Beware the ides of March, the soothsayer warned the great Roman, indeed stabbed on the Senate steps in 44 BC on March 15. An apt date to recap Bombay’s “beware” episodes, which sceptics of the spirit world too have heard murmured.

Jackals and antelope still prowled the island’s southern wilds in 1816 as its first European cemetery rose in Colaba. Stretching from the Bombay Natural History Society to Wellington Mews, the graveyard christened Mendham’s Point, as one Mendham was first to be buried. Ten years later, when a mental illness facility skirted the cemetery, distressed cries floated to the ears of visitors to the tombs.   
    
Beleaguered bungalows often prove more creeper-covered than creepy. That dilapidated Schoen House stands Number 13 on Wodehouse Road, fuels further conjecture. A German Jew dentist, subsequently interned by Brits, practised in the now over-a-century-old structure, clad in canines carved on porch pillars and crocodile gargoyles spouting rainwater from jaw-protruding pipes. The property was procured by successive developers, allegedly dogged by misfortune, even unnatural deaths. But, primary schoolers attending class in the Schoen House compound announced nothing untoward.