Streszczenie książki Indyjskie opowieści o duchach

The 8 key ideas

1. Key idea 1 · free to read

   The author says these tales are true

   S. Mukerji opens with a doubt. He does not know whether writing ghost stories is a mistake. The usual English ghost story, he says, ends with the ghost unmasked as a cat, a dog or a mischievous boy. Readers like that, because they enjoy a little fear and still want to be told that ghosts do not exist.

   The last such tale he read ended with a young woman's ghost becoming a monkey. He calls that bathos taken too far. To show that real events can take the breath away, he prints a newspaper item about events in Texas. A jilted bride kills herself, and her brother fires at the faithless lover. The bullet lodges in a tree, and the brother then shoots himself. Twenty years later the lover and his son cut down that tree, then use dynamite to break it apart. The old bullet flies out and kills him.

   Then he turns to India, where ghosts are treated with respect and fear. He heard his tales from judges, magistrates and officials, and he offers them as true to the best of his knowledge. He admits some may sound like cock and bull stories. He asks readers to remember that there are more things in heaven and earth than we dream of.

   The book asks for a fair hearing, not blind belief.

2. 2

   A camera records a woman nobody saw

   The first chapter, His Dead Wife's Photograph, sets the tone.

   Zacznij za darmo, by czytać
3. 3

   Haunted houses can be tested in court and at midnight

   The Major's Lease turns a ghost story into a lawsuit.

   Zacznij za darmo, by czytać
4. 4

   Death can leave a mark on a home

   Several chapters ask what the dead want.

   Zacznij za darmo, by czytać
5. 5

   Imagination plays tricks, but not every trick

   The Boy Who Was Caught shows the author at his most playful.

   Zacznij za darmo, by czytać
6. 6

   A curse can starve a rich man and darken a city

   The Starving Millionaire is the book's longest tale of black magic.

   Zacznij za darmo, by czytać
7. 7

   Haunted houses go on, with brickbats and a hammer

   The Wedding Party gathers young men who insist on sleeping in a famous haunted house in Benares.

   Zacznij za darmo, by czytać
8. 8

   Warnings and visits come at the edge of death

   The later chapters gather accounts of the dying who appear to the living.

   Zacznij za darmo, by czytać