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The Ghost Temple of Gata Loops: A Haunting Tale on Manali-Leh Road

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A huge pile of trash marks on the side of Manali-Leh Road by the Gata Loops marks the grave and the ghost temple put up for a ghost allegedly haunting the area after dying in a snowstorm. What is the strange story behind The Ghost Temple of Gata Loops?

Are you planning an adventurous road trip from Manali to Leh in the Indian mountains of Himachal Pradesh? Chances are you’ll pass through the famous Gata Loops along the way through the mountainous landscape, a pretty unknown place except for the locals. While this stretch of road is known for its challenging 21 hairpin bends, it also holds a spine-tingling story that travelers often encounter.

Read more: Check out all of the ghost stories from India

Gata Loops, true to its name, is a series of winding and looping roads that form 21 hairpin bends. Situated on the Manali-Leh road at an elevation of approximately 17,000 feet, these loops stretch over 10.3 kilometers, with each loop spanning between 300-600 meters. However, the last two loops deviate from this pattern, being 800 and 1,000 meters long, respectively.

Gata Loops in the Indian Mountains: Sharp turns, remote mountainous area and treacherous weather can make driving on the Gata Loops on Manali Road dangerous and one particular ghost story about one who died on these roads have given rise to its own ghost temple at the side of the road.

What is the Ghost Temple in Manali

Among the bikers hiking up the mountains, or travelers passing through, they gather around and tell tales of mystery about the area. One of those tales is about the strange Ghost Temple of Gata Loops with a harrowing story behind it. 

A huge pile of trash and plastic water bottles and cigarettes marks the place of the Ghost Temple in Manali at around the 19th bend of the Gata Loops. But what exactly is it, and who is the ghost haunting this particular stretch of road?

Read more: Check out all of the Haunted Roads around the world

Exactly when this happened varies according to those that tell it. Some place it in 1999, perhaps an October night. A truck carrying goods found itself in a dire situation as the winters in these parts can be quite treacherous. 

The Ghost Temple of Manali-Leh Road: On the loops of Manali-Leh Road, a pile of trash have collected around the believed ghost temple of a driver that supposedly died and haunts these parts. //Source: The Ghost Of Gata Loops – Vargis Khan

While trucks are known to navigate these loops, for those seeking a less challenging route, shortcuts are available. The steeply elevated roads are wide enough for trucks, making them a preferred choice for transporting goods.

Crossing the treacherous Rohtang Pass during the cold autumn going to winter night when it had already snowed in places, this truck faced mechanical problems and the trucker was unable to fix it. With no help in sight and facing harsh weather conditions, the driver and his assistant helper decided to wait for assistance.

A Desperate Journey

The driver embarked on a challenging walk to the nearest village, Sarchu, to find a mechanic, leaving his unwell helper behind to protect the cargo. However, heavy snowfall held the driver and stopped him from returning.

Several days later, when the weather cleared, the driver returned to find his helpmate’s lifeless body. The severe cold, hunger, and thirst had claimed his life. Local villagers buried the deceased by the road’s 19th bend that soon turned into The Ghost Temple of Gata Loops.

The Ghostly Apparition of The Ghost Temple of Gata Loops

Over the years, travelers reported encountering a young man along their journey who sought water and provisions close to The Ghost Temple of Gata Loops. Those who stopped and gave the man a water bottle saw it slipped right through his hands. 

The Ghost Temple of Gata Loops: Source

Believing this figure to be the ghost of the deceased helper, local villagers established a small shrine to placate his spirit. Passersby often leave mineral water and cigarettes at the shrine to prevent potential wrath or calamities along the way.

What happened that winter night is hard to prove or disprove. People are still giving away water to the bricks that make a little clearing by The Ghost Temple of Gata Loops. Inside it is a real human skull placed inside. Or so the saying goes at least. 

Regardless, some travelers claim to have experienced the apparition of the ghostly helper around the area of The Ghost Temple of Gata Loops. If you dare to venture along this eerie path, tread with caution, but remember that a world of enchanting landscapes awaits you beyond Gata Loops.

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References:

https://gomissing.in/blog/travel/ladakh/ghost-of-gata-loops-other-mysteries-of-leh-ladakh

The Ghost Of The Gata Loops | TDA Global Cycling 

Do you know of the ghost temple on Gata Loops on Manali-Leh Road? | Times of India TravelThe Ghost Of Gata Loops – Vargis Khan

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Ghosts of the Tsunami

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The tsunami disaster in 2011 left large parts of Japan in ruins. And some of the people never being found, are still trying to reach home it seems. This is the story of the Ghosts of the Tsunami.

It was a totally normal day. At least the morning was. It was supposed to be a totally normal day in 2011. It was mid day, so everyone was at work, busy filing papers, building buildings that would soon be torn down. Children sat in class at school, trying to learn something they would get on a test some would never even take. It was supposed to be a normal day. But then, the tsunami hit. Several tsunamis, up to about 10 metres rushed in over the coast of Japan after a massive earthquake.

Read Also: Check our all of our ghost stories from Japan

The event was known as 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami or Great East Japan Earthquake  (東日本大震災). It was the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in Japan, and the fourth most powerful earthquake in the world since modern record-keeping began in 1900 with a magnitude of 9.1.

The earthquake triggered powerful tsunami waves that may have reached heights of up to 40.5 meters (133 ft) in Miyako in Tōhoku’s Iwate Prefecture and people got as little as ten minutes to evacuate before it hit them.

After the waves of the tsunami hit, the entire city of Ishinomaki by the coast of Japan would never be the same again. After six minutes the entire city was under water and taking six thousand of the population with it. Half of those have not even been found. Soon after the survivor started talking about the ghosts of the tsunami that never found their way home.

The Tragedy of the Primary School

One of the big tragedies that the tsunami created was the primary schools that were affected. Especially what happened at the  Ishinomaki primary school, the city with most deaths. 70 of the 180 students was sitting in the classrooms that morning would never finish school.

When the teachers of the school finally got a notification of the oncoming tsunami, they were put in an impossible situation and spent too long making a decision if they should evacuate or not. And when they first group of children tried to run away the teacher chose a route that would lead them right were the tsunami hit and the teachers and students disappeared in the chaos as they tried to cross a bridge on their way to safety.

Massive destruction: The destruction was massive on that fateful day, like taking out an entire school. Many thinks that the victims came back as the ghosts of the tsunami. / Ishinomaki, Miyagi Japan/wikimedia

Later it was exactly the teachers that were blamed for the death of the towns children. A year later one of the teachers committed suicide, burdened by guilt and responsible of the children they weren’t able to rescue. Only the ruins of the school was left when the water retreated, and the ghosts of children was left in the form of the extra shoes, the homework that would never be done and the toys that would never be played with, ever again.

Ghost Passengers in Taxis

Over the decade since the tsunami hit, the echo of the humans that got their life broken by the power of nature. Several reports over the years tells that it’s been seen people that wanders headless, without arms and without legs in the places that was badly affected by the natural disaster. It is not just a particular name or person that is said to haunt the place. It is what we may call a Mass Haunting of the ghosts of the tsunami.

Read Also: Another example of a mass haunting after one particular incident is the The Haunting on Jeju Island in Korea

The ghosts of the tsunami wander the streets, on the hunt after the city they knew when they were alive. Many of the cities had to be completely rebuilt after the disaster and there is not much left of the place before the tsunami took it too the sea. The ghosts of the tsunami stands in line outside of the ruins of shops that were taken by the wave and walks the streets that are no longer there.

Vanishing Hitchhikers: Over the years, taxis in the affected area have reported about passengers they think might have been ghosts of the tsunami. Many taxi drivers talk about picking up passengers of confused ghosts that doesn’t recognize the city that had to be rebuilt after the tsunami.

Perhaps it’s not so weird then, that so many of these stories about the ghosts of the tsunami are told by taxi drivers that they think can guide them home. We have a lot of research and reports on this phenomena thanks to the many rumours about it and a particular university student who wanted to look closer at this phenomenon a few years back.

Yuka Kudo did her investigation on the haunted taxi drivers picking up ghosts of the tsunami as part of a school assignment. She tried to interview drivers about strange encounters they had while out driving. Most of them told her no and ignored her, perhaps not having experienced anything of the sorts. Perhaps it was because they had experienced too much. But those taxi driver who were willing to talk, told of many experiences with ghost passengers, looking for their home that no longer existed after the tsunami.

Read Also: Check out more ghost hitchhiking stories like The Hitchhiking Woman in White in Palavas-les-Flots, The Jayuro Road Ghost, The Ghost Bride at the Devil’s Curve and The Vanishing Hitchhiker

The stories about the ghosts of the tsunami told from the taxi drivers are very similar to one another. All the taxi drivers are sure they pick up completely normal passengers that are alive and well and know were they are going. The taxi drivers let the meter running and are told to go to a specific place. But when they arrive, there are never any passengers in the back seat, even if they had no stops on the way and the backseat door never opened or closed during the drive. Another thing is that the passengers, all seems so young, so full of life.

“Young people feel strongly chagrined (at their deaths) when they cannot meet people they love,” Yuko Kudo says about her findings after interviewing them. “As they want to convey their bitterness, they may have chosen taxis, which are like private rooms, as a medium to do so,” she says about the ghosts the taxi drivers encounters on a regular basis in the areas most affected by the natural disaster.

The Ghosts of the Tsunami in the Destroyed District

One of the stories involving a ghost of the tsunami happened in Ishinomaki in northeastern Miyagi Prefecture in Japan. This is as mentioned one of the cities that experienced most deaths and destructions to the city, and not much was left.

One of the men working as a taxi driver told that a young woman sat in the taxi near Ishinomaki station once, only a couple of months after the tsunami disaster. The incident was still fresh, many of the dead had not even been found and there was a lot of confusion going on. As of 17 June 2011, a total of 3,097 deaths had been confirmed in Ishinomaki due to the tsunami, with 2,770 unaccounted for. The female passenger told the taxi driver to go to Minamihama, a district in the town.

Read more: Check out all of our ghost stories involving Haunted Towns and Cities

The taxi driver reacted to her destination. He wondered why she wanted to go there anymore. Because it was one of the districts in town there was nothing left of after the tsunami had powered its way through and left nothing. He asked her about it and it was a silence from the backseat a while before the young woman said: “Have I died?” The driver turned, but there was no one in the backseat anymore.

The Collective Trauma of Ghosts

So exactly what is the particular nature of the ghosts of the tsunamis? One might be tempted to call them a process and thing of a collective trauma that the entire community had to start processing at the same time. No wonder that the concept of ghosts are easier to believe in than the aftershock the natural disaster left entire cities in.

It is convenient maybe, so many ghosts trapped in one place after one particular event. Perhaps it’s more convenient for the people left and a way to grieve the loss of too many at once. The ghosts of the tsunami acts like echo of all those people disappeared, those they could not rescue, and those they would never see again.

Seeing the ghosts of the tsunami, at least means they are not completely gone.

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