‘The dagger in its wicked curves seemed now a creature of some outlandish fantasy—a snake with a beaked head, a thing of nightmare, in some new way dominant, overruling the centre of his perceptions. The rest of the room grew dim, but the red stone glowed with a fuller light…’
Most of us have heard stories about haunted houses. Some brave souls might also have visited one. Gloomy interiors, rickety staircases, dusty mirrors and moth-eaten furniture with cobwebs all around—apart from these, there’s hardly anything ‘haunted’ about these houses. Many people pooh-pooh the existence of actual ghosts, not realizing that the supernatural is way beyond our grasp. This is what happens with Attwater, who, disbelieving of spirits, rents a haunted room and finds out to his horror what games dark forces play! Hair-raising stories from famous masters of horror-writing are brought together in this anthology by your favourite author and ghost-hunter, Ruskin Bond. So what are you waiting for? Don’t you want to know what’s lurking around the corner?
Ruskin Bond is an Indian author of British descent. He is considered to be an icon among Indian writers and children's authors and a top novelist. He wrote his first novel, The Room on the Roof, when he was seventeen which won John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize in 1957. Since then he has written several novellas, over 500 short stories, as well as various essays and poems, all of which have established him as one of the best-loved and most admired chroniclers of contemporary India. In 1992 he received the Sahitya Akademi award for English writing, for his short stories collection, "Our Trees Still Grow in Dehra", by the Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters in India. He was awarded the Padma Shri in 1999 for contributions to children's literature. He now lives with his adopted family in Landour near Mussoorie.