VARANASI, THE HAUNTED TEMPLE

 

Dagmar, our friends’ delightful and brilliant daughter, who had stayed at Varanasi, told me about this temple on the Ghats that is greatly haunted and feared by everyone in its vicinity. And suddenly I remembered an Indian man I met in Paris many years ago, who told me about the most harmful of sorcerers who had spent time there, tirelessly practising the Dark Arts.

I was obviously very curious to discover this place. It was impossible to enter it, as it was hermetically closed, but the raft on which we were sailing stopped for a long time in front of the temple, which was splendid by the way – what with its Romantic and harmonious architecture, all in pink sandstone.

This temple had belonged to the Maharajah of Varanasi. Upon the death of one of them, quarrels over inheritance had broken out and the palace had been abandoned completely. A magician, a sorcerer settled there. The guide explained to me that several links brought Varanasi and Bengali together, and that Bengali was the land of sorcerers and magicians.

I contemplated the temple; it was so close and so inaccessible. There were no ghosts, or there were not only ghosts, because ghosts are never negative. But this temple exuded negativity, cruelty, horror, danger…

What was it then? It was obviously black magic, because the sorcerer had practised his diabolic powers for a long time. He made a fortune by receiving customers who were hungry to inflict harm upon or kill a family member or enemy from afar. He was so good at it that he had soaked the place in dark energy. One fine day, he disappeared. Nobody knew where or how, but the negativity of the darkness had remained in the pink walls of the splendid temple until this day. I’ve been told that a hotel chain has bought the temple or is renting it. Will we make it out to the other side of the darkness that clutters the temple’s walls? It remains to be seen…


by  Prince Michael of Greece