Ghost stories associated with the 2004 tsunami in Sri Lanka

Record summary

Following the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, Sri Lankan newspapers, aid workers, clergy, and residents circulated accounts of voices, figures, dreams, and sensed presences attributed to people killed in coastal communities. This is a useful cross-cultural comparison with crisis-apparition literature because reports emerged amid mass graves, disrupted funerary practices, and prolonged displacement. The lead concerns a cluster of reported experiences, not one securely bounded event. Regional variation, Buddhist and Christian interpretive frameworks, and retrospective memorial storytelling require careful source separation.