The last train that chugged into the station was in 1972 and ever since a deathly silence has ruled there broken occasionally by the whistling wind and urchins' nervous footsteps echoing through the corridors of the dilapidated red-brick building.People believe the Begunkador railway station in a remote corner of Purulia district is a haunted place and avoid it after dark. The crumbling building stood desolate trying to tell its occasional visitors the story of its busy past.Local people say that the spirit of a woman who was run over by a train moves about the station, 43 km from Purulia town.A local resident, Niladhaj Kumar, said that the last station master had fled after the mysterious death of a railway employee barely a few days after the sighting of the ghost.But now the Railways, which has rubbished the ghost story, plans to revive the station. The senior Divisional Commercial Manager of Adra division in Purulia, Kali Sankar Mukherjee, ruled out the presence of any ghost and said there was no example of the Indian Railways abandoning any station because of presence of spirits.He said that it might be the station staff, who did not like the place, deliberately spread the ghost story so that they could be transferred.
