Dr Death I Lohaghat's Hospital from Hell

What if you knew the time of your death? A doctor in colonial-era India was actually predicting this for his patients, and quite accurately too! However, did 'Doctor Death' really possess supernatural powers, or was there more to it than what meets the eye?

Illustration by Dishani Goswami

This story is about a doctor. A doctor who was loved and admired by the people he took care of. Not only was he compassionate and dedicated, but he also had a special power. This doctor was able to predict the time and day of his patient’s death. This story is about Doctor Death of Lohaghat.

Lohaghat is a small settlement in the Champawat district of Uttarakhand. And back when the English ruled the country, a local British family turned their hunting lodge into an infirmary where plague-ridden people were brought to be quarantined. With no cure, these patients were there only to wait it out. And that is why the locals started calling this place the Mukti Kothri—the Cabin of Salvation.

After the plague, the Mukti Kothri turned into a small hospital, and one day, a young doctor called Morris arrived. Nobody knew it at that time, but Dr. Morris was about to give the name of this place a whole new meaning.

Morris was compassionate and good at what he did. He cared for his patients and they loved him. But then, he had a secret power—Morris could just take a look at a patient and tell exactly when that person was going to die. People did not believe him at first, but soon all of his predictions started coming true. All. Of. Them.

Morris was dubbed as a godman by the locals. Nobody knew how he did it, not even Morris himself. But he kept doing his work relentlessly. That is, until another doctor by the name of Rowes arrived.

Rowes did not believe in Morris’ superpowers. He tried to find out how Morris was able to do the impossible. And when Morris asked Rowes to stay away from his patients, Rowes did the exact opposite. And one fine day, Morris vanished into thin air. After Morris’s sudden disappearance, Rowes did some digging and revealed a horrible truth. Referring to the medical histories of Morris’ patients and the notes from his journals that were left in his cabin, Rowes told everyone that Morris was able to predict the time of death of his patients because he was the one killing them.

Morris was running unethical human experiments at Mukti Kothri. Owing to his stardom and fame, he had acquired a whole ward for himself where he would keep his ‘special’ patients, patients who were supposed to be attended to only by him. There, he would operate on them, give them experimental drugs, and do other terrible things to them in the name of science. When Morris caught wind of the fact that Rowes was not going to stop, he quickly escaped.

And finally, for the first time, Morris’s prediction had gone wrong. All the patients who were under his care when he vanished did not die. Morris disappeared, never to be found again, but a lot of people believe that he might have continued his experiments elsewhere. For the world is quite big for one person to hide in it.