👻 HAUNTED PLACE · EXP. Nº1190
ACTIVE
Begunkodor railway station
Begunkodar, or Begunkodor, is a railway halt in Purulia district, West Bengal, opened around 1960 and closed in 1967 amid stories of a woman in a white sari and of a stationmaster who died or left.
Where is Begunkodor railway station?
- Location
- Purulia, India
- Type
- Public building
- Coordinates
- 23.388, 86.022
- Last updated
LOCATION
Why is Begunkodor railway station said to be haunted?
It reopened in 2009, according to the Press Trust of India; the Indian Express gives 2007. In December 2017 a rationalist group spent a night there and recorded no paranormal activity, while villagers asked for more trains and a platform and a paranormal team had begun selling midnight tours.
What is the history of Begunkodor railway station?
Begunkodar, also spelled Begunkodor, is a halt in the Purulia district of West Bengal, in the Ranchi division of South Eastern Railway, near the Ayodhya Hills and about 50 km from Purulia town, according to the Press Trust of India. Wikipedia says it was opened in 1960 through the joint efforts of the Santal queen Lachan Kumari and Indian Railways; the Indian Express also gives 1960, and the Orissa Post gives 1962.
It closed in 1967, and the accounts of the closure published since all involve a ghost. PTI reported in December 2017 that the stationmaster "reportedly died after seeing a woman clad in a white sari walking along the tracks at night", that passengers deserted the station and that it came to be known as "haunted" in railway records. The Hindustan Times in 2016 placed the sightings "sometime in the 1960s" and wrote that they became a daily routine until railway employees refused to work there. The Orissa Post in 2019 said she had killed herself by jumping in front of a train and that the stationmaster had died "under mysterious circumstances" the same year. Sripati Mahato, a retired schoolteacher interviewed by the Indian Express in January 2018, gave another version: the stationmaster, "a musician and very friendly", left after "some goons misbehaved with his daughter", telling the Railways that the station was haunted.
The villagers petitioned for years. In 2007, the Indian Express reports, they wrote to the then railway minister Mamata Banerjee and to Basudeb Acharia, the Purulia MP who chaired the parliamentary standing committee on Railways. PTI and the New Indian Express date the reopening to 2009, 42 years after the closure, under Banerjee as minister; the Indian Express says the station "could start re-functioning only in 2007". In August 2016 two solar-powered lamps were put up and vandalised the same night, and around then the station began to circulate on social media as a ghost-tourism destination. When the Indian Express spent an evening there in January 2018 it found no platform and no stationmaster. Two brothers from the neighbouring village of Nolkupi, Dolu and Amulya Mahato, ran the 12 ft by 10 ft counter as private booking agents, selling 175 to 200 tickets a day and earning Rs 1.25 a ticket.
Timeline: the documented record of Begunkodor railway station
- 1960 Station established by Santal queen Lachan Kumari and Indian Railways to serve Begunkodor and Jhalda villages.
- 1962 Year of construction given by the Orissa Post; Wikipedia and the Indian Express give 1960.
- 1967 The station closes; PTI reports that its stationmaster 'reportedly died' after seeing a woman in a white sari on the tracks at night.
- 2007 Villagers write to railway minister Mamata Banerjee and to Basudeb Acharia, MP, who chaired the parliamentary standing committee on Railways.
- 2009 The station reopens as a halt under Mamata Banerjee, 42 years after closing, according to PTI and the New Indian Express.
- June 2016 The Hindustan Times reports a paranormal research team and Purulia Tourism selling midnight visits to the station.
- August 2016 Two solar-powered lamps put up at the station are vandalised the same night.
- 28 December 2017 A nine-member team of the rationalist group Paschim Banga Bigyan Mancha spends the night of 28 December at the station and records no paranormal activity.
- January 2018 The Indian Express spends an evening at the halt: no platform, no stationmaster, a ticket counter run by private agents and about half a dozen local trains besides the last one.
- 2019 The Orissa Post writes that trains have not stopped at the station for 51 years, contradicting the reopening of 2009.
Is there a rational explanation for Begunkodor railway station?
The four printed versions of the 1967 events, by PTI, the Hindustan Times, the Orissa Post and the Indian Express, name neither the stationmaster nor the woman, and do not agree on what happened to him: two say he died, the Indian Express source says he left, and the Hindustan Times does not mention him. The haunting has been tested once on the site. On the night of 28 December 2017 a nine-member team of the rationalist group Paschim Banga Bigyan Mancha camped at the station with police protection, carrying torches, digital compasses and cameras. Its leader, the surgeon Nayan Mukherjee, told the New Indian Express that "our cameras or compasses did not record any signs of paranormal activity", and that at about 2 a.m. the team heard a noise behind the station building and chased off a group of men; the Indian Express quoted him as finding "cards, alcohol bottles and condom packets" there. The team suspected that locals were scaring and robbing young visitors drawn by ghost tourism, and the Purulia superintendent of police, Joy Biswas, said night patrols had been increased. Sanjay Ghosh, chief public relations officer of South Eastern Railway, told the Indian Express that "as far as ghost stories are concerned, there is no truth to them".
The ghost had a commercial use before the debunking. In June 2016 the Hindustan Times reported that the Systematic Paranormal Investigation and Research Team had joined the operator Purulia Tourism to sell packages including a midnight visit to the station and a storytelling session. The villagers of the 15 or 16 surrounding villages, the Indian Express found in 2018, wanted more trains, a platform, a stationmaster and electricity, and had put up posters threatening anyone caught spreading "canards".
Two claims that circulate about the station lack a source. The Wikipedia article says that Acharia "said that railway employees had made up the story to avoid being posted there" and gives no citation for it; the PTI, Indian Express, New Indian Express and Hindustan Times articles listed in the references of this file do not attribute that statement to him. The same article's figure of ten trains halting regularly is also unsourced, and the Indian Express counted the last train of the day plus "about half a dozen other local trains".
Can you visit Begunkodor railway station?
Begunkodar halt lies in open country beside the NH 60A, about 8 km from Jhalda according to the Orissa Post and about 260 km from Kolkata according to the Hindustan Times; its station code is BKDR. The most detailed description of the site is the Indian Express report of 28 January 2018. The station had no platform, so passengers jumped down from the trains during a halt of about four minutes, and its only fixtures were a single tubewell, a few signboards and the ticket counter in a corner. The counter opened at 4:30 a.m., closed at sundown around 5:30 p.m. and opened again for a few minutes at 9 p.m. for the last train. About half a dozen other local trains stopped, most of them before dark, and the halt was outside South Eastern Railway's computerised ticketing system. Passengers used it only until 5 p.m., PTI reported a month earlier.
The timetable site totaltraininfo.com, consulted on 4 October 2026, lists twelve trains halting at BKDR and two platforms, but the same page carries a pandemic-era notice that regular trains remain cancelled, so its figures cannot be dated. The posters put up by the villagers, which the Indian Express saw in 2018, warned against taking unauthorised photographs of the area, and the paper reported that villagers had beaten up groups from Kolkata who came to see ghosts.
Sources consulted
- Wikipedia contributors, «Begunkodor railway station» — Wikipedia, 2026 web
- PTI, «West Bengal's Begunkodor no longer a haunted railway station — the Paschim Banga Bigyan Mancha night at the station, the 1967 stationmaster story and the 2009 reopening» — The Hindu, 2017 newspaper archive
- Ravik Bhattacharya, «The ghost and the darkness: A night in the life of Begunkodar railway station, Purulia» — The Indian Express, 2018 newspaper archive
- Aishik Chanda, «Myth of West Bengal's 'haunted' Begunkodar railway station busted after 50 years» — The New Indian Express, 2017 newspaper archive
- Ravik Bhattacharya, «Now, take a tour of Bengal's haunted railway station — a paranormal research team and Purulia Tourism sell midnight visits» — Hindustan Times, 2016 newspaper archive
- Post News Network, «A station where trains never stop — says the station was built in 1962 and the stationmaster died 'under mysterious circumstances' in 1967» — Orissa Post, 2019 newspaper archive
- totaltraininfo.com, «BKDR / Begunkodor — undated third-party timetable listing twelve halting trains and two platforms» — Total Train Info, 2026 web
Reviewed by V. Serrano on 2026-10-04 · How we verify our content
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