Mar 6, 20235 min read

Haunted Story of Tower of Silence: Dark History of Hauntingly Serene Tower of Silence

The Dakhma, or the hauntingly serene Tower of silence, is located in the opulent city of Malabar hills of Mumbai and covers a sprawling area of 55 acres. Otherwise named Parsi bawdi, this is the graveyard of the Parsi community that still upholds the ideals of its age-old customs. It is a very stringent place where people usually are banned from entering. The grieving families of departed souls are allowed inside to mourn and follow their customs.

Various misleading talks swirl around this place, symbolizing the death and grief of many followers of the Zoroastrian and Parsi religions. People regard this place as a symbol of suffering, death, solitude, and hauntings. Thus this place has been awarded a place in the list of the most haunted places in Mumbai.

India is the breeding ground for rising superstitions and ominous beliefs. Hence a place like the tower of silence will climb higher in the spooky tales surrounding our country. So graveyards are avoided by the people of India for being ominous and bad luck.

Purpose and History

Mumbai's tower of silence was erected for “excarnation,” or leaving the dead body in the open air. This would invite the scavenger birds, vultures, and alike to dive and consume the body instead of burying or cremating it. According to the values of Zoroastrians and Parsi, a human should be useful to nature after death. The belief is that the body becomes corrupted after death, so proper processing must be disposed of with a religious mantra laced with precautions and warnings.

They also believed in keeping the environment pure and considered the earth and fire sacred thus, they left the body to return to nature through the scavengers. The tradition can be traced back to the 5th century before christ. This ritual was put down in the scripts of Herodotus, the Greek historian, and geographer.

He perpetuated that the believers of the Persian religion first carried the deceased to this area and left them to be consumed by dogs and birds of prey. Then they covered the body with wax and buried it, so this ritual continued trickling down through centuries. Soon they migrated to the Indian subcontinent and spread across places like Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, etc.

The Indian Parsi Believers

The burial process has been a contention amongst the remaining Indian Parsi believers. Because of the rapid reduction of the vulture population by 2008, there were conflicts in the community regarding the last rites of family members. The remaining vultures could no longer finish off the bodies of the dead loved ones.

This led the community to turn into vulture breeding through solar energy, but this process didn’t seem to work in the longer run. Thus some community members still carry the body to the Tower of Silence and then resort to a proper burial.

The Zoroastrian community of India manages this ritual, granting families entrance to the tower. The union has supreme authority and oversees the rituals in the silence tower.

Visitors

Travelers from across the country flock to this place, hoping to catch this unique, eerie process. They forget to remember that this isn’t just a haunted place. Rather, it’s a place of grief and lamentation.

The people should respect this age-old custom of the Zoroastrian community of India and be left to mourn the loss of their loved ones solemnly. They also weave out the unnecessary horror or creepy tales this place perpetuates.

Structure of the Tower of Silence

The Tower of silence, Mumbai, has been constructed in concentric circles divided into three inner rings for men, women, and children. The towers surrounding the Tower of Silence are uniformly and sturdily built to withhold the effects of the weather.

There are stone beds that act as resting places for late loved ones. The roof area is left open to the sun to aid in the desiccation of bodies and to allow the vultures to fly in and consume the bodies.

Respecting The Community

The visitors are advised to remain respectful towards the grieving families of the community members. They should also try to dispel any lingering tales of the macabre to honor the dead and the customs of the Tower of silence. The tradition of the Parsi and Zoroastrian community and the ideals of the ceremonies, like the sentiments of purity, cleanliness, and respect for nature, should be abided by.

Because their holy scripture “Vendidad,” one of the Avesta scripture, narrates the processes and stipulations that should be followed for the proper resting of the perished members of the community. The only tale that should be perpetuated with this Tower of Silence, Mumbai, should be the solitary and gloom-ridden ideals of the last rites that the community members still carry out.

The Haunted Tales

The visiting tourists of the Tower of Silence claim that chills dance down their spines and is often assaulted by the smell of death. They also claim to see lingering souls and apparitions of the people lost. Because India is a place that is still superstitious regarding graveyards and the idea of death and the afterlife, they weave such narratives regarding this place which symbolizes the grief and customs of a community brought together by the passing of their loved ones.

The Custom of the Last Rites

The proper story that the members of the Zoroastrian community follow is as follows. Their culture believes the corpse of dead loved ones to be impure and corrupted. They also believe that the cadavers which have been further in contact with the corpse demon named “nasu” can corrupt everything it comes into contact with. Along With the gone loved ones and their left-behind grief ridden families too.

Thus their holy scripture named “Vendidad” cites the proper steps to complete the last rites of the loved ones. They also suggest that any tombs or graves raised in the name of loved ones should be destroyed for the safety of the loved ones from the “nasu”. This will provide proper purification to both the body of the fallen and the manifestation of the evil be prevented to affect the lives of those left behind.

Conclusion

The Tower of silence is thus an amalgamation of the ideals of the Zoroastrian and Parsi community that stands for the natural process of leaving the mortal world. This place also reflects the everlasting beauty of nature and the acceptance of death and peace. The tower of silence is thus a place of serenity and sadness and tackling the idea of death in the hum-drum of Mumbai.