"A ghost... is the imprint of a departed soul left upon the earth...," the dialogue from Harry Potter comes alive when one get to know the story of Chennai's De Monte Colony. An affluent pocket of city's luxury Alwarpet, De Monte colony equally speaks of the colonial past and growing present that comes with silence. The two-story houses of the street can look deserted, but if one goes by the locals, the homes still speak of flickering lights in homes without electricity, the sound of a heavy gait on empty porches, and a chilling stillness that even the city’s chaotic traffic cannot penetrate. For years now, De Monte Colony has been reputed as the most haunted geography in South India.
But as said - the ghost street has a story that lies a far more reputed saga of colonial wealth and dynastic despair that departed somewhere with time.
The colony is named after one of it's earliest resident - Sir John de Monte, a 19th-century Portuguese businessman who rose to become one of the wealthiest merchants on the Coromandel Coast. In the early 1800s, De Monte was the epitome of success, but as high was his life outside, his personal life was a tapestry of tragedy. Legend has it that his wife descended into a profound madness following the mysterious disappearance of their only son, who left for Germany and was never heard from again.
A 2015 Tamil horror flick "Demonte Colony" is inspired by the same story. (Facebook)
Left with immense wealth but no heir, De Monte eventually bequeathed his vast properties to the Archdiocese of Madras-Mylapore. After his death in 1833, the land was intended for charitable use by church. Instead, it became a tomb for his legacy. The identical, row-house structures seen today were built much later, but they seem to have inherited the heavy atmosphere of the land’s original owner.
De Monte Colony is far from the palatial estate its founder once envisioned. The houses was lie on the either sides of it's two streets were once modern and coveted, but now only skeletal remains—their windows shattered like hollow eyes, their walls strangled by the aggressive roots of banyan and peepal trees. Despite being situated on land worth hundreds of crores, the colony has remained stubbornly vacant for decades.
In the 1990s and early 2000s, several attempts were made to renovate the area, but they were met with unexplained resistance. Security guards hired to watch the premises famously quit within twenty-four hours, citing the sound of a man opening a gate that didn't exist, or the sight of a shadow walking the streets under the midday sun.
The colony consists of two streets, with a line of uniform one-storey houses on either side.
The houses were even once inhabited by employees of Easun Engineering Company on lease from the Archdiocese of Madras-Mylapore but as written in the fate of place, since the last exodus over a two decade ago, it has remained uninhabited.
The heart of the colony’s dark reputation centers on the belief that Sir John de Monte never truly vacated his property. Paranormal enthusiasts and curious teenagers who hop the rusted gates report an "oppressive weight" that settles on the chest the moment they cross the threshold. There are no dramatic "gunned down" warnings here; instead, there is a psychological barrier—a collective agreement among the locals that some places simply do not want to be lived in.
Source: India Latest News, Breaking News Today, Top News Headlines | Times Now
