12 Haunted Places in Kashmir: Ghost Stories, Folklore and the Real History

Pari Mahal is the place most Kashmiris name first, and it is the easiest to visit. The terraced garden sits on the Zabarwan slope above Chashme Shahi, looking down over the south-west side of Dal Lake. Dara Shikoh, the eldest son of Shah Jahan, built it in the mid-1600s for his Sufi teacher Mullah Shah Badakhshi, and the top terrace was used to teach astronomy and astrology (Live History India; Kashmir Life). The name itself is disputed. Some historians link it to a Begum named Pari, others say it began as Pir Mahal, the saint’s house. The legend grew out of that name. ‘Pari’ means fairy, and guides will tell you the fairies never left. The other story is about a cursed willow said to bring bad luck to anyone who walks under it. Visitors talk about whispers in the arched chambers and a feeling of being watched near the upper walls. The record is quieter but darker in its own way. Wikipedia notes the complex was later used as an interrogation centre, which is the kind of history that feeds a ghost story. Go in the last hour before closing. The light over the lake is the reason to come, ghosts or not.

Our Pari Mahal visitor guide has parking and photo tips.

Hari Parbat is the hill that dominates Srinagar’s skyline from almost anywhere in the old city, with the Durrani-era fort along its crest. The walls below were raised by Akbar’s builders in the 1590s, and the hill is sacred to three faiths at once. The Sharika Devi temple, the shrine of Makhdoom Sahib and the gurdwara Chatti Patshahi all sit on its slopes. The fort spent most of the 1990s and 2000s shut to the public under CRPF occupation, and that is exactly when the stories took hold. Locals describe figures walking the ramparts after dark and voices carried on the wind from empty bastions. A closed fort above a city under curfew was always going to collect rumours. Today the Archaeological Survey of India maintains it and Greater Kashmir lists it as open from 9:30 am to 5:30 pm, closed on Sundays, with an entry ticket. Climb up from the Kathi Darwaza side in the morning and you get the clearest view of the Jhelum’s bends through downtown.

Read more in our Hari Parbat guide.

Hari Niwas is the one place on this list that Kashmir’s own press calls haunted. Outlook’s Naseer Ganai describes it as the oldest ghost in Kashmir, dating to 1947. Maharaja Hari Singh built the Gothic-style palace on Gupkar Road in the 1920s, reportedly after his priests warned that the ground belonged to a goddess. He fled Srinagar for Jammu during the tribal invasion of October 1947 and never came back to live here.

What followed is why people call it jinxed. Outlook records that the BSF ran it as an interrogation centre from 1990, and a 1993 Human Rights Watch report described beatings and electric shocks inside. Ghulam Nabi Azad moved in as chief minister in 2007 and lost power in 2008. In August 2019 Omar Abdullah was detained here after Article 370 was revoked. Most chief ministers since have refused to live in it (Kashmir Life, ‘A Jinxed Palace?’). It is government property with no public access, so the best you can do is see the gates from Gupkar Road on the way to Chashme Shahi.

Gaw Kadal is a working bridge in Maisuma, near Lal Chowk in central Srinagar, and the story attached to it is history first. On 21 January 1990, CRPF personnel opened fire on a large crowd of protesters crossing the bridge. Outlook puts the dead at 51, Wikipedia gives a minimum of 50 including people who drowned, and official figures at the time put it between 21 and 28. Many still call it the worst single massacre in Kashmir’s recent history (The Kashmir Walla).

For years afterwards residents said they heard screams on the bridge at night, and some refused to cross it after dark. We include Gaw Kadal because readers search for it, but please treat it as a memorial. Parts of Srinagar observe a shutdown every 21 January. If you go, cross on foot in the day, look at the old wooden houses lining the river and keep your camera away from anyone’s face.

From here it is a short ride on to the old city and the Shah-e-Hamdan shrine on the Jhelum, which is covered in our places to visit in Srinagar guide.

The Bota Kadal story is a Srinagar neighbourhood legend with no published record behind it, and we want to be upfront about that. The tale goes that a family lived in a large house near Bota Kadal, off Lal Bazar and met a tragic end, after which the house stood empty. Neighbours describe flickering lights in empty rooms, footsteps on the upper floor and a figure at the window. Srinagar’s older neighbourhoods are full of houses like this. Thousands of Kashmiri Pandit families left the city in 1990 and many homes were locked and never reopened, so an empty house with a sad story is a common sight here. Arshid Malik’s essay ‘The Haunted House’ in Kashmir Life (2013) captures that feeling better than any ghost tale. There is no address to visit and the buildings are private, so enjoy the walk along the river lanes and leave the empty houses alone.

The house of Abdullah Jinn is the strangest story on the list and the hardest to trace. The legend says a jinn called Abdullah lives in a house in Srinagar. Anyone who walks in finds their shoes thrown back out of the door a little later, and people who stay too long fall ill. Some versions add screams from empty rooms.

Jinn stories are part of everyday Kashmiri life, and families often call a local peer or faqir to deal with a troublesome one rather than a priest or a doctor. No source we found gives a street or a family name for this house, so treat it as folklore rather than a destination. If the theme interests you, our section on Kashmir’s folklore spirits further down explains where the jinn sits beside the rantas, yach and daen.

Dal Lake has two ghost stories, and both come from boatmen rather than books. The first is a pale figure that appears to float on the water at night between the houseboats and the open lake, then vanishes when a shikara rows towards it. The second belongs to the hill above the lake, where people living below the Shankaracharya temple talk about a woman’s crying carried down the slope after dark. Neither story has a documented origin, and we found no Kashmiri press report behind either one. What is certain is that the lake gets very quiet once the shikaras dock. Mist sits on the water on autumn and winter nights and the lights of the houseboats reflect in long lines, which is a good setting for a story.

Hear it the right way, from a shikara wala on an evening ride before dark, then climb to the Shankaracharya Temple the next morning for the view over all of it.

St Mary’s is a small grey-brick Victorian church with a green roof, built in 1902 for the British families who spent their summers in Gulmarg. It stands near the golf course, about 50 km from Srinagar. It fell silent for years and reopened in 2003, holding its first Christmas service in 14 years, and it belongs to the Church of North India’s Diocese of Amritsar (Wikipedia). Guides and pony-wallahs tell of the spirits of British soldiers, of hymns heard when the church is locked and shapes in old photographs. You will read online that these were soldiers killed in the Indo-Pak wars. That cannot be right. British units took no part in the fighting in Kashmir, and the last British troops left India in February 1948. The older version, about men from the colonial garrison, at least fits the dates.

See it on a clear morning before the gondola crowds, and pair it with our St Mary’s Church visitor page and the full Gulmarg travel guide.

Parihaspora is a field of huge broken stone blocks on a plateau about 22 km north-west of Srinagar, near Pattan in Baramulla district. In the 8th century it was the capital of Lalitaditya Muktapida, one of Kashmir’s most powerful kings, whose reign modern historians date to around 724 to 760 CE. It served as his capital only briefly, and by the 12th century, when Kalhana wrote the Rajatarangini, it was already deserted and in ruins.

There is no single ghost here, which is the point. Villagers on the plateau have long avoided the ruins at night, and the empty grid of plinths at dusk explains why. It is the safest and most rewarding entry on this list for history lovers, with few visitors and open access. Outlook Traveller reports the site is being developed under the Swadesh Darshan 2.0 scheme, so expect new paths and signboards. Combine it with a drive to Gulmarg, since Pattan is an easy detour on the way out of Srinagar.

Gurez is a remote border valley on the Kishanganga river, about 123 km from Srinagar by the official district figure, reached over the Razdan pass. Its folklore includes a tree in the forest that villagers will not touch on the night of the new moon. Anyone who does, the story goes, falls ill or is possessed by the spirits living in it. Nobody points to one specific tree, and every village seems to have its own candidate. The valley’s better-known legend is about the poet-queen Habba Khatoon, who is said to have wandered here searching for her exiled husband. The pyramid-shaped peak above Dawar carries her name. Gurez is worth the trip for its wooden Dard villages alone, though the road over Razdan usually opens only from late May or June to October. Indian nationals carry government ID for checks.

Plan it with our Gurez Valley guide and the wider list of offbeat places in Kashmir.

Khooni Nala, the ‘bloody stream’, is a gully on NH-44 in Ramban district, on the stretch between Ramban town and Banihal. It earned its name from accidents. Loose hillsides above the road send down boulders and ‘shooting stones’ after rain. In March 2020 a falling boulder at Khooni Nallah killed a sleeping truck driver and injured three people in a car at the same spot (Hindustan Times). In August 2025 the whole highway shut after shooting stones and slides in Ramban (The Tribune). In 2026 the Digdol to Panthyal twin-tube tunnels opened to bypass this slide zone, so most vehicles now pass Khooni Nala underground (Kashmir Observer). Drivers have their own explanation. The best-known story is a woman in a black saree carrying a baby who waves for a lift. Refuse her, the tale says, and you crash further down the road. Another version blames the spirit of a pregnant woman who died here. Truckers on the route will tell you both. The practical advice is far more useful. If you are routed over the old road, cross it in daylight, never stop under the slope, and check the J&K Traffic Police advisory before you set off.

Our list of the scariest roads in India covers the rest of this highway.

The Udhampur story is pure rumour, and older articles even placed it in Srinagar, which it is not. Udhampur is a garrison town in the Jammu region, about 65 km north of Jammu city and home to the Indian Army’s Northern Command. The tale is that an old block of army quarters is haunted, with lights and noises reported between 1 am and 3 am. We found no named source, no date and no address for this one. It is military property, so there is no access, and you should not try to photograph army installations anywhere in the region. Include Udhampur on a road trip for the right reasons.

The town sits on the way to Patnitop, and the Krimchi temples, a group of old stone shrines about 12 km away, make a much better stop.