Ghosted Into Love

My name is Faraz Ahmed, and this is the most ridiculous, hilarious, and strangely romantic story of my life. I’m from Multan, a city full of rich traditions, great food, and apparently, haunted love stories.

Now, let me set the scene.

It was a hot summer evening. My mother had just finished telling me—again—how all my cousins were married with kids, while I was still single and trying to figure out if the girl at the grocery store smiled at me or just had something stuck in her teeth. According to her, I was late. Very late. According to me, I was just waiting for the right… ghost?

It started with a meme.

A Facebook meme. You know, one of those low-quality posts with text like “Desperate? Call now: Rishta Hotline – 100% results or your loneliness refunded!”

I was bored. So I texted the number.

“Hi. I’m Faraz. Not tall, not dark, not handsome. But hey, at least I’m real.”

And then… a reply.

“Hi Faraz. I’m Zoya. I’m not real. I’m a ghost.”

I laughed out loud. Clearly, this was some admin with too much time. So I played along.

“Nice to meet you, Zoya the Ghost. Can you cook ghostly biryani?”

“Only if you can handle it. One bite and you’ll taste the afterlife.”

This went on for days.

Zoya only messaged at night. Her texts were half flirty, half spooky. She claimed to live in an old haveli outside the city, said mirrors in her home never showed her reflection, and once told me her pet was a black cat named “Jinnifer.”

I thought I’d get bored. Instead, I got hooked.

It was fun. Weird, yes. But fun. It was like texting a horror movie character with Wi-Fi. She wasn’t like other people—she didn’t ask boring questions like “what do you do” or “where do you see yourself in five years?” Instead, she’d ask:

“If I disappeared at midnight, would you still wait for me tomorrow?”

Or

“If I were cursed to only exist in dreams, would you try to find me in sleep?”

I was starting to like her. Which was insane. Because either I was being catfished… or worse, falling in love with someone who might be… not alive?

Then came the turning point.

One night, she said:

“Come meet me. But promise me one thing: when you reach, don’t look back.”

Now, I’ve seen enough Bollywood and Netflix horror to know that’s not a good sign. But I also hadn’t been on a real date in two years. So naturally, I said yes.

She sent me a location—a broken-down haveli near the edge of Multan. I won’t lie. I hesitated. I called a few friends to tell them, you know, in case I disappeared. They laughed so hard, one nearly choked on his chai.

But I went.

I reached the gate. It creaked open on its own. Not joking. I stepped inside. My heart was pounding. And there she was.

A girl. Sitting on an old wooden chair. Wearing a black dress. Pale skin. Red lipstick. Slight fog around her. For a moment, I genuinely thought, “Oh my God. I’m about to get married to a literal ghost.”

Then she smiled.

“Faraz?” she said.

“Zoya?” I replied, half-expecting her head to spin or her eyes to glow.

“I’m not a ghost,” she laughed. “I just like pretending to be one.”

I stood there, confused, blinking.

Turns out, Zoya was a psychology student running a social experiment for her thesis on how people react to supernatural romance. I was the only one who kept replying, joking back instead of blocking her.

“So… this was all fake?” I asked.

“Not all of it,” she said. “I liked our conversations. I liked you. And I wanted to see if you’d show up.”

Reader, I showed up.

Fast forward six months. We still laugh about it. Her project got an A. And me? I might just be in love with the girl who pretended to haunt me.

Sometimes, late at night, I send her a text:

“Still haunting my heart, ghost girl?”

And she replies:

“Only until death do us part.”