Bhoot Chaturdashi 2026: fourteen greens, fourteen lamps, and stories for the night

The day starts in the market, with a bag of greens: ol, mustard, hinche, kalmi and ten more, half of which your mother will have to ask the vegetable seller to name. Lunch has a fistful of bitter fried shak on the side of the plate. Then, as the light goes, someone walks round the house with a tray of little lamps and leaves one on the roof, one at the bend of the stairs, one by the bathroom door, one at the tulsi. Count them and there are fourteen.

It is called the ghosts' fourteenth, and nothing about it is meant to frighten you. The ones expected tonight are family.

When is Bhoot Chaturdashi in 2026?

Saturday 7 November 2026, and both panjikas agree. Drikpanchang's page for Kolkata has chaturdashi, the fourteenth lunar day, from 10.47 am on Saturday to 11.27 am on Sunday 8 November. The Bisuddha Siddhanta panjika is two minutes later, 10.49 to 11.29. When chaturdashi ends on Sunday the new moon begins, and that night is Kali Puja.

If the tithi covers two days, why Saturday? The Bisuddha panjika answers in one line: this chaturdashi is fixed by the pradosha rule, which means the tithi has to be running just after sunset. On Saturday the sun sets at 4.56 pm in Kolkata, by drikpanchang's panchang for the day, with chaturdashi in full flow. By Sunday evening it has gone. So the lamps are lit on Saturday.

Who the fourteen lamps are for

Bengali has a phrase for your whole line, usually said in anger: choddo purush, fourteen generations. The lamps on this night are for them. Bengali Wikipedia says they are lit for fourteen generations of forebears, and the English article gives the belief behind it: on this dark night before the new moon the souls of the dead come down to visit their families, the lamps show them the way home, and the light chases off whatever else is lurking in the corners.

Bhoot, in Bengali, also means what has been, the past; the dead are the ones who have been. So the ghost of Bhoot Chaturdashi is your great-grandfather, and his father, whose names nobody remembers, and for one evening a year there is a lamp on the stairs for them.

The ghost of Bhoot Chaturdashi is your great-grandfather, and his father.

There is another telling, also on Wikipedia: that on this day Kali, as Chamunda, comes down with fourteen ghosts to drive evil out of her devotees' homes. Let both stand. It is not the night for an argument.

Fourteen greens: two lists, five in common

Every Bengali knows about the fourteen greens, and no two households name the same fourteen. They could hardly be expected to, because the printed lists do not agree either.

The old list, as Bengali Wikipedia gives it from the sixteenth-century smriti scholar Raghunandan's Krityatattva: ol, keu, beto, kalkasunda, neem, mustard, shalincha, jayanti, gulancha, palta, ghentu, hinche, shushni and shelu. Read it and you notice that much of it is not a vegetable at all but a medicine shelf. Neem, gulancha, kalkasunda and palta are all bitter.

The Bisuddha Siddhanta panjika's list is a different one: spinach, fenugreek, mustard, note, shaluk, helencha, kalmi, ghentu, sanchi, gime, bhatpata, shushni, hinche and ol. Most of it reads like everyday kitchen greens, not a medicine shelf.

Why greens at all? Bengali Wikipedia says the months of Ashwin and Kartik, when Bengal's weather turns, were once called jamadangshtra kaal, the time of Yama's teeth, and it was believed that greens eaten then kept illness away. We leave the medicine to doctors. But look at the pair: bitter neem against the teeth of death at lunch, lamps for the dead at dusk, in the same house on the same day.

Once the lamps are lit: stories for the night

After the lamps, the evening belongs to Bengal's old habit, the ghost story. These are the three we would play.

▶1:08:41Play: Jokaburir Doho

Jokaburir Doho

THRILLER LAND

THRILLER LAND's Bhoot Chaturdashi story, with Ranadip Nandy's name on it. Ranajoy comes back to the village after twelve or thirteen years to sell the family house, and his old uncle will not have it, because of the family's goddess, who gives what you ask and takes something back. 1 hour 9 minutes, October 2024.

▶ Play hereWatch on YouTube · THRILLER LAND

▶1:05:41Play: Godrobonga

Godrobonga

THRILLER LAND

Antara Biswas's story, THRILLER LAND's Bhoot Chaturdashi episode of 2023. A Santal spirit's curse on the zamindar house at Nandipur. 1 hour 6 minutes, November 2023.

▶ Play hereWatch on YouTube · THRILLER LAND

▶57:07Play: Kaligunin O Danober Moni

Kaligunin O Danober Moni

BIVA Cafe

BIVA Cafe's Diwali special from the Kaligunin series, with Soumik Dey's name on it: a tantrik story, and a bridge to the next night's Kali Puja. 57 minutes, November 2020.

▶ Play hereWatch on YouTube · BIVA Cafe

For a longer night, we have written up where to start with Taranath Tantrik. And for the next evening, Kali Puja 2026, with the date and the nishita time.

The lamps will not last the night; the oil runs out. That does not matter. The ones they were lit for found the way long ago.

Just inNew stories from the channelsWhat the Bengali story channels have just put up, played from their own YouTube.See the stories