Petni

Bengali ghost taxonomy is more granular than most other regional traditions in India. Where other regions might simply say 'female ghost,' Bengali folk belief distinguishes carefully: the Shakchunni is the married woman who cannot let go of her domestic role; the Petni is the unmarried woman who never had the chance to begin hers.

The distinction matters because the two ghosts behave differently. The Shakchunni seeks continuity — she wants to possess and inhabit. The Petni seeks something harder to give her: the life she should have had. She is jealous in the older sense of the word — watchful, envious of what she cannot have — and her presence is associated with the misfortune of other young women in the family.

The Petni typically appears as she looked at death — young, in unmarried dress (no sindoor, no conch-shell bangles, her hair unbound), with an expression that witnesses consistently describe as hungry rather than threatening.

She may appear in mirrors at night, or as a face at a window. In possession states she speaks of the experiences she never had.

The Petni's primary influence is on other young women of the household — particularly sisters, nieces, or daughters of the family she died in. She causes them to become ill during their own wedding preparations, to develop inexplicable reluctance toward marriage, or to have persistent bad luck in relationships.

In full possession, a Petni-possessed woman speaks as the ghost and demands to be married — a demand that the family must address symbolically before the ghost will release its hold.