The White-Robed Man on the Demra Road
I've never believed in ghosts. Not really. In our religion, we believe the soul doesn't just wander around after death — it's reborn, again and again. That's what I grew up believing. Except, maybe, for the ones who die badly. Suicide. Murder. Those souls, some people say, don't get to move on so easy. They stick around as something else. I used to hear that and shrug it off.
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| The old man with the lantern |
It was a Monday. December 2nd. Early morning, and my phone rang. Nobody calls me that early — not my friends, not even my own family, really. So when I saw it was my younger brother, I already felt off before he even said a word.
He told me a relative of ours — I won't name him — had been killed. Murdered, by people we didn't know. Just like that, over the phone, before I'd even had my tea.
I don't remember exactly what I said back. I think I told him to hang up, that I'd call him in a minute. I remember going to the bathroom first — I don't know why, maybe just to have thirty seconds where nothing was real yet — and then calling him back.
He filled in the rest. Our relative had been missing all night. People had been searching. Eventually he was found in Amulia Model Town — some locals said there'd been a body there — and by the time anyone got to him, the body had already been moved to Sabujbagh police station. That's where they finally identified him.
My chest just went tight hearing it. I had to go to work at 8, so I rushed through getting ready, but I wasn't really there. By 10:30 or so, word came that the body was still sitting at the station. Nothing moving yet. It's a murder case, so I guess that's how it goes. Everyone who heard — my brothers, cousins, whoever — we were all just sitting with this heaviness all day.
Sometime after two, my brother called and said they were taking the body to Dhaka Medical for the post-mortem. I left work and got there myself around half past three, maybe four. Found my brother and the rest of them waiting.
We waited outside for fifteen, twenty minutes. Then a staff member came out and asked, loud enough for the area to hear, who was there for the Sabujbagh body. My brother and another relative went in.
And that's when it happened — the first thing.
A man walked up to me. All white. His clothes, completely white, head to toe. He asked me the exact same question the staff worker had just asked — who's here for the Sabujbagh body. I told him my people had already gone in.
Then he asked me straight out — are you the relative of the Sabujbagh body? I said yes. I told him again, my people are already inside.
The second I said that, he turned and walked in after them. Fast. Like he had somewhere urgent to be.
At the time I didn't think much of it. I figured he worked there, or he was someone's relative, or whatever — the kind of person you don't really look at twice in a hospital corridor full of strangers. Five, seven minutes later my brother came out and said they were done. A couple minutes after that, they brought the body out and loaded it into the ambulance we'd brought.
I sat up front. My brother and the other relative sat in back, with him.
We drove past the Burn Unit at Dhaka Medical, and right around there I noticed a smell coming from the back of the ambulance — something like raw meat, or raw fish. I didn't think much of it. It's an ambulance, I told myself. It carries bodies every single day. This kind of thing happens.
We got up onto the flyover. About halfway across it, the smell changed. Completely.
Now it was incense. Agarbatti. Except — and I noticed this clearly — it wasn't the kind of incense you smell around here. Not a Bangladeshi scent at all. It smelled almost Arab, if that makes sense, like something from a completely different part of the world. I looked out both sides of the flyover, thinking maybe it was drifting up from Old Dhaka, from around the old mayor's building down there — that's an incense kind of area, I thought. I told myself it made sense. I let it go.
We came down off the flyover onto the Demra road. And the smell changed again.
Both of those smells — the meat, the incense — gone. In their place was something rotten. Just decay. I remember thinking, well, it's been sitting since yesterday, of course it's started to turn by now, that's all this is. I still wasn't scared. Not yet.
We reached his family's home in the village. What you'd expect happened — neighbors coming by, crying, that whole heaviness of a house that's just lost someone violently. By the time we'd finished all that, it was evening.
There was a disagreement about what to do with the body. His mother — I think it was her — said something like she wouldn't let her son be burned, that she wanted to bury him. But in our religion, burial's really only for religious ascetics, holy men. Everyone else gets cremated. So in the end, that's what the family decided.
We passed the Demra staff quarters, somewhere around Trimoni I think — I'm not totally sure of the route anymore, honestly — and then past the new Demra police lines, toward the house. We took him to the cremation ground by the Balu river, right next to where the police station now sits. On the other side of the river was Koyetpara. And I have to say — that place felt wrong the second I walked into it. I can't really explain it better than that. Anyone new walking in there would feel like something wasn't right about the atmosphere. Like it was built for exactly this kind of dread.
They needed paperwork done, because it was a police case, and the family handed that over. While that got sorted, the rest of the preparations were already underway — mango wood, stacked and ready for the fire. But before they actually lit anything, it was already getting late, and I told my brother and the others I had to head back. I told them to take care, stay in touch, and they said go on, they'd manage.
So I left. Alone.
The road out was a bypass road, connecting toward Bonosree and the Demra staff quarters area. Quiet road. It was around 6:30, maybe 7 in the evening. Not late, but that kind of empty-quiet where you notice you're the only one walking.
I kept walking. Up ahead I saw an auto-rickshaw, and a guy sitting in it — hoodie on, even though it wasn't cold enough for that. And something about him — I don't know, the build, the age — reminded me of my relative. The one we'd just cremated.
I called out to him. Asked if he'd take me toward the main road. Called a few times. He didn't answer.
I got annoyed. I swore at him — something like, deaf bastard, forget it, I'll walk — and kept going on foot.
I walked for a while. No people around still, just some distant lights that might've been shops. I needed to pee. There was a dark patch off the road, some bushes, so I stepped off to go.
When I finished and lifted my head — he was right there. In front of me. The same hoodie. Also urinating, facing me, like we'd just happened to stop at the same spot.
I thought, okay, maybe he needed to go too, fine. Then I looked back toward where the auto-rickshaw had been.
It wasn't there.
I looked forward again.
He wasn't there either.
I don't know how to describe what happened in my body right then. Something just — dropped. A kind of fear I've genuinely never felt before or since. I kept telling myself it was nothing, that I was imagining things, that ghosts aren't real. But then I'd think about my relative, about how he died, about what people say happens to souls that die like that. And the resemblance. I started walking faster.
That's when I saw him.
An elderly man, up ahead on the road. Dressed completely white, same as the man from the hospital. In his hand, a hurricane lantern — the old kerosene kind, the kind nobody in Dhaka actually carries anymore. And that same attar smell, again, strong.
For a second I actually felt relieved. I thought, maybe he's just coming back from prayers, an elder from somewhere nearby. We were walking the same direction, more or less matching pace. I called out — murubbi, murubbi, three or four times — just wanting to ask how far the main road was.
He didn't answer. Didn't turn.
That's when the fear went from a suspicion to something certain. I looked back to see if anyone else was on the road — I remember seeing two men some distance behind, walking slow. I stood there a moment, thinking I'd let them catch up and walk the rest of the way with them. They didn't come any closer, though. I wasn't going to turn back for them — I just meant to keep going once they were near enough.
I looked back once more to check on them.
Then I looked forward again.
He was gone.
I don't remember deciding to run. I just remember running. Sweating everywhere, my whole body soaked, moving as fast as I could toward wherever the lights were. In my head I was just repeating God's name, over and over, not really thinking about anything else.
Eventually I reached a house right up against the road. A man was standing at the gate — and for a second, I genuinely couldn't tell if he was real or not. I wasn't sure anymore what I was looking at. I asked him anyway, how far the main road was. He said not far — two minutes, maybe.
I kept walking and started hearing traffic. Real traffic, big trucks, the ordinary noise of a real street. I got to the main road and there were people — actual people, finally — and a little stall selling tea, boiled eggs, muri, chotpoti, fuchka. The light there was that half-lit, half-dark kind you get at roadside stalls.
I was hungry. I know that sounds strange given everything, but I was, so I bought an egg and some muri from the vendor. He offered me a stool to sit on instead of standing.
I sat down at one end. At the other end of the same stool — someone in a hoodie. Face covered, so I couldn't see who it was. Eating, same as me. Right then I felt my body start to heat up, like a fever was already climbing. Whatever this was, it wasn't done with me yet.
I didn't wait to find out. I handed the man a 500 taka note and started walking away fast. He called after me — hey, brother, you gave me too much, it was only fifty taka — and gave me back 450. I don't even remember taking it properly.
I got to New Bazar stop, where the buses come through — Ashimoni, Rajdhani, that route. I stood there. Buses kept passing right in front of me and I just — didn't get on any of them. I couldn't tell you why. Twenty, twenty-five minutes, maybe, just standing there while buses I needed came and went.
A man walking behind me finally asked if I was alright, if I was sick. I told him yes, I think so. He flagged down the next Rajdhani bus for me and got me on it. I sat down, and the strange thing is, nobody ever came around to collect the fare from me the whole ride — even though the bus wound around a good bit before it settled onto the main route.
Not long after, I called my brother to check where they were. Still at the cremation ground, he said. I told him something felt wrong — I wasn't sure exactly what I meant by it even as I said it. The bus was already passing Bonosree, near the Ideal School, by the time we were talking, and I remember telling him I thought I was near there — except the bus should have been well past that point already. He just said I was probably disoriented from the day, the stress, and that the bus would take me where I needed to go.
I don't know if I fell asleep after that. I genuinely can't say. There's a stretch of that ride I can't account for. I know the trip usually takes under an hour, and somehow I looked up and we were already at Kuril Bishwa Road — further along than I should've been if it had only been an hour. I got off. I never paid the fare. I just got off and got into a rickshaw and went the rest of the way home.
I didn't tell anyone what had happened. Not that night. I went straight in, washed everything — even my shoes — and just sat with it alone.
By then the fever had already started coming on. I always keep medicine at home for that, so I ate some rice and took it. That night the fever climbed — bad, maybe 103, 104. I sweat through it, woke up once in the middle of the night. By morning it was completely gone. Not a trace. I almost couldn't believe I'd had a fever at all, except I remembered it so clearly. And the whole thing from the day before just kept replaying in my head, over and over, whether I wanted it to or not.
I was supposed to leave early that next morning for our village home — we have a temple right at the house, and there was something happening there that day. The fever was gone, but the fear wasn't. It just sat there.
I still don't believe in ghosts, not the way people usually mean it. But I believe souls exist, and I believe in rebirth, and I believe — now, at least — that a soul taken by violence, by murder, might not just move on quietly like the rest. Whatever I saw on that road that evening, it looked like him. It moved like him. And I still don't have a better explanation for it than that.
Has anything like this ever happened to you — right after losing someone, in the hours just after a death? I'd like to know I'm not the only one.
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