It all started in Kanakpur, a village that had once been full of laughter and weddings — until the night my friend Sunil died. That night changed everything. I still remember it clearly, as if it happened yesterday.
Two years ago, Sunil had called me, terrified. His voice was shaking, almost whispering.
“Raghav… she’s back,” he said. “She’s standing outside my window, wearing that red bridal dress… covered in blood.”
I thought he was joking, maybe drunk. But when his scream tore through the phone, Jiten and I ran straight to his house. What we saw still haunts me.
Sunil was hanging upside down from the ceiling fan, his neck strangled by a red bridal dupatta. On the wall, written in blood, were the words: “I will return.”
The police couldn’t find any evidence of suicide. But the villagers knew the truth. They said the ghost of Rekha, the bride who never got married, had returned. And every time someone in Kanakpur planned a wedding, she came back to claim a groom.
Rekha was once the most beautiful girl in our village — kind, soft-spoken, full of dreams. She was engaged to Abhishek, a wealthy man from a nearby town. But a week before the wedding, his family demanded more dowry. Rekha’s father couldn’t afford it, and the wedding was called off.
Everyone in the village started mocking her. Some men made disgusting remarks, some women called her “unlucky.” Even her family abandoned her. She would walk around, still wearing her bridal bangles, her eyes hollow with pain.
One night, dressed in her red bridal outfit, Rekha drank poison. Before dying, she whispered a curse — that if she couldn’t become a bride, no other man in Kanakpur ever would.
After her death, her entire family died mysteriously — her parents, her brother, even Abhishek and his new wife. The villagers stopped celebrating weddings altogether. For two years, the village stayed silent.
Then came Arjun’s wedding.
Arjun was a close friend of mine — an engineer, practical, and completely dismissive of ghost stories. He was engaged to Riya, the daughter of Chaudhary Harnath, one of the most respected men in Kanakpur. When we warned them about the curse, they just laughed.
But I still remember that eerie evening before the wedding. Arjun’s bike wouldn’t start, so he decided to walk to Riya’s house to deliver her red bridal dress. The sun had just set, and the road to her home was silent, surrounded by empty fields.
Later, Arjun told me what happened — though only once.
He said he felt someone walking behind him. Then he heard a woman whisper his name. When he turned around, he saw a floating red veil, slowly gliding toward him. Beneath it was a woman — her face hidden, her feet not touching the ground.
When she lifted her veil, Arjun saw a burnt face, blood dripping from her eyes.
“You won’t reach your wedding,” she whispered.
He ran for his life, but something wrapped tightly around his neck — a red dupatta. Somehow, he escaped. When he looked in the mirror later, there were deep red marks on his throat.
The next night was the wedding.
The whole village was tense, pretending to celebrate but waiting for something terrible to happen. The lights flickered, the wind grew cold. Just as the priest began the rituals, the entire mandap went dark.
Screams erupted. And then — she appeared.
Rekha. Dressed as a bride, her eyes glowing red, her voice echoing through the dark:
“Didn’t I warn you, Arjun?”
Before anyone could react, she threw her dupatta around Arjun’s neck. He gasped, his eyes wide — and then, in front of everyone, he vanished.
The next morning, we found Arjun’s body near the same road where he had seen her. His face was pale, his eyes open in terror. The curse had claimed another groom.
Jiten, Pandit Kailash, and I couldn’t bear it anymore. We went to meet Tantrik Shiv, a spiritual man living deep inside the forest. After listening to everything, he said, “Rekha’s soul is incomplete. She died as a bride, but never became one. Her spirit will only rest when her wedding is completed — with a groom from this world or the next.”
It sounded insane… but we had no choice.
That night, under Shiv’s guidance, we performed a ritual — a wedding between Rekha’s spirit and Arjun’s departed soul. As the mantras echoed through the dark, a cold wind swept the temple. For a brief moment, we saw her — Rekha, smiling softly, her face calm, her eyes finally at peace.
And just like that, the curse lifted.
The next morning, the village felt different — lighter, quieter. The air no longer carried whispers. For the first time in years, the bells of a new wedding rang again in Kanakpur.
But sometimes, when I pass by that old temple at night… I still hear faint anklets tinkling, and a woman’s soft laugh fading into the wind —
as if Rekha is still watching, waiting, somewhere between this world and the next.
