No Place for Trespassers. Notes toward a Himalayan Anthropology of Fright

The chapter takes into account a series of elements related to the eerie and the uncanny in Nepal, ranging from local folklore and demonology, to hauntings and ghost stories, and their presence in literary and artistic production. Himalayan range and its valleys have been often defined as a bastion of bio-diversity. This richness well extends also into the realms of belief and imagery, with a cultural heritage delving deep into the sphere of the other-than-human: secret dimensions hidden beyond sight, supernatural creatures roaming the woods and mountain ridges, exorcisms and walking dead, ghosts and evil spirits haunting village paths and cities‘darkest corners are just few of the tropes characterizing a discourse on the themes of fright and fear. The numerous indigenous cultures maintaining a shamanic belief system, the highly elaborated Hindu and Buddhist tradition, the Nepalese and Indian modern literature and the global pop culture, all have a role in the framing of a discourse on contemporary ‘gothic’. From religious rituals to oral narratives, from folk stories compilation to social media, up to the emergent Nepalese cinema industry, the circulation of eerily unsettling tropes and imagery seems to pervade diverse, and yet inter-related, fields. Taking as a starting point the local and indigenous beliefs on the dead and the supernatural or mythical beings roaming the countryside, the authors will explore the transfusion of folkloric materials into popular culture themes and literary tropes and their transformations with particular attention to the motif of trespassing.