Spend five minutes on any Indian social feed this year and you'll trip over the same debate: which of Bollywood's new ghosts is scariest? Between Stree 2's headless Sarkata snatching people right out of Chanderi, Munjya's lovesick tree-spirit, and the steady march of folk monsters into theatres, desi horror has quietly become a whole cinematic universe. But here's the part I love about all this — almost none of these creatures were invented in a writers' room. They were haunting our villages long before a single camera rolled.
Most of us keep a private list of horror films said to be based on real stories. And if you've been anywhere near Indian cinema since 2018, you've heard people argue about Stree — the film that manages to be genuinely funny and genuinely creepy at the same time. Directed by Amar Kaushik and produced by Dinesh Vijan, it won audiences twice over by leaning on Indian folklore. But where did its ghost actually come from? Buckle up — this one has chapters.
The Legend That Started It All: Nale Ba
Stree translates to "woman" in Hindi, and it drew on ghost stories that had been passed down through generations. This Rajkummar Rao and Shraddha Kapoor starrer is based on a real urban legend from the nineties. Yes, not all that long ago.
In that decade, in the area around Bengaluru — the Silicon Valley of India, or Bharat — people knew the phrase Nale Ba, which means Kal Aana in Hindi, or Come Tomorrow in English. That is exactly the line chalked on the walls of houses in the film, meant to keep the ghost from attacking.
Here is the story as people told it back then. A witch — or ghost — would target men by knocking on doors at night. Any man who opened the door after hearing the knock would be found dead the next day. The spirit was said to call out in the voice of a loved one, which is what made men open the door in the first place. The only defence was to shout Nale Ba from inside the house; on hearing it, the ghost would retreat and wait for the next day, and the cycle would repeat.
Do not be surprised if you spot "Nale Ba" written on the walls of some old houses in Bengaluru even today. They can still be found. The film moved the action to the town of Chanderi in Madhya Pradesh, but director Amar Kaushik has acknowledged that the story came straight from Bengaluru.
Stree 2 and the Headless Sarkata
Here's the twist that lit up fandom in August 2024. Stree 2, released on Independence Day, went on to become the highest-grossing Hindi film of the year, and it carried a brand-new monster: Sarkata, "the headless one." Sar means head and kata means cut, and this ghost spends the film abducting people from Chanderi while the old gang scrambles to bring Stree back.
Now for the legend hiding behind that name. In Lansdowne, a small cantonment town in Uttarakhand, locals have told the story of a headless ghost for generations. By their telling, the spirit rides a horse through the cantonment at night, guarding the town. Soldiers who fall asleep on duty reportedly get a sharp tap as a warning — depending on who is narrating, it is either a comfort or the stuff of nightmares.
Who is this spectre? As local lore tells it, the spirit belongs to a British officer, W. H. Wardell, who commanded the Lansdowne Cantonment over a century ago. He marched off to fight in the First World War and never came back — his body was never recovered, and so, the story goes, his ghost returned to the post he loved. Whether that is history or hearsay, nobody can say for certain. What we do know is that the film borrowed only the legend's shape and built a very different creation from it.
Meet the Munjya
While Stree 2 was smashing records, its studio quietly released another folklore film that charmed its way to a hit: Munjya, set around Pune and the Konkan coast. Its monster is straight out of Maharashtrian tradition.
Munjya is a very specific kind of ghost. In Hindu custom, a boy goes through the sacred-thread ceremony — often called the munja or upanayana — around the age of seven, when he takes the girdle of munja grass and begins his life as a student. A boy who died after that ceremony but before marriage could not move on, the belief went, and his restless spirit became a Munjya — a clever, sometimes childlike bachelor ghost said to live in peepal trees and trouble travellers after dark.
Here's the detail I like most: the Munjya is not even considered fully evil. He is more of a mischief-maker — sharp-witted enough to speak several languages, quick to pelt stones at anyone who defiles his tree. There is even a wonderfully boring practical theory behind the fear: peepal trees release carbon dioxide at night, which is as good a reason as any not to linger under one when it's dark. The film, directed by Aditya Sarpotdar and written by Niren Bhatt — the same writer behind Stree 2 and Bhediya — turns its spirit into a lovestruck ghost simply desperate to get married, and a computer-generated Munjya that fans took straight to their hearts.
One Universe, Many Legends
Here's what made all of this news. Maddock Films has been quietly stitching these films together into a shared universe — India's answer to a certain superhero franchise. It began with Stree in 2018, added the werewolf story Bhediya in 2022, then Munjya and Stree 2 in 2024, with Thama following over Diwali in 2025. Characters keep crossing over between films, and every single one is rooted in a different piece of Indian folklore.
And they are nowhere close to done: the announced slate includes Chamunda, Bhediya 2, Stree 3 and Maha Munjya, building toward an epic two-part finale. Whatever you think of the films, there is something quietly wonderful about a studio betting on our own ghost stories instead of importing someone else's.
How True Is Any of It?
Let's talk honestly, because this matters. None of these films is a documentary. Stree was fiction wrapped around the Nale Ba legend; Stree 2 borrowed the Sarkata name and shape and spun its own yarn; Munjya dressed a real folk belief in a comedy about marriage. Folklore itself is a living thing — every village tells it a little differently, and the details blur the further back you go. What is true is that these stories are old, they are wide, and they shaped real habits in real towns, from chalked warnings on Bengaluru walls to soldiers staying awake on night duty.
So next time someone swears that Stree was based on a true story, you'll be in on the secret: nearly every ghost you're watching was somebody's grandmother's bedtime story first. And honestly, that's what makes them scarier — and a lot more lovable. Keep an ear out for the next one; the legend train isn't slowing down.