#Spooktober 1: Vetala Panchavimshati

October 1, 2022

The Vetala Panchavimshati, also known as The Twenty-five Tales of Baital (Baital Pachisi) is a collection of Sanskrit tales and legends placed within the frame story of king Vikrama who promises a sorcerer (vamachari) that he will capture a creature. The collection of tales has been known at least since the XI Century and its stories are very popular up to these days.

The set of tales, with the main prompt being the capture of the creature, provides the oldest account of this ghoul-like spirit who hangs upside-down from a tree and interacts with the material world by possessing corpses, known as the vetala.

Vikramāditya (the king) tries to capture the creature several times, but each time the vetala tells a story and the story ends with a riddle: if the King proves unable to solve it, the creature flees capture. Eventually, it will turn out that things are not as they seem when it comes to friends or foes.

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