This Halloween, storytelling sessions get a paranormal spin

Halloween, over the years, has become a lot more about celebrating pop culture, costumes, and parties, with people seeking inspiration from iconic film, TV, and historical characters to dress up and go cosplay. However, no matter how much the celebrations change, the spook factor remains the core of Halloween, and some like to celebrate it in an old-fashion way and what better than storytelling! This Halloween, young storytellers and poets across the country are coming together virtual to narrate original horror stories written by them.





Pune’s Nukkad Café organised Halloween Late Night Storytelling, a virtual storytelling session, on Saturday where professional storyteller Deepesh Chandran took the audience through a horror-filled experience through his stories. The café which promotes storytelling and poetry meet-ups also hosted Tatva 2021 Horror and Screenplay Film Festival. Vaibhav Paliwal of owner Nukkad Café, says, “When it comes to horror, people don’t have a lot of real stories in films that are relatable and new in films. How much can one go on watching Annabelle and Conjuring? Storytelling, which has seen huge popularity, gives listeners the power of imagination to experience a spooky encounter through the eyes of the storyteller. Since it is an intimate environment and there is no exaggerated visual or musical element in storytelling, listeners get the thrill out of it these stories. They are not necessarily scared or horrified, but definitely get goosebumps. While the virtual film festival had Brazillian and Korean horror films screened, Rupali Godambe and Mujahid Sidiquii also narrated original stories written by them.

^{Deepesh Chandran}
“The Halloween night, perhaps, is the best time to think of, recount and retell horror stories and other several experiences that you've had with the unknown, ‘paranormal’ beings,” Gunjan Jha, storyteller, adding "Horror and paranormal give people an escape from the real world." Storytellers and poets say the pandemic has seen a rising number of people exploring horror as a genre in storytelling, and while the genre isn’t new, it is creating a lot of curiosity among adults and children alike, who are now preferring to hear a story than watching a film."

Storyteller Kinjal Banerjee, who is part of a storytelling event for Halloween says, “What makes narrating a horror story interesting is that there are no props, visual media or music, so a lot of the spookiness comes from the way are telling the story. Only in recent times, Bollywood has started to delve into local folklore, but storytelling has always been about that, and therefore, people connect to it. These are the stories they may have heard while growing up, in bits and pieces. While some love to take a trip down memory lane, those hearing it for the first time, get hooked to them because of their authenticity.”
The storytellers bring forth thrill, fear, suspense, those nail-biting moments combined with voice modulations to make Halloween more spooktacular. So, does this mean horror movie marathons, a quintessential Halloween tradition are now the thing of the past? “Most definitely not,” says storyteller and poet Anjum Afzal, who will be reciting a poem ‘Khamosh Cheekhti Raat’ the horror experience of her walking alone on a long winding road on dark nights after her night shift.
“The time when the stories are narrated plays a huge part in creating an atmosphere of paranormal and occult. Given that Halloween horror storytelling sessions are organised at night, they add to the horror quotient. Many of us may have had some supernatural experiences — big or small — at some point in life. On my way back home from work, there was a dilapidated house rumoured to be inhabited by spirits and I would often get spooked by the slighted sound of the wind while passing by the building. I wrote the poem inspired that the experience. There are no descriptions of ghosts but the scary experience of me walking alone post-midnight and my imagination is what I am going narrate,” says Anjum.