Part 1: The Forgotten Path
You ever walk into a place and feel like you weren’t supposed to be there? Like the air itself pushes back against you? That was Devdiya for me.
I remember the exact moment we arrived. It was late October. The monsoon had passed, but the land still smelled like wet soil and damp wood. I was leading my small team—Aman, our cameraman and the sarcastic one of the bunch; Zara, my best friend and research assistant; and Kabir, our logistics guy and the only one with survival training. We were there to shoot a new episode of our blog series “India Unseen.”
I found Devdiya in an old folklore book I picked up in Pune. There was just a half-page mention: “Devdiya, where the light refuses to stay and the cursed walk freely after dusk.”
Sounded perfect, right?
The village wasn’t on any current map. We had to piece together its location using old railway records and handwritten letters from the 1950s. That’s how we ended up here—four city kids, loaded with equipment, soaked in sweat, and completely unaware of the nightmare waiting for us.
The last real human we saw was this old man who ran a roadside chai stall just before the forest began. I still hear his voice sometimes.
“Turn back, beta. Some places ain’t meant for stories.”
We laughed it off. We were too deep in this. Too ambitious. Too stupid.
Devdiya was about a 12-kilometer trek through a trail that barely existed anymore. Vines clawed at our ankles, insects buzzed in invisible clouds, and the air got colder with every step. And then, without warning, we stepped into silence.
I mean complete silence.
No birds. No wind. Not even the buzz of bugs. Just stillness.
That’s when we saw it—an old wooden arch with half-rotted wood and a rusted bell hanging from the top. “Devdiya - Est. 1884” was faintly carved across it.
We crossed under.
Inside, the village was like something left in time. Stone houses, roofs caved in, moss eating the walls. A dried-up well stood in the center, and at the edge of the village was a small temple, its stone idols broken, defaced… hollow. Something about that place made Zara shiver. She asked if we could set up camp elsewhere. Kabir, practical as ever, said the temple would provide the best shelter.
We should’ve listened to Zara.
As night fell, we gathered around a small fire just outside the temple and started filming some B-roll. Aman cracked a joke about us being in the “Indian version of Blair Witch” and we all laughed. But even in that laughter, I felt... watched.
I couldn’t shake it.
Around midnight, when the fire had died to embers, I heard scratching. Soft, rhythmic scratching outside my tent. At first, I thought it was Kabir or Aman messing around. But the sound didn’t move. It just... stayed in one place.
Like something was trying to claw its way in.
I froze. Every instinct screamed at me not to open the flap. But I did. I peeked outside, heart hammering. There was no one.
Just the cold wind and the sound of the temple bell swaying—though no wind was strong enough to move it.
And then, I turned back to zip the tent shut... and saw it.
One word scratched into the canvas: RUN.
