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After the Empire: Narratives of Haunting in the Postcolonial Spectropolis

Abstract This paper explores instances of spectral uncanny in the postcolonial urban ethos through the stories of three legendary haunted houses in Kolkata. It attempts a literary-cultural reading of the colonial “spectres” both as embodied presence and as memories entrenched in physical or material spaces of the metropolis. It considers whether the ghastly in the built environment of the city can work as a historical supplement to interpret Calcutta’s transition from the colonial to postcolonial modernity through the windows of nostalgia, trauma and other memories, haunted by various temporalities. Inhabiting the interstities between “here” and “now” and “there” and “then,” in their hauntings the past returns with a surplus of meaning. It can never be the same past once experienced, as it is always already altered by the concerns of the present. This paper on urban haunting is premised on a textual reading of a body of documented narratives on the most widely-recognized haunted mansions from colonial Calcutta, now listed under heritage property. Situating these haunted houses as the loci of alternative stories, this paper envisages the city as a dynamic narrative space that continually defines itself by re-enacting its memories through repeated differential hauntings.