The Gold Owlin Haunted Story
The Gold OwlIn the silent heart of Jalna village, where mango groves crowded against a wilderness of cane and gloom, people whispered about the old Banwara mansion. They said its doors moaned at night and oil lamps flickered—without a living hand to tend them.
But what drew greedy, desperate men from far away was the rumor of the gold owl: a statue crafted by a 19th-century zamindar, said to bring fortune to its owner…or a lifetime of chilling terror.Ravi, a penniless scrap dealer from Warangal, laughed off the tales. His debts crushed him harder each month and, by Diwali, his wife’s bangles were gone. So, emboldened by local brew and dire hunger, Ravi decided he would steal the statue. All he had was a flashlight, a rusted crowbar, and a friend named Suku who owed him a favor.At midnight, the two men crept through the tall grass, halos of their breath swirling in the cold.
The mansion’s gate hung limp, but inside, the compound was still—too still. “Just old wood and rats,” Ravi muttered, pushing past the peeling doors and into the arched hall.A painted owl stared from peeling murals, its gold eyes glinting in their torchlight. Suku’s hands shook. “It’s upstairs—the room with the blue door,” he said. Ravi’s heart beat louder than his footsteps as he led the way, each stair moaning under their weight. When they reached the blue door, Ravi pushed it open, crowbar clenched.
The room was lined end to end with old books and velvet-draped furniture. In the center, a glass case stood illuminated by the moon sneaking through a cracked ceiling. There it perched: the gold owl, lifelike and dazzling, as heavy-looking as a brick of solid bullion.“Let’s grab it and go.” Ravi smashed the glass, expecting a clang.
The Gold Owlin Haunted Story
But the room grew freezing cold, their torches flickering. Suku stifled a scream. In the gloom behind them, a whisper rose—like the creaking of a thousand dry bones, growing louder, closer, circling. “Let’s go, fast!” Ravi hissed as he dragged the gold owl free.The moment they crossed the doorway, the air snapped with the smell of burning feathers. A shadow darted from the corridor—it was not human, not animal.
A massive owl shape, black as ink but with golden glowing eyes, soared at them, passing through walls and freezing flesh. Ravi ran, the statue clutched to his chest, Suku stumbling behind and gasping prayers.Downstairs, the front hall twisted around them. Corridors closed, floorboards warped, and each door led them back to the room with the broken glass display and the empty plinth. The shadow owl hovered on the rafters, screeching so loud Ravi’s bones trembled.
“Put it back! Please, please!” Suku wailed, but Ravi refused, desperation stronger than fear. He hurled himself at a window, bursting out into the yard. The gates slammed shut behind them by some impossible force. The sun was already rising—but Banwara mansion looked as if it had aged a hundred years in one night. Suku was gone, lost in the loop of cursed halls, and Ravi’s hands were turning cold and stiff as stone.Back home, Ravi locked the owl in a trunk, vowing to sell it. But sleep fled him. Birds wouldn’t come near his roof.
Each night his house filled with the sound of flapping wings and a scratching, scraping noise at his door. He found black feathers on his bed, gold dust in the drinking water, and his food rotted overnight.On the seventh night, as Ravi lay trapped by nightmares, the gold owl statue was gone.
In its place—a single, perfect feather, pure gold—lay beside a message scratched into the wood: “Greed flies by night. Some treasures have their own hunger.”No one saw Ravi again. Suku wandered the old mansion’s corridors, searching for a way out, but always returned to that cursed room and its empty glass case. In Jalna, the tale of the gold owl grew—a story of warning, richer and darker, for all who were hungry for gold.