There are many ghost towns and villages around the world but not all of them have a mystery surrounding them.
Kuldhara Village is one such village in Rajasthan, India. The village is abandoned and no one has dared to settle there. Why?
Because it is thought to be haunted and cursed.
Long ago, the village was inhabited by the Paliwal Brahmins, a clan that was known to possess the ability to be able to grow bumper crops in the arid desert climate.
It was in August 1825 that the villagers abandoned their homes in the middle of the night and were never heard from again.
For years nobody could understand why a thriving village was abandoned all of a sudden and then why no one was able to resettle there again.
The historians finally traced the incident to a minister of Jaisalmer at that time, Salim Singh.
Salim Singh was a vicious man, cruel and unscrupulous. He was notorious for using devious methods to collect taxes.
It so happened that one day he set his sights upon a beautiful girl in the village. Upon investigation, he found she was the daughter of the chief of Kuldhara Village. Salim Singh decided he wanted her at all costs but was told that the girl was. Paliwal Brahmin could only marry someone in the clan.
Salim Singh would not take no for an answer. He announced that if he was not married to the girl in two days, he would levy heavy taxes on the village.
The villagers were faced with a perplexing problem. They couldn't afford another tax that would leave them with no money to sustain life. On the other hand, letting a girl marry someone, not from their clan was a personal insult to their beliefs.
A decision was made on the fateful night of Raksha Bandhan, a festival where a brother makes a promise to his sister to protect her, come what may.
The very next day, the village was found to be empty. No one knew where the villagers had gone and why nobody noticed a large group of people leaving together in the middle of the night.
Till today, no one can find any concrete proof of what happened to the villagers. All that is left is speculation and theories.
One theory is that the villagers refused the alliance and were killed for their disobedience. Or were perhaps arrested and kept in cells by the sadistic minister, Salim Singh.
That would explain the rumours about the disembodied whispers, the screams of women and the sounds of things falling, that people believe to have heard.
Paranormal experts have scoured the area and some do suspect a haunting based on the temperature drops and the feel of hands-on their backs.
In fact, when a paranormal expert was interviewed of his visit to the Kuldhara Village, he did agree there was some unusual activity in that place that required further investigation. Shortly after the interview, the investigator committed suicide and the people close to him believed he had attracted a lot of negative energy whenever he travelled to haunted places.
Another theory regarding the mystery of Kuldhara Village would probably be that the villagers decided to protect the dignity of the chief's daughter at all costs and that meant taking her away to a safe place. It was Raksha Bandhan after all, and the villagers kept their promise to protect the girl.
As to how they managed the exodus, they were known for their agricultural prowess. There may be a possibility they had constructed troughs as part of their irrigation system and they probably used it to hide and travel through it to another place.
The question remains, that this story and the mystery of the village has been talked about for years, yet no one has come forward with an explanation of what truly happened that night. The people must have had descendants, right? This story must have been passed on by family members, right?
Hopefully, the mystery of the Kuldhara Village remains unsolved.
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