Monsoon ghost stories

Some ghost tales stem from moods and changes triggered by the monsoons. Shaped from the peculiarities of the rainy season, these horror stories take the form of urban legends and myths shared through verbal storytelling between friends, drinking circles, family and strangers who want to share a rush of adrenaline with warning. Here are two such monsoon ghost stories still in circulation as urban myths in Sri Lanka.

One life every monsoon: the story of Samudradevi’s spirit haunting Diyawanna 

The Diyawanna, where the parliament sits on serene waters, is a lake surrounded by a protected wetland and some little-known ruins of the Kotte kingdom. An urban legend tells the story of a haunting that takes place around Diyawanna every year when the monsoons flood the waterways, raising the water levels. The story says the ghost of Samudradevi, a Kotte-era princess who drowned in the Diyawanna, haunts its boundaries during the rainy season.

Samudradevi was the Kotte king’s daughter. She was married to the nobleman and hotheaded royal commander Veediyabandara. It was a troubling time for the Kotte kingdom, with the Portuguese invaders inching ever closer to the kingdom’s centre of power, making the seasoned warrior Veediyabandara one of the most important assets to the king. So much so that when Veediyabandara heard about a rumoured affair between his wife, Samudradevi and the Portuguese court officer Deigo de Silva, he didn’t hesitate to murder her. Historical lore says that enraged Veediyabandara took Samudradevi to the edge of Diyawanna Lake and pushed her in where the currents were known to be unforgiving. Veediyabandara evaded punishment and was eventually forgiven by the king for his services to the kingdom.

This is where historical details get woven into an urban myth. With no justice for her murder, Samudradevi’s spirit is said to wait along the borders of Diyawanna. When the monsoons flood the surrounding wetlands, expanding the borders of Diyawanna, her spirit can roam further with the waters, searching for a sacrificial soul. In Sri Lankan ghost lore, there is a shared concept of a recurring 'claim' of a living soul demanded by a restless spirit to appease itself for a time; a grim negotiation between the living and the dead when a haunting becomes cyclical, revisiting the same place year after year. Each 'claim' buys a temporary peace, holding the haunting at bay until the debt comes due again. The story goes that the claim sought by Samudradevi’s spirit was due every monsoon, and anywhere along the borders of Diyawanna was game. The urban myth claims that her favoured hunting spots are near the current Waters Edge lake border and the wetland west of the Diyawanna bridge, where Samudradevi is said to have drowned. It appears to be a story that was fed by the works of Diyawanna’s deceptive currents and whirlpools that strengthen during the monsoons, as well as crocodiles that hunt along the lake border and the surrounding wetlands. Before the area was tamed with public parks and markets, there would be a drowning or a disappearance now and then, resurfacing the story of Samudradevi’s haunting of the Diyawanna.

Monsoon Mohini: a warning to not let the monsoon in

There’s an urban legend connected to the spirit ‘Mohini’, the succubus ghost of desire and deception. Mohini legends drift through much of South Asia, taking different forms. The most common Mohini stories involve a beautiful woman appearing at three-way junctions late at night, to strike up conversations with lonely travellers and lure them to doom. Another version involves a beautiful woman in a white saree, carrying an infant; she would ask men travelling alone to hold her baby so she could fasten her loosening saree. If a man agrees to take the baby, Mohini would start walking away, forcing the startled man to attempt to return the child and follow her into the shadows. The monsoon Mohini story is another version; its warning is less apparent and is more entertaining than cautionary.

This urban legend warns men to never leave their doors open during monsoon thunderstorms. Mohini would visit, a beauty with her silhouette half-veiled, half-revealed in rain-drenched clothes, leaving just enough to tantalize the male imagination. She would ask for temporary shelter, till the rain lasts, not too long. According to the story, once let in, she’ll leave your senses undone and you’ll fade slowly in the fever of your own desire, consumed by a longing that drains both body and will. Like in most Mohini stories, the only escape here is also cunning; those who meet Mohini with calm intelligence, turning her tricks upon herself, might see another sunrise. But she is a creature of paradox and cunning, and to play her game is to wager your soul. So, the warning remains; don’t let the monsoon in.

These monsoon ghost stories often unfold around ponds, wells, and lonely stretches of road, or unguarded households where actual dangers could lurk or unfold from negligence. These stories served as cautionary tales that used fear as a useful, entertaining and effective way to warn of dangers.

Folktales: treasures from unclaimed terrains

A folktale is shaped by many voices across time. They echo generations. Rarely written down, but remembered and retold. Never owned, but carried. A folktale is a story that lives in the oral tradition of a people, passed from mouth to ear, from elder to child, from stranger to another. It is shaped not by a single author but by the collective imagination of a community. And like all things born in the wild, folktales resist being contained.

They feature ordinary people, animals, spirits, moral dilemmas, and natural wonders. They carry the weight of local wisdom, shared fears, communal humour, and codes of survival. Folktales were used to share everyday wisdom, explain the inexplicable, and warn without scolding. They entertain with meaning. Traditionally transmitted through oral storytelling, later adapted into print and digital forms. Oral roots shape its rhythm, repetition, and memory-friendly structure.

A folktale is

• Mostly translated through oral origins, with growing print and digital transmission.

• Anonymous authorship, evolving with each retelling.

• Rooted in culture, shaped by rituals, beliefs, and the worldview of its people.

• Uses symbolism, using simple characters.

• Adaptable, changing slightly depending on who tells it and where.

• Voices vary, but gravitate towards overarching, all-knowing, genderless ones. 

• More often detached from personal bias, folktale narrations usually observe, guiding listeners through the story while allowing the lesson to reveal itself. Sometimes, didactic lessons are brought in, directly judging.

"Folktale narration often takes the form of an omniscient, timeless voice; one that is neither male nor female, neither young nor old. Folktales usually use simple language, rhythmic structure, and moral lessons."

In cultures with strong oral heritage, folktales preserve history, tradition, and identity. They encode ancient knowledge, how to read the stars, how to listen to the wind, how to live in harmony with the land. They teach through metaphor, not instruction. Through wonder, not doctrine.

Folktales are mirrors of the collective psyche; unclaimed because they belong to no one storyteller. They allow people to process awe, fear, grief, longing, and love. They are the wild stories of shared terrains. And like the flowers that bloom without permission, they remind us that wonder, meaning, and truth often grow accessible, unclaimed, uncontained, but entirely necessary.

Read another blog story featuring a Sri Lankan highland folktale drawn from that shared well.

The Garden of the Gods; a Sri Lankan folk tale that transcends myth

The Horton Plains, when the Garden of the Gods appears once in twelve years.

They say twelve years is a single day in the realm of gods. In a Sri Lankan folk tale, when a young celestial being fell in love with an earthly woman, this strange time-dilation became the premise of his heartbreak. In this story, we share the folktale The Garden of the Gods and how it entwines with reality in a natural phenomenon that takes place every twelve years.

In the highlands of the island, there was a village girl of great beauty. Every few days, she went into the forest to gather firewood. Her elders said to her, “Do not tarry; the forest is not a place to linger; return quickly, that you may assist your sister.” 

But the girl loved the forest. She gazed long upon the trees, and she wandered about seeking flowers.

At that time, a young god came down to the Earth. When the god beheld the maiden, he desired to draw near to her. Seeing that she was pleased at the sight of wild flowers, the god thought, “By flowers shall I keep her here for a long time.”

Then the god took the heavenly blossoms from the garland that he wore, and scattered them upon the hills and plains. Straightaway, those heavenly flowers spread out upon the earth, covering it in colours brighter than any flowers of this world. The green of the highland forest became a garden of the gods.

When the maiden came to gather wood, she saw the countless flowers, and her heart was filled with wonder. She forgot her household tasks and wandered long in the garden of the gods. 

Then the god took the form of a young man, fair to see, and he drew near to her. He spoke kindly, and she was pleased. At parting, he said, “I will return on the morrow. In this garden, we shall meet again.” 

But one day among the gods is twelve years on earth. Thus, though the maiden waited through days and through months, the god did not appear. At length she thought, “That day in the heavenly garden was but a dream,” and she gave it no more heed.

Yet the god was true to his word. On the morrow of the gods, after twelve earthly years, he came again to the highlands. The garden of the gods sprang forth upon the hills and the plains, in colours and in beauty without measure.

To this day, every twelfth year, the hills are clothed in blossoms, and the divine garden reappears on earth. There the young god waits, ever hopeful, for his earthly love.

Thus it is said: the garden of the gods still appears and vanishes, not to be possessed by human nor deity. To desire beauty is human, even divine. But to seek to possess it is folly.

Folk tales are often dismissed as stories unworthy of documentation. They rarely entered libraries until anthropologists, scholars, and revered intellectuals like Carl Jung began to expose their depth as tales springing from universal symbols common to humankind and the reservoirs of our collective unconscious. This story, The Garden of the Gods, not only draws from that shared well of wisdom, but it also entwines with a vivid natural phenomenon that takes place with uncanny resemblance to the folk tale. 

This happens in Sri Lanka’s world heritage site, Horton Plains, in the central highlands, where the tale is said to originate. Here, every twelve years, Strobilanthes species erupt in a synchronized mass flowering that transforms the highlands into a spectacle still described by locals as ‘the garden of the gods.’ As many as 33 Strobilanthes species take part, with at least 30 endemic, some critically endangered.

Strobilanthes kunthiana is one of the endangered species that takes part in the synchronized flowering. The mass flowering gives the Strobilanthes species a better chance at pollinating and surviving predators.

Folk tales usually spring up as unremarkably as wildflowers and disappear without getting recorded. They were transmitted by grandparents charged with containing restless children through stories, so that afternoons in households could remain sane. Sometimes those children retold the tales when they grew older, but most slipped quietly out of memory, especially as oral traditions changed. Rarely were they written down, unless an anthropologist or occasional story-keeper stumbled upon one too remarkable to let vanish; too wondrous to be forgotten.

This folk tale sparked lifelong wonder in those who first heard the story as children, only to later see it come true across the Horton Plains: myth confirmed by nature, wonder given form. For those alive when botanists explained the twelve-year flowering cycle of Strobilanthes in the 20th century, the awe deepened further with science and story converging. The tale will stir still more wonder for future generations who may never see all 33 species bloom again across Sri Lanka’s highlands, as many now hover on the edge of extinction.

Stories are timeless vessels of wonder. They are not escapes from reality but frames through which reality reveals itself. The Garden of the Gods is one such frame. It's a folk tale that carries—through myth, ecology, loss, and longing—the truth that beauty cannot be possessed. This is how stories distill truth into forms that are more accessible, memorable, and enduring.