The Literary World of Ghosts: Faces, Forms, and Manifestations
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Originally written and meant to amuse children, ghost stories continue to be popular even among the adult audiences. The depiction of ghosts in literature has always been a means of exploring the blurring boundary between the human and the non-human. The imagined world of ghosts in Odia literature translated into English explores unique human experiences, especially in stories of well-known Odia story writers like Manoj Das and Ganeswar Mishra. Recent Odia podcasts on horror tales further explore the world of ghosts in an innovative way that sometimes captures the cultural memory of ancient Odisha and the essence of the ancestral ghost characters in Odia legends and folklore. The recent Odia movie Bou, Buttu, Bhuta (2025) depicts a supernatural experience in modern-day rural Odisha. The box-office performance of the film continues to establish our faith in spooky stories. This research analyses the depiction of ghosts in select Odia translated ghost stories into English, Indian English ghost stories, Odia legends, Odia folktales and recent Odia podcasts through a comparative approach to their portrayal, as well as a comparison between different kinds/categories of ghosts depicted and the commonalities and differences between them. This research also examines the contribution of such literature to the alternative world these ghost stories have created in diverse narrative spaces.
Source: The Creative Launcher
Author: Manisha Mishra
Institution: Rama Devi Women's University
Language: English
Subfield: Literature and Literary Theory
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W7203698620