Tower of Silence - A True Story - Real Ghost Stories

On January 19, 2003 Indian officials were venturing into the jungle after receiving several missing persons reports from a nearby city. What they found can only be described as "disturbing".

What they found was a “Tower of Silence,” or Dakhma.

Zoroastrians use these sites to dispose of bodies in the open air.

While sites like these are not uncommon in certain parts of India, several peculiarities hint at something more unusual.

There are around 70,000 active members of the religion called Zoroastrianism, which dispose of their dead in this manner. The believe the soul cannot truly be freed until it is eaten by vultures and contributes back to the earth. They found a large amount of bodies at the sight. The strange thing about this instance is that there were no animals to be found other than maggots on the bodies themselves, and that the bodies the officials were able to look at did not look like any birds had been eating the bodies which is highly unusual.

There is no official count of the bodies.

The deep pit in the center of the Dakhma known as the Ossuary had a pool of festering blood in it that they estimated had to be over a foot deep and was far more than the bodies around the central circle could have produced even if they were fully drained. The stench emanating from the central pit was so unbearable that many of the people became nauseated as soon as they neared it.

The officials had photographs of the missing persons and they could not identify any of the bodies as the people who were missing. They also noted that many of the bodies were of people in their mid-20's to 30's, not something that is usual in these situations.

The officials and a few villagers were only at the site for 45 minutes to an hour before the expedition was ended.

A villager accidentally kicked a small bone into the pit, penetrating the coagulated surface of the blood pool. A massive burst of gas from the decomposing blood erupted from the pit, splashing those looking into it and around it. Normally blood would not cause this to happen even if it was out in the sun for long periods of time. Something else was added to blood in the pit.

Those caught in the explosion were immediately sent to the hospital, where they were quarantined for possible infection. They became delirious with fever, shouting about “being tainted with the blood of Ahriman” (the personification of evil in Zoroastrianism), despite never having admitted having any familiarity with the religion.

In fact, many of them had no idea what the Dakhma was when they had found it. Delirium turned to insanity as many began to attack hospital staff until they were sedated. The fever eventually killed all of them.

Indian officials organized another trip to the Dakhma in order to investigate further. They had full HAZMAT gear and medical staff at the ready in case another incident happened like the day before.

When they arrived at the site, all the bodies had been removed and, astonishingly, the pool of blood in the pit had been drained.

There were no traces of the bodies.

A few of the officials repelled down into the pit, where they found several grates on the ground and walls that had pipes attached to them. The blood stains on the walls went roughly a few feet up.

Officials also sent samples of the blood back to the lab, and when it was tested the results were mostly inconclusive, but over 1,000 unique DNA identifiers were found meaning the blood in the pit was from 1,000 different bodies.

When they tried to use sonar imaging to find out where the pipes went, they could find no evidence of the pipes anywhere outside of the central stone tower.

Indian Officials have kept an eye on the Dakhma since 2003 and have had no reports except for curious villagers looking to see the site.

Some speculate that the officials had interrupted a worship to Ahriman and the site was a profane shrine to him and when the bone fell into the blood it messed up the ritual so Ahriman punished those closest to the pit and that the bodies and blood were moved to another location where they will not be bothered.

There are at least two other Dakhmas in the area.