On ghost stories

My grandma used to tell us ghost stories. Scary ones made even more so by her complete belief in them. They came in many forms. There were those for which we would sit down to just tell stories. Many others, however, came as foreboding warnings and cautionary tales. The story of the Kichkandi is the latter.

It was a Friday afternoon after school had finished. A friend of mine came over to play Street Fighter 2. We weren't good at it but we had lots of fun. All of us mashing buttons with no clear strategy. Our controllers suffered.

It was then my friend told me about the Kichkandi. We treated most ghost stories as jokes, this was no different. He told me about a classmate who -swore- he saw one while driving past Lajimpat with his father. He described the second-hand scenario best as he could. My brother and I were familiar with the area. We would regularly walk up to Lajimpat to catch buses, taxis, and tempos. Our house was not the most accessible.

My grandma, aamboi , happened to be within an earshot of his storytelling. We did not know she was listening to us. She said little while my friend was still there. But when he left, she sat us down and said that the Kichkandi was nothing to joke about.

Kichkandi appeared regularly by the riverbanks of where she grew up. These ghosts were especially dangerous to men. They appeared as beautiful women, often wearing alluring clothes. Their siren voices captured men and lulled them into stupor. Some would look entirely human and live with the man - slowly sapping his life force. The apparition would look ever more beautiful while the man's life crumbles. His cheeks would shrink in, revealing the form of the skull underneath. His eyes would become milky white, losing the appearance of vitality.

One day in the future, when she was done with him, they would take a trip. The trip would end up in a morgue, graveyard, or crematory grounds. Few made it out alive, and those that did were mere husks destined for a destitute life.

Others, would not even wait that long. Their hunger would drive them to suck all the life out of the man. Only to then, leave their bodies lifeless and dry. Sometimes these bodies would be found in crematory grounds, but not usually. And these were the ones that she told us stories of.

She spoke about an incident from the village. Going to the riverbanks to bring water home was a regular chore.We didn't have running water in the house. Lugging gagri (copper water vessels) to the river and back was the only way to have fresh water. She'd been at the riverbank a bit late one evening, the sun had already begun to set. She was there alone. That's when she heard it- a man's scream in the distance- my grandma actually made a haunting scream as she retold this story. I can't ever forget that sound. Across the riverbed she saw a lone figure, a woman with long black hair, in a red and white dress, looking at her. There was no other figure. Certainly not a man. The woman turned around and walked away and that's when my grandma noticed it, her legs were all wrong. They pointed the wrong direction. And in that moment, she knew what she'd witnessed. So, she left the gagri and all and ran back home. Only to come back the following day with someone else to reclaim it.

As an adult, logic and rationale tells me that the kichkandi must've been a trick of the senses, or her imagination gone wild. Yet, I cannot hide the goosebumps on my arm as I recall her sincerity as she told us of it.