What if you feel something invisible sneaking into your room while you are all alone in your apartment? What if, in the middle of the night, you catch a blurred view of someone crawling across your hallway?   What if, while working on your laptop, you feel someone breathing down your shoulders?

After encountering these kinds of repetitive strange paranormal occurrences there are a few things you might do. You could move out of the apartment you are currently living in, or you could do ghost cleansing with the help of a spiritual person. But Md Asraful Alam Russell, a radio jockey working for Radio Foorti, did not do any of them.  Being a victim of paranormal activities, he thought of creating a platform where people experiencing the existence of similar invisible and invincible entities would be able to share their experience with the rest of the country.
Even if we find the idea of embodied spirits haunting us ridiculous or any simple ghost story leaves us petrified of being alone, we can't deny the fact that we love to hear spooky stories. Asraful Alam, popularly known as RJ Russell, enthrals you with such stories with his show Bhoot FM every Friday at 11:59 pm on Radio Foorti.
“A few years ago, I lived in an apartment all by myself and inevitably, every night I would come across some spine shivering paranormal experience; either a string of my guitar would mysteriously get torn on its own or I'd hear some strange, unearthly noise in my house,” says RJ Russell.

When terrified Russell shared these stories with his colleagues, he discovered that many of them had similar incidents to share. “One day during a very casual conversation with my colleagues, we thought of starting a late night show where our listeners could share their ghostly stories with the rest of the country.”

That's how Bhoot FM, considered to be one of the most popular radio programmes in the country, started its journey in 2010. Since its beginning, Bhoot FM has been catering to a large number of scary-story-hungry population of different age groups with its horrifying and grisly ghost tales. “A number of surveys by the Nielsen Media and Demographics Survey confirm Bhoot FM as the most popular radio programme of the country,” says RJ Russell with pride.

Over the last few years, the show became so popular that the team of Bhoot FM decided to document the best horror stories by publishing two books named Bhoyer Koboj and 13 Nombor Oshubho Shongket.
What is the secret behind Bhoot FM's skyrocketing popularity?

“The content, we believe, is the key,” Russell confidently says. “We don't make up or manipulate any story, rather all the experiences come straight from the listeners' mouth.”   

Given that we are a nation of gechho bhoot-mechho bhoot and lots of other ghosts living in every possible place around us, Bhoot FM never runs out of interesting stories. Listeners from every corner of the country can share their experiences with the paranormal through email and the selected ones are invited to the radio station to share their stories live from the studio.

“Moreover, our stories are not only Dhaka-centric.  As Radio Foorti is able to give countrywide coverage, we get stories from every nook of the country,” says Russell.

“In fact now Foorti listeners can listen to Bhoot FM from all over the world using Foorti App. We are hoping to get more interesting stories from our global audience.”

“Honestly, I am not an avid radio listener,” says Farzana Mithila, a third year student of the University of Dhaka. “In fact, the only time I listen to the radio is when I am in my car. However being a horror film lover, I always try to listen to Bhoot FM, one of the very few horror productions of the country.”

She also says that unlike Hollywood horror movies, she can relate to the stories that the listeners come up with in this show as those are mostly about what we see around us.

However, there are a few things that the production team should keep in mind, believes Mithila. “One important thing is the presentation of the story. In spite of having a good plot, sometimes the story loses its appeal because of its dull presentation. The listeners are completely aware of the fact that the storytellers are common people like us. But the proper tone and eloquence are needed to make a horror story more horrifying.”  

“My ten-year old son stays up till midnight every Friday to listen to the show”, says 32-year-old Mashiat Islam.
“He listens to the Bhoot FM tales curling up in my arms, sometimes covering his head with his blanket. No matter how scared he is, he waits all week to hear the show,” Mashiat chuckles.

“We grew up listening to our grandma's bedtime stories, something my children unfortunately could not experience. For me Bhoot FM helps to bring back those childhood days,” she adds.

Considering the immense popularity of the show, the team is working arduously to make it more exciting. “We are planning to take the show beyond the studio by taking it outdoors, to a haunted house for example, so that our listeners can feel even more connected to the story,” concludes RJ Russell.