India, Sept. 6 -- "Ghosts are all around us. Seek them out and you shall discover them," Ruskin Bond once said - an apt threshold into a disarmingly entertaining book. As someone susceptible to such phenomena, I read it hoping for insight as much as validation that the unreal is real. Roy's hauntings are never confined to ghosts alone - apparitions, premonitions, eerie presences, even an apparent possession.

Calling it a ghost-story collection undersells it; this is closer to a supernatural memoir, part autobiography, part travelogue, part social history, where the unexplained becomes a portal into decades of lived experience. Roy begins with an advantage rare among writers of the paranormal: he isn't anxious to convince anyone. He owns ...