psychological stress, and local beliefs about spirits combined to make the situation abnormal.
Senior officials from the Maharashtra Blind Faith Eradication Committee, an organization that works to combat superstition, also met and counseled the students. They urged that the episode be viewed scientifically rather than through the lens of superstition.
Amravati’s member of parliament, Balwant Wankhede, has also urged students not to be afraid and to return to their classes. The school’s headmaster, Sanjay Chowdhury, said counseling efforts to bring the students back were under way, adding that some had already returned.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report