It’s the spooky season, and some conversations with my clients have got me thinking about the haunted and the hauntings that live inside us.
In Nepal, as in most cultures, I grew up surrounded by stories of ghosts, ghouls, and spirits. One of the most famous of these is the Kichkandi—a female spirit from Nepali folklore who inhabits both our myths and our imaginations.
To set the scene, here’s one story passed down through generations; a tale that lives in the Nepali ether.
The Bride Who Never Crossed the River
They say that long ago, in a small village near the Arun River, there lived a young woman named Kanchhi. Her wedding day was set for the harvest moon, and the whole village said she glowed brighter than the oil lamps.
But on the morning of her marriage, a monsoon storm split the sky open. The river swelled and roared like a living beast. Still, her in-laws waited on the far bank. The men decided to cross. Kanchhi hesitated, clutching the red veil her mother had tied to her head.
“Tomorrow,” she whispered. “The river will calm.”
But the elders insisted the shubh samaya, the auspicious hour, must not be missed. So they began crossing.
Halfway across, the current caught her. Her bangles shattered in the water; her beautiful red adornments washed away. She was gone before anyone could scream her name.
They say the river took her body and the funeral rites were never done.
Months later, woodcutters heard a woman’s voice on foggy nights:
“Baba… I’m still waiting… the river is too cold…”
Those who followed the sound saw a woman in bridal red, combing her wet hair by the river, smiling faintly.
Her feet were turned the wrong way, as if she had been walking backward through time.
“If anyone spoke to her,” they say, she asked softly, “Will you take me across?”
And those who said yes, vanished by morning.
To this day, people believe the mist over the Arun River is her wedding veil, still searching for the shore she never reached.
(Gives me the chills even today. And more than that, it makes me sad.)
Who Is Kichkandi?
In Nepali folklore, a Kichkandi is the restless spirit of a woman who died an unnatural, painful, or unfulfilled death often before marriage, during childbirth, or far from home without proper funeral rites. Her soul lingers between worlds, caught between life and death, longing for connection, recognition, or release.
She appears in liminal places: lonely paths, forests, riverbanks, and beneath the sacred fig or banyan trees (peepal and bar-peepal); spaces where the veil between the spiritual and mortal thins.
Her Appearance
They say a Kichkandi looks eerily alive, young, beautiful, draped in white or red. White for mourning, red for unfulfilled love. But there are signs that betray her:
- Her feet are reversed, heels forward, toes back: a symbol of inversion, of walking against the natural order.
- Her hair veils her face: hiding what decay or sorrow lies beneath.
- And sometimes, she carries the scent of decay and sandalwood smoke: the mingling of death and sanctity.
In many South Asian ghost traditions, reversed feet reveal a spirit’s fractured relationship with the living world. She can mimic vibrancy and beauty, but her body tells the truth. The Kichkandi walks backward through time, haunting the paths she could never finish.
Origins and Beliefs
The myth of the Kichkandi, I’ve learned, arises from the crossroads of Hindu cosmology, patriarchal customs, and animist traditions.
Hindu belief teaches that a soul (ātma) must receive proper rites (śrāddha) to transition peacefully. Those denied them, especially women who died “impure” deaths or before fulfilling social roles become restless spirits (preta).
In older Nepali society, a woman’s identity was bound to her father, husband, or son (a reality still present in some parts of Nepal). A woman dying outside those roles was considered incomplete and her spirit, unanchored. The Kichkandi became a moral cautionary tale about purity, duty, and taboo but beneath it lies grief: the sorrow of women denied closure.
Even earlier shamanic (jhankri) traditions saw forests and crossroads as homes of powerful female spirits—once seen as nature spirits or guardians, and later demonized into ghosts as beliefs shifted over time.
Encounters and Folklores
Folklore says the Kichkandi seduces travelers appearing as a lonely woman seeking help. When they follow, she reveals her true form, leading them into the forest, into disappearance. Just like the story mentioned above.
Yet not all tales cast her as vengeful. Some speak of her loneliness, her longing for ritual, her desire for rest. Shamans sometimes perform rites to free her, to help her soul cross at last.
The Symbolism She Carries
- Her inverted feet symbolize the inversion of life’s natural rhythm.
- Her beauty and decay mirror the duality of desire and mortality.
- Her haunting stands for voices silenced by neglect and abandonment—emotional, social, and spiritual.
To me, Kichkandi is not merely a ghost. She is cultural memory made myth—a symbol of the fear of death without closure, the tension between purity and agency, and the compassion for the forgotten. Her backward feet remind us that some paths, once twisted, can only be released through acknowledgment.
Kichkandi and the Psychology of Healing
Over the years, I’ve come to see Kichkandi as a mirror for trauma and grief, especially within South Asian cultural therapy for trauma and grief, where ancestral wounds and silence often live beneath the surface.
Her backward feet remind me that trauma makes us feel as though we’re walking against life—retracing the same patterns, haunted by what we thought we’d outgrown.
Her unperformed rituals reflect the unprocessed grief within families and cultures—the parts of ourselves that were never mourned, validated, or laid to rest. These emotional ghosts reappear as anxiety, depression, or the vague ache of something unfinished. From a generational lens, Kichkandi becomes the ancestor who carries unfinished grief. Naming her story, our story, breaks the cycle of silence.
Her presence in folklore also urges us to honor liminality: that space between who we were and who we’re becoming, the in-between where healing often happens.
She is also the voice of women silenced and exiled by society’s shame and invisibility reminding us that what we abandon does not disappear; it transforms into haunting.
Perhaps healing begins when we listen to our ghosts instead of exorcising them. When we understand that our pain is not monstrous; it is simply asking to be witnessed.
And maybe, in modern therapy, as in ancient or traditional ritual, we create space for that witnessing: a sacred act of remembering, giving our experiences language, and offering the release they’ve longed for.
A crossing over for what has long been waiting by the river.
Closing Reflection
Today, I think of Kichkandi not as a horror, but as an invitation to turn toward what haunts us,
to honor what never received its rites, to help the parts of ourselves still waiting on the shore finally cross.
This, to me, is the heart of therapy for trauma and grief a way of tending to our ghosts, not to banish them, but to bring them home.
If this reflection resonates with you, and you too would like to explore the intersections of story, identity, and healing—honoring both the ghosts we inherit and the wholeness we’re becoming—please feel free to reach out to me for psychotherapy services. I provide South Asian cultural therapy for trauma and grief.
References
- Dor Bahadur Bista – People of Nepal (1972) references women’s ghost figures and beliefs about “wandering spirits” arising from incomplete rites.
- Gopal Singh Nepali – The Life and Culture of Nepal (1965) mentions female ghosts and reversed feet as markers of unnatural spirits.
- Harka Gurung and Ram Bahadur Chhetri – Field Folklore Collections, Tribhuvan University (1980s–90s) record oral tales from the Gurung and Tamang regions, including early forms of Kichkandi legends.
- Jumla, Bhojpur, and Dhankuta – Oral Archives (Field recordings, Nepal Folklore Society) mention several versions of “bride ghost” or “forest spirit with reversed feet.”