Siddha Pokhari — The Old Woman by the Tank
One of Bhaktapur's oldest water tanks, on a road stretch locals treat as accident-prone — where the blame is laid on an old woman in a white sari who appears after midnight and, in the most detailed account, picked bloody chunks of meat off the road and wrapped them in her sari.
Case File No. 290
FILE 01 The Legend
Siddha Pokhari is a large historic pond at the eastern entrance of Bhaktapur, on the road out toward Sallaghari, in continuous ritual use for centuries. The stretch beside it has long been treated as accident-prone, and local accounts describe an old woman in a white sari who appears at the roadside late at night and is blamed for crashes on that road. The story is oral, gathered by Bhaktapur-based writers in the 2020s rather than printed in any older chronicle — which places it at the weaker end of the Kathmandu Valley's ghost lore, and honestly so.
FILE 02 The Sightings Log
The most detailed account, from the 2010s, describes two men on a scooter stopping around half past midnight for what they took to be a confused elderly woman — then seeing her pick bloody chunks of meat off the road and wrap them in her sari, which was already stained red, her face blank. They rode off. The explanation they were given afterwards was that she was a spirit responsible for accidents on that stretch, and that the lit cigarettes they carried counted as fire and kept her away.
FILE 03 The Skeptic’s File
The narrative is a single anonymous testimony published on a Bhaktapur tourism site, with names changed, and cannot be checked against any other record. The road is unlit and narrow; night traffic and stray dogs explain both the debris and the accident rate; and a figure in a white sari is the most ordinary sight on any Nepali roadside after dark. The municipality treats the stretch as a road-safety problem; no ritual closure or exorcism has ever been recorded there.
BEYOND THE CASE FILE / PLAN A VISIT