Garuda Mahā Purana - Preta Khaṇḍa
23 - On Ghosthood
Garuda said:
1. What do the ghosts do in their ghost hood? When do they speak sometime? Please tell me, O lord of gods!
The lord said:
2. I shall tell about their form, signs and dreams. Being oppressed by hunger and thirst they enter their former home.
3. Though possessed of airy forms, they give signs to their sleeping descendents, O bird.
4. They visit the place where their sons, wives and relatives sleep.
5. If a person dreams of a horse, an elephant, a bull, or a man with deformed face, if a person awakened from sleep sees himself in the opposite side of the bed, this is all due to the working of a ghost.
6. If a man is fastened with chains in dream, if his dead ancestors demand food in dream.
7. If one snatches the food from him while he is eating in dream, if thirsty, one drinks water.
8. If in dream one rides a bull or moves with bulls or if one springs up in the sky or goes to a holy place hungry.
9-10. If one speaks aloud among cows, bulls, brahmanas horses, elephants, deities, ghosts and demons—this is due to the working of a ghost. Many are the signs of ghosts in dream, O bird. It is due to a ghost if one sees his wife, relative, son or husband as dead.
11. He who begs in dream oppressed by hunger or thirst should give pindas to the manes to ward off coming distress.
12. If one sees in dream his son, cattle, father, brother, wife, getting out of house, it is due to the working of a ghost.
13. These signs, O bird, call for atonement. One should bathe at home or at a holy place, give water oblation to a deity at the root of a fig tree.
14. Or give black corn, perform worship, offer gifts to a Vedic scholar and do homa as far as his means can allow.
15. If, in faith, one reads or hears this discourse, the ghosts disappear immediately from his vicinity.
Summary of chapter 23 of the Garuda Mahā Purana - Preta Khaṇḍa is as follows:
The Supreme Lord narrates the inspiring historical legend of the noble King Babhruvāhana, who encountered a group of emaciated, suffering Pretas in a dense and lonely forest during a royal hunting expedition. Moved by curiosity and deep compassion, the king inquired about their tragic condition, and the chief ghost revealed that despite their earthly wealth in past lives, the total absence of obsequial rites and charity had condemned them to ghostly torment. The narrative illustrates the real, palpable suffering of forgotten souls, setting the stage for a dramatic demonstration of the power of royal piety and ritual redemption.