Strange Experiences is at once a collection of entertaining stories, an enigmatic treatise on the paranormal, and a rare window into the early life of the author, Shrii Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar. The book consists of fourteen mostly first-person accounts of “strange” experiences, preceded by an introductory note by the author. At the end of each story, the author sheds some light on the mysterious events with cryptic, technical explanations.

Bengali literature abounds with stories of the supernatural, that is, ghost stories, and in one sense Strange Experiences can be considered part of the author’s inimitable contribution to this body of literature. Many of the stories published here bear a strong resemblance to those the author narrated in the course of dictating Shabda Cayaniká, an incomplete twenty-six volume encyclopedia of the Bengali language. In Shabda Cayaniká, the paranormal nature of the stories often seems incidental to the lessons contained therein on such topics as history, geography, spirituality or music. However, in the case of Strange Experiences the focus is on the paranormal events themselves.

For general interest, and to facilitate research, a brief appendix has been supplied relating the stories to their historical context in the author’s life. And for the readers’ convenience, and in order to avoid potential misunderstandings, a second appendix has been included which summarizes the author’s complex views on so-called “ghosts” and other paranormal phenomena. There one may also find notes concerning the stories’ explanations given by the author.

The Bengali and Hindi versions of this book, both entitled Vicitra Abhijiṋatá, were almost certainly first published in 1969 and 1970, respectively. Subsequently, at least some of the stories appeared in English translations in the magazine Cosmic Society, under the name Priyadarshii. It is not specified there whether they were translated from the Hindi or the Bengali. The translator remains unknown. Stories four, five, six and seven appeared in Volume 1, Number 2, in the winter of 1963. Stories nine and ten appeared in Vol. 1, No. 3, in the spring of 1964. Story twelve appeared in Vol. 1, No. 1, in the monsoon season of 1963 (that is, some time between June and September).

Herein the Strange Experiences stories appear in English for the first time in book form. Those stories which appeared earlier in Cosmic Society have been retranslated; wherever possible the translator made use of the earlier translations. Thereafter the publisher checked the English translation line by line against the Bengali edition, and made a number of corrections, clarifications and suggestions. Ácárya Acyutánanda Avadhúta also read the text thoroughly, and his many useful suggestions have also been incorporated. The appendices were prepared by the translator.

Square brackets [   ] in the text are used to indicate translations or other insertions by the translator. Round brackets (   ) indicate a word or words originally given by the author.

The author used a certain shorthand for explaining the etymologies of words. Under this system, a minus sign (–) follows a prefix, and a plus sign (+) precedes a suffix. Thus ava – tr + ghaiṋ = avatára can be read, “the root tr prefixed by ava and suffixed by ghaiṋ becomes avatára.”