Everything begins on a September night when the monsoon has just stepped back and left the mountains soaked and trembling. A thick white mist rolls down the dark slopes like a silent creature searching for something to consume. Trees drip rhythmically as if whispering warnings to the wind. The entire village sleeps under a moonless sky. And then it happens.
A sudden burst of frantic wings tears through the silence. Birds are screaming in the darkness. Not dozens but hundreds. They fly straight toward the village lights as if possessed by something unseen. In the next moments they fall. On rooftops, bamboo fences, on bare earth. Their bodies lie scattered everywhere. To the villagers it looks like a night of mass suicide.
The first known chapter of this story goes back to 1905 in Jatinga, a small mountain village in Assam. The Naga tribes who lived there believed the land breathed with spirits. One rainy night a group of Naga men went searching for a missing buffalo. Torches glowed faintly in their hands painting the hills with trembling orange light. As they approached the Jatinga ridge at the edge of the Borail mountains, the sky suddenly erupted. Birds began dropping on them from above. Dead, wounded, confused like a storm of bad omens. Frozen in terror the men were certain this was a curse. That belief spread across the mountains carried by mist and thunder like a whispered prophecy.
By 1910, it became clear that the strange deaths happened only on the nights of September and October, always between six and nine thirty in the evening. As if nature had marked these nights with an invisible ink known only to the birds.
For decades the mystery stayed hidden within the hills until a British tea planter and bird expert named E. P. Gee heard the tale in 1957. Drawn by curiosity he traveled to Jatinga. He insisted it was not suicide but pure confusion. His findings showed the pattern appeared only after the monsoon when clouds’ thick fog and heavy moisture blended together turning the air into a maze. After long observation he wrote a book The Wildlife of India and the world came to know of Jathinga's dark secret.
But science alone could not stop the legends from growing. Some claimed the village was cursed by ancient spirits. Others believed mountain gods were pulling the birds toward their realm.
In 1977 the Zoological Survey of India sent Sudhin Sengupta to uncover the truth. He noticed something eerie. When the mist and rain droplets caught the glow of light they created a strange illusion. That illusion struck the minds of birds already lost in the night sky sending them spiraling downward. Then he discovered something even more unsettling. Each injured bird had taken its last meal exactly three hours earlier.
He studied the village for months through storms and seasons. He recorded bird movements rainfall patterns and every possible source of light. Yet the heart of the mystery refused to open. Why does the event occur only inside a narrow valley that's 1.5 kilometers long and 200 meters wide? Why does it happen only when the birds are hungry? Why does no other place on earth witness the same thing? No final answer has ever been found.
Today Jatinga still sits 730 meters above sea level, holding its secrets tightly. About 2500 people live there watching the sky each year as a few moonless nights turn the quiet valley into a stage of falling wings once again. Visitors stand in awe, scientists stand puzzled. And nature remains silent, guarding a riddle that perhaps was never meant to be solved.