# Ghost rumors scare 600 girls away from Maharashtra hostel 2026-08-19T23:50:01+00:00 | Governance | Indian Opinion Desk Corroboration: 1 independent outlet About 600 girls at a government residential school in Amravati, Maharashtra, fled to their homes after rumours of ghosts in the hostel. The trouble began on 22 July when four students started crying and laughing uncontrollably. Superstitions spread among the 810-student tribal school: that spirits lived in a mahua tree which was cut, that a local deity was angered by a drain, and that a dead tribal youth's soul haunted the area. A psychological report linked the episode to superstition, fear, stress and local beliefs. Officials said some village women later showed similar mental symptoms. The administration has built a new hostel within the school campus with bunk beds. All girl students will be shifted there from 1 September. Senior members of the Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmoolan Samiti (superstition eradication committee) met the students and tried to calm their fears through counselling. ## Indian Opinion Analysis This mass panic at a residential school in a tribal area is not an isolated event. Similar mass hysteria incidents have been reported in Indian schools and hostels, often triggered by superstition and social contagion. The real issue here is the psychological fragility of children living away from home, combined with deep-rooted local beliefs that administration fails to address proactively. Over 600 of 810 students fled, a 74% dropout rate from a single episode. The district administration’s solution, a new hostel building, tackles infrastructure, not the underlying superstition. The Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmoolan Samiti’s intervention is the only substantive de-escalation. The key date is 1 September, when students are to return, watch whether the real psychological rehabilitation matches the physical relocation. ## Coverage - aajtak.in Led with the ghost fear and student flight, not the official response. Framed as a hysteria and superstition story, not an administrative failure. This story was synthesised by AI from the source linked above. Tags: Amravati, Maharashtra, Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmoolan Samiti Canonical: https://indianopinion.org/ghost-rumors-scare-600-girls-away-from-maharashtra-hostel/ License: Summary and commentary (c) Indian Opinion, reusable with attribution. Facts belong to the linked sources. Cite: https://indianopinion.org/ghost-rumors-scare-600-girls-away-from-maharashtra-hostel/#story-in-brief Review state: restored archive article, accurate at time of publication, not offered to search indexes. How this brief was made: an AI model read the report linked above and wrote this summary and analysis, which were published automatically. Published briefs are sampled every hour by an automated quality check; the editor verifies its findings and approves corrections, and corrected briefs carry a dated correction line. We do no original reporting. Methodology: https://indianopinion.org/ai-use-policy/