This Paranormal Life - #309 India's MOST HAUNTED Building - Bhangarh Fort
Episode Date: April 4, 2023The story of India's most haunted location is one of wizards, love potions, beautiful princesses, crushing boulders, Indiana Jones-style temples, and a giant ancient fort said to curse anyone who sets... foot inside it. But is there any evidence to back up the paranormal claims? There's only one way to find out. Time for Kit and Rory to investigate.Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and YouTubeJoin our Secret Society Facebook CommunitySupport us on Patreon.com/ThisParanormalLife to get access to weekly bonus episodes!Buy Official TPL Merch! - thisparanormallife.com/storeIntro music by www.purple-planet.comResearch by Amy GrisdaleEdited by Philip Shacklady Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Are there trees on other planets?
How can mirrors be real if our eyes aren't real?
Answers to these questions and more on this episode of
This Paranormal Life!
Hey!
Hello, and welcome back to This Paranormal Life.
This is the weekly comedy podcast where every Tuesday,
two paranormal investigators at the peak of their game
dive into a different case and get to the bottom of whether it's truly paranormal or not.
Can I get some energy in the room today?
What are you talking about?
Woo! Let's just turn it up a notch.
Yeah, that's too much because that peaked the mics.
I don't know what you're talking about, buddy!
Right now we're kind of at like a seven, and I want to be at a ten.
I want to be at a ten today!
Okay, how many have you had of those?
I'm seeing two to three
Diet Coke cons in front of you. Two or three just so far since we started. Sorry, I interrupted you
for the start there. You were telling people about the podcast. I think I was pretty much done.
Okay. Okay. One interesting intro question where you're saying, how can we see our eyes if our
eyes aren't real? No. How can mirrors be real if our eyes aren't real?
Right. I need you to understand. In fact, I need you to actually tell me why you think eyes aren't
real. That's maybe a better place to start. This is actually a pretty classic philosophical
question. How can mirrors be real if our eyes aren't real? First posited by philosopher Jaden
Smith on Twitter in, I think, 2014.
Right.
He put that one up on Twitter and it kind of broke the internet.
I hadn't heard that one.
That's okay.
An interesting hypothesis.
Someone told me this fact recently, and I shouldn't be regurgitating it on the podcast
because it sounds like it definitely isn't true.
As long as it's not problematic, let's go.
But they told me that if your body knew your eyes were in your head,
they would kill them.
All right.
Sorry, who said this?
I don't remember.
I think it was a man in the pub.
Okay.
I think it's something weird that they were like,
your brain doesn't know that your eyes are in your skull
because if it knew they were in there, it would send antibodies to kill your eyes.
I don't know.
I don't know if there's science behind that.
I don't think we have time to Google it.
I think we're going to have to move swiftly on there.
But, hey, there's just a little quote you can whip out at parties.
You know when some people say like, hey, do you know that cows have four stomachs?
Or, hey, do you know that the technology that once four stomachs or hey do you know that the technology
that once put a man on the moon is now actually the same technology in a calculator do you know
do you know your body will kill your eyes if it actually finds out about them so keep your
voice down yeah so if you want to lose friends and alienate people that is a great story i'm
gonna look it up you know i'm gonna look it up because i don't appreciate being put under a
microscope and and called a liar on this podcast in front of everyone else.
We're gonna, we're in for about 20 minutes of Googling here because that search query
is not gonna work.
I did see a good video the other day of an MRI scan of a brain and eyes and it was showing
how like whenever eyes move, you can literally see the parts of the brain that are moving
them.
They were making the point that eyes are basically
just a bit of your brain that's outside your head.
Is that real? Is that right?
I could show you the video. It's quite creepy looking.
That's terrifying.
Okay, there is something here.
There is something here.
I believe that there is a type of...
A philosopher known as Brexit Barry said...
I think this was, to be fair, the person who told me this,
I think was someone at the magic convention I was at on the weekend.
After a number of pints of Stella.
They said you can get an immune disease or an autoimmune disease.
That means your body starts attacking your own eyes
once it realizes that they're in your head.
I don't know if that's the science. Is your brain realize that your eyes are in your head like what does that
mean like as opposed to where else where else would they be where does your brain think the
eyes are i'm not a scientist i don't know the answers all right this is not what we're here
to talk about today uh this is this paranormalanormal Life where we talk about, granted,
the shit Rory's talking about ain't normal.
Yeah, it's pretty f***ing weird.
I'm not sure
that it's necessarily paranormal.
Today, pretty exciting,
we have a listener suggestion
that was written into us
at thisparanormallifepodcast
at gmail.com,
an inbox that we monitor,
I would say,
once every six to 12 months.
We go in there, delete a bunch of things,
and occasionally if we accidentally read an email, we'll read it.
But when I look back, this had actually been suggested by many, many people.
So shout out to our cool and cute listeners,
namely Abhishek Kumardas, Timmy Nolan, Yashena, and Avani Tripathi.
Avani wrote.
Yeah, sorry, I'm just seeing some of these emails now.
One of them here is marked urgent.
And it says, time is of the essence.
This is an emergency.
I am locked in the closet.
There's something outside.
Please help.
Please help.
I think a spam.
I'm going to delete that.
That was sent in 2014.
So this next one here just says, please help please help urgent see that you mark that as spam
i see here on the logs it's always like dfs sales this like discount code that like i don't even
bother to read those like it's all good i just i kind of just go in there and mark everything spam
because like honestly most of it is right so this one this one here says, Kit, it's me. This isn't spam. There's a demon.
See, they've got so much information on us.
Like DFS, not to hone in on DFS in particular, but like those motherfuckers, like they'll do anything to sell us so far.
Right, right, right.
Yeah.
So like.
This sale is demonic.
You know, this is crazy.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
So I guess like we can check that theory.
Let's look at what was the email address it came from?
Was it a DFS email address?
This was susanh at hotmail.co.uk.
Okay, so that might have been a real email.
And I just tried to respond and it bounced back.
So I think she's gone from not even Earth,
but maybe existence, the world of the living.
Yikes.
All right, I'll put my hand up there.
Should have been paying a little bit more attention to the inbox,
but there can't be
Too many like that right
I mean you said that was
Like last week or something right
No that was 2014
There's quite a few more
Quite a few more there
So that was
Oh wow
That was a long time ago
But maybe all these people
Aren't dead yet
And that's why we're
Covering it on today's podcast
Right
For those still struggling
Avani wrote this in 2014
Avani did this in 2014
They write
Hey guys
I'm not an old time listener
but I recently found your podcast
and I'm enjoying listening to it
I'm not sure if you've investigated
the case of Bangar Fort yet
It's considered to be
the most haunted place in India
and it is strictly forbidden
to visit after sundown
Damn
I myself have visited it
during the early hours of the day, but the people living
in the neighboring town claim to hear drums,
voices, and a lot of
other noises at night.
They claim the town comes
alive at night. Okay.
Okay. Nothing, nothing
you know, fully paranormal just
yet. Those are all kind of normal sounds.
Little weird to be all happening together
at night. There's no one there.
There is no one.
This is like picking up
finding the Jumanji board game on the
beach and you're like, okay, jungle drums.
Pretty f***ed up. I don't see a drummer anywhere
nearby, but that is a normal sound.
Technically a normal sound.
That piece just moved by itself
and that kid became a monkey.
Things are getting a little weird now.
Monkey, a normal animal,
an animal from our world.
A lot of scientists believe humans did come from monkeys.
So maybe it's not that weird.
So if we go back, is that so strange?
It's a weird sketch guy
trying to justify Jumanji.
Board games are getting pretty advanced
these days.
The technology is there.
Yeah.
Avani continues,
please ignore my grammatical mistakes. English is not my
first language. Well, fear not, Avani, your English was literally perfect. And thanks for the suggestion.
And I'm dyslexic anyway. And you know what? We're going to get right into this very paranormal case
right after a couple of words from today's sponsors. All right, Rory, we start our journey in...
today's sponsors.
Alright Rory, we start our journey in Mmm. Alright Rory,
we start Mmm.
Mmm.
You gotta stop making that noise, it's really
weird.
Like it's okay to make a mistake, but
don't be so mad at yourself that it's like
you gotta start over.
Don't hit yourself.
Alright Rory, today we start
Mmm.
What is this noise that you're making?
Sorry.
I took some Adderall before this.
Why?
I thought it would help me.
I hear it helps you focus.
It didn't.
So I actually, the end of the script isn't actually done yet.
I got distracted and opened up about 16 eBay tabs.
I'm actually bidding on some pretty exciting paranormal artifacts,
but I think I'm going to be able to mentally kind of
like lay the railway tracks in front of me as I'm rolling along them.
You know what I'm saying?
Focus wasn't the problem, by the way.
No point of this problem we're having right now is due to focus.
So you didn't need the Adderall.
I'm just going to take another.
I wouldn't.
Oh!
That looked like a couple.
I think that's going to...
That was five or six.
Okay.
All right.
So, Rory, we're going to get stuck into our journey today.
It's going to be hard to cut around this.
It is going to be very hard.
We've got a good editor.
I trust them.
All right.
I'm just going to...
I think I just need a little bit of...
I think they're...
To be honest,
I think they're just stuck in my throat.
I think that's where the sign's coming from.
Hold on a second.
Hold on a second.
Just a little bit of...
From my friend, Dr. Pellegrino.
Okay.
All right, Rory.
Today we start our journey in the village of Gola Kabas in India's Rajasthan region.
Among the hustle and bustle of pedestrian and road traffic and trade,
three teenage boys were walking through the street.
I'm bored.
Can we get out of town?
Oh, I know.
We could walk out to Bangar Fort.
It'll be nice and quiet out there.
Are you nuts?
It'll be dark soon.
You'd have to be crazy to go to that place at night.
No, but I'm going crazy.
Why do we have to go to a dangerous, haunted fort?
Can't we just do regular, long-term damaging teenage activities
like smoking cigarettes, binge drinking?
Look, we don't have to go all the way there, but can we at least walk in that direction?
I just want to hear myself think. This town is so busy today.
Fine, we'll just walk that way.
The three wandered westward, and though the town's hubbub faded away,
the air was thick with conversation about the fort at Bangar.
I heard two boys went out and visited after dark and never came home.
What if that happened to us?
No way.
I don't believe that.
And if it did happen, it wasn't the fort.
It was probably tigers.
Tigers?
We'll be fine.
If you see one, just remember to stay very still
or run, whatever it was.
Okay, you stay still and I'll run.
At least one of us will be fine.
The stories grew wilder as they marched on.
Or, or, what about those tourists?
I heard they paid off their guide to spend a night at the fort.
When they began exploring, they came across a little boy sitting in a room.
But it had no doors or windows low enough for him to have got into.
He was just there.
Well, maybe we'll see him.
We're here. What? We're
actually going in? The boys looked ahead and saw the grand walls of the fortress in the distance,
bathed in the glow of the setting sun. It was a grand structure with high walls and round turrets,
all made from the same golden brown bricks. The teens wandered through the narrow entranceway,
looking up at the 500-year-old fortress before them. There was a whole town here once, you know. To this day, no one knows what
happened to all the people that lived here. That's cool. I just found a skeleton with a
bunch of tiger marks in it, so... No one knows. They stomped through the undergrowth. They couldn't
stop thinking about how many people must have died here over 500 years. The place
was alive with energy. But
not only that, it felt like they weren't alone.
Like they were being followed
by something. Cool.
Cool. Don't want to derail us
too much. And hey, loving the story so far.
This is pure fiction though, right?
This is... I'm sorry.
I'm just not entirely sure how...
Sorry, how dare you.
How you know the dialogue that
these children had in this
adventure in an old castle.
I just want to know where this came from. I'm not going to give the gig
away. I'm not going to give the gig away.
But in a few minutes, you're going to be really f***ing sorry
for what you just said. I just want to know where
this is coming from as well.
That would just be great to have, like, is there
a citation or, like, a bibliography that I can look at?
I didn't know I was going to get attacked like this,
and I honestly feel like I need another couple of Adderall
just to get through the accusation.
You definitely don't.
All right.
I just want to see the ruins of the village.
It can't be much further.
It could be right in front of us.
It's so dark I can't even see where I'm putting my feet. Just then he stepped on a flimsy wooden
board covering up an old well. He tumbled to the bottom, hitting the sides all the way down.
He died? Oh my god, are you okay? Yeah, I think I'm okay. Help me out. The boys managed to make a human ladder,
and although the walls of the well were crumbling at the slightest touch,
they managed to pull him out.
A human ladder?
Out of bones?
I think they just, like, one person kind of leans down over the edge,
the other person holds on to them outside the well so they don't fall in,
they lift the other person out, that type of thing.
I think that's just kind of grabbing people. I don't fall in, they lift the other person out, that type of thing.
I think that's just kind of grabbing people.
I don't know if three dudes can be a ladder.
It's not human centipede.
We're not like connecting them asshole to asshole.
They're just hanging onto each other.
Okay, okay.
Once they got out, they limped their way towards the main road, back to town and
maybe hospital, feeling a wave of relief as the old fort got further and further away.
Any romanticism they had had about this place was long gone.
In the dark, it looked like the gateway to hell.
They felt lucky to have survived.
That was close, guys.
Wow, what a rush.
I'm so full of adrenaline.
We should be careful, though.
Crazy drivers come through here, and we don't want to get hit by it.
All three of the young men were killed instantly in that fateful moment, hit by a truck.
What is this story? What is this? Is this even paranormal? You're just saying a bunch of kids
got hit by a car. News spread to the town quickly of what happened and while they were all saddened,
few were surprised. After all, it was predestination.
By choosing to visit Bangar Fort after nightfall,
they had sealed their destiny.
All right, it's some sort of cursed location, is that the idea?
Bangar Fort is so dark, mysterious, cursed, and haunted all at once
that the boys knew you weren't supposed to go there after dark.
And when the locals heard that that's exactly
what they had done, they knew it was only...
They hit them with a car.
Because they shouldn't have been doing it.
And they needed to learn a lesson.
They knew that
they were going to get final destinationed.
As sad and grim as it is.
You make it sound like the kids were
lying on the street and it's like,
I mean, try and resuscitate them or something, right?
Nope.
Their fates are sealed.
That one seems to be all right.
He's kind of limping a little bit.
He's done for.
Back to the village.
They run out with a two by four.
Yeah.
Predestination.
Back to the village.
Terry, release the wolves.
All right.
Now you're killing them.
Wow, that's kind of cool.
Hey, we've talked about haunted locations on this podcast before,
but rarely do we ever talk about a place so haunted
that merely entering it inflicts you with a curse that claims your life.
That's next level.
Probably the closest thing would be Tutankhamun's burial room or whatever.
Yes.
Something like that. Yeah. When
Howard Carter went inside, ignored the warnings and the curses. Yeah. He inflicted the wrath of
the ancient mummy upon him and the other archaeologists. So I guess that would be
something quite similar. Yeah. You've said it. What we have on our hands today is a giant,
haunted, and as we've just seen, potentially cursed fort.
You thought haunted houses were bad.
This is basically a whole castle.
So I think it's time that I show you some photos
and potentially tell you a bit more about Bangar Fort.
It's really quite cool.
It was built in the 1500s, about 150 miles outside Delhi,
built by the Raja Bhagwan Das.
A raja, of course, is basically an Indian equivalent to a king.
So it's huge.
It has the ruins of a king's palace,
huge defensive fortifications,
countless ruins of temples inside.
The haunting potential here is absolutely off the chain.
But I'm glad you actually said it earlier.
At the same time, can you imagine being a kid
and being told you're not allowed
to explore this magical kingdom of temples yeah there's no way you could keep them away yeah you
can't be the parent that's like hey uh you know we just want to make sure you guys are back by dinner
um if the street lights come on time to come home and don't go into the magical forbidden kingdom of lost gold treasure. Don't even think about it.
All right?
Because, yeah, some say there's a chocolate river.
Some people say video games grow on trees.
But those are just myths.
Maybe.
I don't know.
I'd have to go myself to look at it.
They could be true, honestly.
But don't even think about going there.
And whenever I was young, all my friends went and had a rad time,
and I was the only one not allowed to go, and it did ruin my childhood,
but that's why you're also not allowed to go.
They're going to go.
They're going to want to go.
It's like in The Lion King when Mufasa, I haven't seen it in a long time,
so I might be butchering this.
Mufasa says, hey, kid, don't go over there.
It's f***ing not ours.
Yeah. They're like, see, kid, don't go over there. It's f***ing not ours. Yeah.
They're like, see, look how far you can see.
Is it to that tree over there?
That's as far as you're going.
Anything beyond that tree, don't do it.
Don't do it, kid.
It's going to get weird.
Then, spoiler alert, Mufasa dies.
And Sinbad eats a couple bugs and goes on an adventure.
Sinbad? What's an adventure. Simbad?
To the, to the, what's his name?
You mean Simba?
Simba.
Simba goes.
Simbad the sailor?
He eats a couple bugs with a rat and a pumba and a pig
and then he eventually becomes the king himself.
A rat and a pumba, a meerkat and a warthog.
But my point being that he was warned not to go to the dark side of the Sahara.
And I think he did it.
I don't remember.
But there were consequences.
And listen, we all grew up with our own version of that kind of metaphor.
For me and you probably, it was don't go to that seedy nightclub and drink WKD blue.
Right.
But you tell us that.
What do you think is the first thing we're going to do?
Yeah, exactly.
I was actually told not to go to Kit's house because they were like,
that kid's really weird.
A lot of the other parents are concerned about some of the things
he's telling the other kids.
He smells funny.
He's really strange.
I didn't, and I don't.
But then, of of course that made me
just want to hang out with kit even more because my parents told me that i couldn't hang out with
kit and he's actually a pretty chill guy and some of the things he believes in like ufos and aliens
and the fact that lizard people are real yeah they're actually pretty convincing and uh mom
all people make mistakes that's why they put rubbers on the end of pencils. We've all put a hamster in a microwave like Kit.
Rory, check out these images of Bangar Fort.
Kit has not even cherry-picked these images.
He just typed the name of the fort into Google and handed me a Google image tab.
The Google search results.
I'm just looking at hundreds of pictures here.
I don't even know what I'm supposed to be looking at.
Honestly, Florida is not even a good word to describe it.
It isn't.
It's really like a castle grounds or like a palace grounds
because there's countless individual buildings inside it,
temples, palaces, whatever.
Yeah, palace is not doing it right.
It looks like it is a village.
Yeah.
Like, because inside of it is so much other shit.
You should not let kids roam around here.
There's a lot of very steep drops, a lot of very dark cavernous areas
where little children are going to die.
That sounded like a threat.
I did not mean to come off like a threat.
But I mean, are you seeing this?
Look at some of these f***ing buildings, man.
They're insane.
That is crazy.
The problem is, as cool as it is to explore this area,
countless deaths and gruesome events have unfolded within those walls in the last 500 years.
And those who visit the ruins report feeling plagued by restlessness, anxiety and paranoia,
with many saying they feel they're being watched or followed.
Many tourists even cut their whole visit short
because they feel so uncomfortable.
And pretty creepy that visitors alone say that,
but our next clue is even more obvious of how dark this place is.
The government has forbidden anyone to enter after sundown.
There are tons of signs up even warning you not to stay after sunset.
That's like saying, my local Starbucks closes at 6 p.m.
Because if you had the f***ing audacity to try and order an iced latte at 6.01,
Bloody Mary herself will appear.
It's just when they close.
It's when the attendants go home and people stop working at the Starbucks.
Yeah, well tell that to the three
kids who are turning to pancakes, Rory.
They didn't even die!
In the building they were hit by a car!
Yeah, because they were cursed! Because they were cursed
by going after dark! Alright, alright,
alright. Hundreds of visitors
have reported seeing ghostly apparitions
along with reports of music
and dancing coming from within
the city and fortress with no explanation at night no not at night not at night okay
kit's face right now is that of a pirate captain realizing there's too many holes in the ship
i just need another couple lateral to plug the holes as we know from many this paranormal life
investigations wherever there's a curse there's a creepy origin story yeah that's how it works couple Adderall to plug the holes. As we know from many This Paranormal Life investigations,
wherever there's a curse, there's a creepy origin story. Yeah. That's how it works. They don't just
come out of nowhere. And Bangar Fort is no exception. One story takes us back to the fort's
earliest beginnings when it was first built by the king. The king was on a scouting mission,
checking out the surrounding lands to decide where everything would go, it was a blank canvas, completely untouched land. A 16th century empty Minecraft server
that he could start building on. Except, that is, for one tiny house on top of a hill that
overlooked the whole land. You see, in that house lived a little Yoda-looking holy man
called Baba Palaunath, and every day he would hike on the land,
meditating from sunrise to sunset.
When he heard about the plans to build a huge defensive fortress,
Baba Palaunath told the king,
You may have my blessing to build upon this land.
Thanks for that, mate. Nice one.
Not like I'm king or anything.
You're lucky I don't have you clubbed on the head for that.
Under one condition.
Build what you like.
Towers, walls, gates and castles.
But none should be as tall as my house on the hill.
If a single shadow from the fortress touches my walls and blocks out the sun,
there will be consequences.
Motherfucker!
Okay, just club him now.
The king had to resist calling his men to put this guy in a headlock.
But after all, he was a man of honor and he agreed.
The fort was built and they stuck to the agreement.
The holy man's house was still splashed in sun all day long, and a thriving town
grew into life around the fortress. Everyone was happy, everything was in balance. That is,
until the king died and was replaced by his grandson. When the grandson looked around,
he couldn't help but feel a little underwhelmed. walls were looking a little small he thought well that
wouldn't do he created huge new walls making it much taller than it was before and you guessed it
now blocking the sun from the old man's house all right we're gonna pause it right there how did the
king show up when the kingdom didn't exist and there's a 90 year old man on the mountaintop.
Now the entire kingdom is built. The king
is dead. His grandson is a man
and the old guy's still
up in the mountain and he's not dead.
I said he was like Yoda. A whole
civilization has been built
and he's like, too tall!
Have you been waiting for this moment?
It's been literally 300 years.
But what the new king hadn't understood
was that while this wrinkled old man looked harmless,
he was a holy man after all.
He had a power that the mere mortals
that lived alongside him could not understand.
The words of the man echoed in his ears.
There will be consequences, motherfucker.
The ground began to quake. The people of the town fled for cover, Wow. left are still standing to this day. It's said that more than half the entire population,
including the king, left overnight. Wow. I don't think you can call yourself
a holy man if you open up a portal to hell. Demogorgons just coming out. Fly, my pretties,
fly! It is Jesus's will! It's like, like is it though because a lot of these guys
are coming from downstairs
I do wonder
if that's a little bit
of a
translation issue
of course
Indian culture
completely different
yeah of course
so for example
I'm calling him a king
he was realistically
maybe a Raja
yep
holy man
holy man
doesn't mean Jesus
could be
death wizard.
Yeah, of course.
We don't know.
Spiritual. He's spiritual.
Yeah.
There's just something so funny about that. No, it's me, holy. Look, here's my buddy, Moses.
Moses has horns and a pitchfork. I don't think he had that in the Bible. He did.
He did. They didn't talk about it much.
But he did.
You're wearing an ACDC t-shirt.
You clearly bat for one side.
And I can tell which one it is.
This might sound crazy, but if you travel to this area, you'll notice something really strange.
None of the houses in this surrounding kind of abandoned region, none of them have a roof.
Every single roof has been destroyed or has collapsed.
Wow.
It's believed that this old man cursed the area so that no building would stand tall again.
And no matter how many times you try to build a roof on a building, it will collapse.
Tons of people have actually, sadly, been killed by their roof collapsing on top of them. For generations, people have tried and allegedly always comes out with the same result.
You know, I'd love to give this a shot myself,
but my career as a Jenga player is maybe an indication
that I should not be trusted with any form of construction.
No.
Really.
So if these people are having problems,
I think I definitely would too.
Rory sent a toddler to hospital
when he was playing Jenga in a pub in East London one week.
The tower came tumbling down on little Freddy's head.
So we can't let him near actual bricks and mortar.
So we will talk more on the hauntings later,
but what I want to focus on for now is this curse surrounding the building.
After all, that is supposedly what killed those boys in the beginning
and is the reason people are forbidden from entering the fort at night.
We're going to get into exactly what that curse is
right after some words from today's sponsors.
Rory, we've covered a lot of curses in the past.
Does that curse origin story make sense to you?
Kind of.
It's a bit of a hard one when we come up with stories like this
because you can have an amazing location, a great story based there as well,
that maybe there's some physical truth to the fact that there are no roofs,
the fact that there is a civilization that no longer lives there.
But when your origin of the curse is an old wizard that just said,
now there's a curse, those are always a little bit hard to take seriously as a paranormal case.
You think?
Little bit.
Little bit.
See, maybe I'm a simpler man than you, Rory.
I see a wizard.
He says the word curse.
I'm sold.
Double yes.
Well, it actually turns out that there's another explanation,
another curse story for why this region is cursed.
So we actually have a strange luxury today of getting to pick which one we prefer.
Okay, okay. Excited to hear option number two.
The other concerns a beautiful princess.
Oh, I'm in. Here we go.
The region was once home to a beautiful princess, Ratnavati.
She was so very lovely that she had the interest of rich and powerful suitors from all over the continent. But unfortunately for her, she was turning other heads, creepy heads, that only cared about her looks and what they could do to make her theirs.
Right.
One day, the princess was out at a market buying perfume
when she caught the attention of an
evil wizard. Okay,
I'm sorry.
I just, I just, I was really hoping
it was kind of going to be one of these things where it's like,
we have two choices. We have this one
that's like, you know, a cursed
old ancient man
living on the mountains who's a thousand years old.
Or we have like this one,
which is maybe like
a little bit more realistic,
like option number two,
which is a little more grounded.
So I just wasn't expecting.
It's a curse.
How grounded could it be?
I don't know.
Not involving a wizard maybe?
It's a paranormal curse.
Okay.
I just didn't know
both options were wizards.
It seems like wizards
could have been option one
and option two
could have been something else.
All right. Okay. But then have been option one, and option two could have been something else.
All right, okay.
But then we have option two, a wizard in green robes.
Aside from that, identical story.
All right.
Or three.
Some say he didn't have a beard.
The stories are quite different, and I would ask you to hold your tongue until I finish the story, which is almost over. Okay. She's picking up some Britney Spears fantasy at the marketplace.
An evil wizard shows up.
He sees her picking up the perfume.
It's a good scent.
He hatches a plan.
He has a vial of love potion hidden in his robes.
And when she's not looking, he swaps her perfume with the love potion.
She buys the quote unquote perfume and leaves the market and begins walking home, followed by the love potion. She buys the quote-unquote perfume
and leaves the market and begins walking home,
followed by the evil wizard.
This is arguably wilder than the first one.
I think you see where this is going.
He stops her and says,
why, what did you pick up from the market?
She explains that she picked up a wonderful perfume.
He says, oh, how lovely.
Do you want to try it?
Do you want to try it so that
I can smell it? Try it. Try it now in front of me. Use it. Drink it. I see. I see. She takes it out
and before she sprays it, she smells it and realizes she might be very lovely, but she's also
wasn't born yesterday. And she remembers that is not the scent that she bought at the market. She realizes what's going on and she throws the vial of love potion.
It hits a giant round boulder that was right next to the evil wizard.
All right.
And I'm not f***ing making this up.
The boulder rolls over and crushes the evil wizard.
Option one.
Option one I prefer now.
Almost done here.
Almost done.
Crushed under this giant Indiana Jones round boulder,
he says,
Curse this town.
Once I'm dead, let no other soul survive.
The very next morning,
the fort, its town, and all its people
had been invaded by an enemy army,
decimating all of it.
Okay. Okay.
Wow.
That was pretty moving as well,
as kind of fascinating and paranormal.
Let's move on.
What else are we talking about today?
Sorry, but out of the two,
is one of those jumping out to you
as more likely to get us a yes today?
No, neither.
I didn't think that was going to be something
that I could even conclude on, but no.
Do I think it was Yoda summoning demons to crack the land?
Right.
Or do I think it was a magical princess and a love potion?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Is option number three a Scottish ogre and a talking donkey
that went there?
Well, now you mention it. There is some other explanations
that if you have time for, we could get into.
I'm fine. I think I'm fine.
All right, we'll move on.
Okay, I'm sensing quite a lot of animosity,
I will say, from Rory about where this story is going.
So maybe we should think quickly about...
What?
I'm so f***ing stupid.
What?
That was so f***ing stupid.
The backstory, the level that we're talking about this case is no different if you had sat down tonight and it's like,
our story begins with three little piglets that decided one day to build a house.
Rumors have it that allegedly a wolf, both big and bad, descended upon the piggies. Bullshit. Bullshit.
That's what we're talking about! Bullshit.
It's the exact same thing. You're talking about a magical princess and love potions and a boulder falling on a wizard.
Alright, if you're not gonna take me seriously, how about you take seriously the head of the Indian
Society of the Paranormal.
And yeah, he wears a robe and a pointy hat, but that's just his vibe.
The BBC interviewed the head of the Indian Paranormal Society, Siddharth Bandwal.
You have all kinds of animals making different sounds.
There are a bunch of monkeys who stay inside.
Mostly they take shelters on the trees that are around them. So there are branches that shake, there are
leaves that rustle and it definitely creates a very spooky kind of a voice. Most probably there
is a psychological impact that has been created maybe by the people who stay there or maybe in
general because of all these tales or all these stories that are revolving around the place.
We've been to Bhangarh multiple times.
Our team was the first one to actually visit Bhangarh back in 2012 itself.
That was the first time a paranormal team had visited that place.
It had stayed for the night there and it had investigated thoroughly.
The preliminary investigation that we do, it's all based on the readings that we get.
We didn't find any unusual fluctuations or there was not much activity as such, to be very honest.
Shut this off.
Oh, crap.
Sorry.
Sorry, I was supposed to hit stop on that before.
Before he said there was nothing there.
He didn't say that.
I think he said we didn't get any readings of anything and we didn't find much, to be honest.
Yeah, and I'm sure it's cut from the episode, but listeners should know, before Kit played that clip,
he accidentally played a clip that happens way later in this video, where the guy says that all the rustling and noises is basically caused
by wild monkeys.
Did I mention that
right next to this fort
is a tiger reservation?
I don't think so.
Yeah, there's a lot
of f***ing animals
around, man.
There's a lot of animals.
I'm just saying
there's a chance.
The kid basically went,
I think that you're
going to find this evidence
pretty convincing.
Hits play. As you can see, it's monkeys. All monkeys. Always has been, I think that you're going to find this evidence pretty convincing. Hits play.
As you can see, it's monkeys. All monkeys
always has been, always will be.
Shut that down! Shut it down!
Yeah, we were the
first paranormal team that ever went, and we didn't
find anything. I will say,
some people think
that the reason no one
comes back after visiting
at night is because there's a lot of tigers and panthers.
And monkeys, bro.
Monkeys will kill you.
Yeah.
There's a chance.
There's a chance that these people might die on the way back or in the fort because there's so many dangerous wild animals around.
And I'm going to say it right now.
If you are eaten by a tiger or a panther or bitten by a monkey with rabies inside of the fort, that is not the curse of the fort. That is the
nature of the jungle taking effect. That is, you could say that is the law of the jungle.
I did want to point out something cool though. I found an interesting through line from this
investigation to a long ago past TPL investigation. Okay, all right.
At this bit where it showed the Indian Paranormal Society
going on location, measuring it,
I thought to myself, that bloke in there,
those images look weirdly familiar.
Do you remember them?
No, I don't think so.
We did a story years ago.
I don't really remember whether it was a main episode
or a bonus or whatever,
but the man in that image,
the first person to investigate Bangar Fort
in person from a paranormal team
and society of investigators
was a man called Gaurav Tiwari.
He was a paranormal investigator famous all over India
until he sadly died in kind of much,
let's say much talked about circumstances.
Very young, he died in 2016.
Wow.
And I think we talked about it before
because the chat at the time in India
and in the paranormal community was,
this guy has investigated so many f***ed up cursed places.
There's no way him dying young
wasn't a result of a curse and the temptation is of course with this uh to connect it to
Bangar Fort sadly just to be completely honest with the listeners from what I've gathered it
seems that he died of suicide so there was a there was a lot of uh there was a lot of chat
at the time we even talked about it on the podcast
because I guess for a while people didn't know.
And there was a bit of fun of like,
oh, like this guy talked about, you know, the MIB.
He's like us.
He's talking about the MIB.
He's talking about the powers that be out there
shutting the paranormal down.
To be clear, that is not what happened.
What was the other case that he popped up in?
Do you remember that we did?
I think I don't actually
remember it might have honestly just been about him oh uh so yeah it's someone we've talked about
a lot before uh so really cool to see him i should say he actually founded started the indian
paranormal society wow oh so r.i.p man that's sad to lose a homie he left quite a legacy um
and really cool that i mean it just goes to show how, I guess, honest he was.
Because his team went, they looked into it, and he said, to be honest, we didn't find anything.
Nothing here.
A lot of monkeys.
They are not paranormal.
They're just very angry.
I'm going to keep it real with you, Chief.
I did not get to present that final piece of evidence in the manner that I would have hoped.
But that being said, I have done my duty as a paranormal investigator.
I have presented to you in its entirety the history of Bangar Fort,
India's quote unquote most haunted site,
the reasons for why it may be cursed to this very day
and the findings of some talented paranormal investigators on the ground.
Where's your head at? What are you thinking about this case?
You know, it's interesting to get a nice mix
on this paranormal life.
Yeah, previous episodes this year that I've investigated,
I've brought to the table photographs
of declassified government documentation,
even pictures of actual UFOs or testimonies from witnesses
that are actual audio recordings.
And then we've got other great evidence, like Kit telling stories about wizards,
like Lord of the Rings or f***ing Harry Potter.
It's all good stuff.
You want to go toe-to-toe?
We recorded a recent episode where Rory got extremely angry with me.
We don't know if it's out yet.
For a case where he got extremely angry with me. We don't know if it's out yet. We don't know if it's out yet. For a case where
he got extremely angry
for a case that
there was no physical evidence.
You didn't show me a photo
or whatever. There was
a lot of testimony. I actually had a picture I forgot
to show you.
Well, that's extremely convenient.
Oh, you know what? I'm just closing
my laptop because the investigation is done.
But, oh, I had a bunch of photos I'm going to show you, bud.
We still got time.
Open that puppy up and show me a picture of the wizard.
Oh, out of battery.
Out of battery.
So we'll have to use our imaginations.
All right.
Well, all I'll have to go on is just everything that you said so far,
which was two bedtime stories and a picture of some rocks on Google.
And a story that I don't even know where it came from,
about three kids getting hit by a truck.
Well, that really happened.
So RIP to those kids.
Did it?
It did.
From where?
Where did you hear that?
How did we have their dialogue from inside the building?
Local Times people tell that story to this day.
Okay.
Okay.
Hey, look, it's an interesting story.
I can't say it's one that I necessarily believe there's an inch of truth to.
We're just looking at an old timey civilization.
Natural disasters happen all the time.
Regular disasters happen all the time.
I mean, for example, look at where we grew up, the case of Dunluce Castle, which is an old castle built on the cliffside near our hometown,
where at one point in the history of the castle,
there was erosion in the cliffs and the entire banquet hall
fell off into the ocean and everyone died.
I think, to be fair, there is a curse story around that.
Of course, of course there is about a wizard or someone not being happy
or a princess or a king or something, because anytime something like that happens, that's going to be a way you can tell that story.
It's a lot more interesting than saying, yeah, see what actually happens is the waves crashing against the shore eventually jeopardize the structural integrity of the cliffs and eventually through erosion the cliffs will become structurally
unsound and the castle will become susceptible to damage or you'll say a long time ago
there was a man in a little hut people are going to remember the man in the little hut right uh
they're not going to want to tell stories pass them down to their grandkids about the erosion
of uh the world's coasts.
And I think that's probably what happened today.
It's not interesting to tell the story of the fort that fell down.
It is interesting to talk about love potions and beautiful princesses and evil wizards getting banged by boulders.
Yeah, there was a bit in that video I didn't show you where they said they probably just ran out of water.
So, yeah, I would say... They ran out of water. So yeah, I would say-
They ran out of water and killed each other with rocks. It was pretty grisly. We're not
proud of it, but that is what happened because historians documented it.
Yeah. For what it's worth, I'm on the same page as you. With this case, I was excited to look into
it. I mean, I still really enjoyed researching it, but I was slightly surprised. Now, this could also be a language buyer thing,
but I was slightly surprised at the frequent
and braggadocious claim that this is the most haunted site
in India that would lead us as paranormal investigators
to believe that there would be bountiful pictures
or videos or strange occurrences that witnesses had had,
you know, just something to chew on in terms of like, I saw a ghost.
I saw this, this moved.
This, even just, I was walking through
and a boulder almost hit me.
Something, anything.
Yeah.
But from all my searching, I really found nothing.
And I watched quite a few videos
of people even talking about it,
even reading the YouTube comments.
Tons of people going,
yep, I stayed overnight, literally nothing.
Even our friends in the Indian Paranormal Society, they're saying we looked and we got next to nothing.
So we may be, in this case, respectfully have to say it's really fun.
But until we see more evidence, this might be more tourist marketing than a kind of much more than that.
A hundred percent. And that's nonsense because I feel like we've investigated cases on this
podcast before in India that have had better evidence that was a lot more convincing. I mean,
there's the thing you can give anything the name. This is actually the most haunted X in Y. It's
not like a Guinness world record. You don't need a plaque to prove it. People just throw that shit
around all the time. Oh, this is actually the most haunted hotel in the UK. Oh, this is the most
haunted bathtub in all of Bed Bath & Beyond. You don't need a qualification to say that. So people
chuck that shit around everywhere. But you can tell when a case has some genuine paranormal
footing. It's a no. It's a no. Double no. For today on the case of the Bangar Fort.
But thank you so much
to everyone who wrote in
and suggested it.
Really appreciate it.
Nice to get back to India.
We haven't done a case there
in a little while,
but we have,
well, there's been some great ones
over the years.
The Delhi shadow monkey,
for one.
That was genuinely
more paranormal.
That had more evidence
than this case did.
And that did involve a monkey.
So it could be tied in to this place.
Is this his home?
We don't know.
We do not know.
Thank you, of course, to Amy Grisdale for researching that case.
And thank you to Philip Shacklady for editing.
Unfortunately, it is a double no, because, you know, with these paranormal cases, we
take it very seriously.
To get that elusive double yes, you need a convincing story.
You need witness testimonies.
You, huh, huh.
I guess that's kind of everything I had when I did my story, but now I think about it.
That's weird.
Yeah, a little bit of a lack of evidence, I would say.
Yeah, there's a lot of evidence.
There's a lot of evidence.
It's pretty actually convincing.
Yeah, I don't-
You need reliable witnesses.
I actually recall pictures, though.
I guess they were kind of reliable
because they were all in the f***ing military
and they were pilots of planes.
They said they were in the military,
but between you and me,
they were just f***ing guys with mustaches.
Yeah.
I don't recall laying eyes on any kind of alien,
like anything that would be paranormal, though,
is a thing.
Like anything like a grey or like a UFO.
Like I didn't see anything, you know? The picture's here somewhere. that would be paranormal though is the thing like anything like like a gray or like a ufo like i
didn't see i didn't see anything you know i the picture is here somewhere
the f***ed up thing is we don't even because we're recording these out of order we don't even know
where this is lying so we might be giving some s*** away i'm showing you figure even this if
this is out of order then people are gonna find it even funny this is gonna be this picture is there's a lot a lot of weight a lot of pressure on this
picture yeah trust me it's gonna do nothing to convince you you want to see a picture of the
ufo kit look at that all right he's just shown me the lights off in his apartment and i guess
there's some philips Hue lights on the background.
Maybe a fire pit.
Maybe this is a barbecue somewhere.
That was taken of the craft that night.
Those are not regular lights.
That is firsthand evidence of the UFO,
and it's too late.
We're not going to argue about it anymore, all right?
Because the Rorians, strong and true,
have taken up their position in the paranormal commune.
All right, all right, all right. the Rorians, strong and true, have taken up their position in the paranormal commune. Alright, alright,
alright. Hey, hey,
I don't know if we're going to have some Bangar truthers. There might be some people
in the commune who've been to it and have said,
f*** you, I've seen the ghosts.
So I would love to hear from them, too.
Yeah, get in touch. Right into this Paranormal Life
podcast at gmail.com or hit us
up on socials. The links to all of them are in the
description of this podcast.
Probably email me directly because now that we know Kit is working for the bad guys,
he'll just delete all those emails before I can even look at them.
So probably just best to do it to me.
Yeah, cool.
Do you want to give your personal email address on the podcast so people can get that too?
DM me on Twitter.
DM me on Twitter or Instagram.
Like convincing shit.
And if you're interested in joining uh shit and if you're interested in
joining sorry if you're interested in joining my team the roryans uh do get in touch because
numbers are low we've kind of the rally wasn't quite as strong as we want so we're always looking
for new members right yeah we're always looking for new members who really believe in the which
for reference is kind of it's like team jacob you know team whatever uh you don't even know the
second guy which is offensive which is a bit like this one it's like i don't even know the second guy, which is offensive, which is a bit like this one. It's like, I don't even care about your side to the extent that I don't even know the
name.
Edward cares about Jacob.
Let me tell you,
he does.
He's worried.
He's worried.
He's going to move in on Bella.
And if you want to see us argue in HD,
head on over to YouTube,
search this paranormal life or follow the link in this description,
or hit us up on socials.
We're on Tik TOok on instagram and twitter and you can catch clips of tpl of new episodes coming out every week hell yeah of course
the other place to get us is over on patreon.com huge back catalog of bonus episodes and after
parties behind the scenes content along with many other cool rewards, including a shout out at the end of an episode.
Whoa!
And I appreciate, like I say, we might be recording these out of order.
So don't be alarmed if you're waiting on yours and you're not hearing it this week.
But because of how we're recording these, I am shouting out just one person this week.
So thank you so much to Jim Morphous Gas.
Jim is less of a human and more of a, you guessed it, amorphous gas.
Okay, that's fine.
Morphous gases can still pay tax money.
So welcome to the commune.
Wow, that's all you care about.
It's not all I care about.
I also want to know if he's poisonous or not.
Right, sure.
Because if he is, go join Kit's side of the commune, brother.
I think you're going to in real real good over there
and make yourself cozy spread yourself around all those delting thomases go on wow so much
animosity jim i think you know where the good vibes are happening and it is over in the kittens
side thank you jim for your support thank you to everyone who's supporting us on patreon and
everyone who's just listening to this,
shout out to you guys for making this very thing possible.
We're going to be back on Tuesday
with another brand new paranormal argument.
And of course, over on Patreon
on Fridays and later in the month
with bonus episodes.
Whoa, so much cool shit.
So we will see you next time
in another new part of the world,
hopefully for another brand new paranormal tale.
Bye-bye, folks.