Building community in Bengaluru, one ghost at a time
Tarun Sridharan, creator of the YouTube channel Odd Compass, has launched the Ghost Story Collective in India. The initiative hosts events in cities like Bengaluru, Delhi, and Hyderabad to foster community through shared, unscripted paranormal storytelling.
Why it matters
This highlights a growing trend of community-building through niche, in-person social experiences in urban Indian settings.
It began at a dinner party in Hyderabad. By the end of the evening, attended by people from around the world, Tarun Sridharan, who was at the party, says. “We started telling ghost stories, personal ones,”
Tarun, an Indian-American litigator and marketing professional, is also the creator of Odd Compass, an animated YouTube channel focusing heavily on South and Southeast Asian history. “We had such a great time. It almost felt like telling tales around a campfire.”
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It got him thinking about the absence of storytelling events. “Earlier, you would go down to your local tavern, where a storyteller would hold you captive with his tales. And maybe some other people would join in to start telling their stories, and that would be the entertainment for the evening,” says the Bengaluru-based Tarun.
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