Monthly Archives: March 2017

Hospital Visitation

For this collection, I will be using initials to denote the conversation between the interviewer and the interviewee.

AJ -> Interviewer

LA -> Interviewee

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AJ: Have you, or has anyone close to you, ever experienced something strange or unexplainable?

 

LA: Like spirits sorta-stuff?

 

AJ: Yes! Can you tell me about an experience?

 

LA: So one time, it was Christmas day, and “santa” (my parents) bought me and my sister a go-kart as our present. It didn’t have any roll bars and was pretty dangerous. At the time, my sister was 11 and went to ride it after me. She came flying around a curb way too fast and crashed. The go-kart did multiple barrel rolls,  flips, skidded across the road on its side, and then landed on the wheels again. My sister was very, very close to crushing her skull on the asphalt. Meanwhile, my grandfather was in the hospital, and had been in a coma 6 days. Later that afternoon, my mother went to visit him and he awoke for the first time. The first thing he said to her was “How is [the sister]? I heard she was hurt. My wife visited me and told me about the crash.” But, the thing is, our grandmother had pass away, so essentially he said an angel visited him.

 

AJ: How would you explain this? Would you say it was a ghostly visitation or luck, or do you think someone visited him before your mother and told him the story, or something else?

 

LA: Well, I don’t believe in ghosts, but I do think there are spirits. I’m not sure how I might classify them differently. Maybe like an energy that flows around us constantly, and it can carry thoughts or ideas that the human mind can pick up on beyond our cognitive recognition.

———-

After thoughts:

This story has a lot of the classic motifs. For one, it takes place on Christmas day, which is a liminal period. In addition, similarities can be drawn to Gillian Bennett’s “Alas, Poor Ghost!” where many of the interviewees don’t believe in ghosts, but they believe in alternative definitions, such as “spirits,” “energy,” “angels,” and “visitations.” LA exhibits these same notions, further proving that lexicon choice is important when asking about experiences.

The Orbs

For this collection, I will be using initials to denote the conversation between the interviewer and the interviewee.

AJ -> Interviewer

NH -> Interviewee

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AJ: Have you, or has anyone close to you, ever experienced something strange or unexplainable, like ghostly encounters or anything of the sort?

NH: There was a time that I was in the sixth grade and had a weird morning. It was early in the morning, in like homeroom period after I had just gotten to school. I went to my assigned group section to sit until the first bell and I sat down. I put my head down for a second and spaced out because my friends weren’t there yet. I closed my eyes, and when I opened my eyes, it was as if the whole world was tinted blue, sort of like the blue fire that you see in cartoons or anime that represent your soul. In addition to the tint, there was a blue orb near the bodies of the people that were present. I was very confused and questioned what was going on. I tried to look closer at the orbs, but when I closed my eyes, everything was normal again. I just shook it off and continued about my day after that

(Brief pause)

NH: Oh and, there was also another instance too! One night I was sitting watching tv in the living room with my family, when all of a sudden our dog and two cats all looked up towards the corner of the room near the stairwell. The fur on the back of their necks began to stand up, and nothing could break their attention away from the corner. Out of curiosity, my brother began to snap a continuous line of pictures of the corner. When going through them later, all of the pictures were the same except for two; there were two pictures that had a weird white orb in the corner. Never could explain that one.

 

AJ: Do you think these events are connected in any sort of way? Is there a bigger picture, or general explanation you might be able to give?

 

NH: I honestly don’t think anything of it. For the school incident I think I was just way too tired. And for the orb in the pictures I think it was probably just like a flash from the tv or something. I don’t know. Maybe it was a ghost or a spiritual visitation, but I can’t be sure, and I’m leaning more towards my mind just playing games.

———-

After thoughts:
This is an interesting set of stories, because in both stories, he describes his strange sights as “orbs.” He also draws connections to the representation of the soul. In addition, these collections show the classic motif of traditions of disbelief; NH plays off the stories by blaming himself for being tired or by blaming the TV for adjusting the light, even though he mentioned to me later on that he does in fact believe in ghosts.

 

A Ghostly Shove

“My dad, when he was younger, around the same age as us [18] was in his house, and it was an old house that they had. He was on the [third floor] terrace, just sitting or whatever, just looking over the top, just standing there. No one was up there; it wasn’t windy, nothing. Literally, he felt someone push him, like an actual shove, as he was looking over. All there is is just like a little border and then you fall. And so he felt someone push him. He fell over the thing, fell down, and like broke his arm. No one was upstairs, everyone was downstairs. And it was just him and his mom, like his brothers were gone. It was just him upstairs. So yeah, he broke his wrist or whatever. And so, like he, I mean, everyone thinks it was a ghost. I’m pretty sure, like…what else would it be? He didn’t just like, he didn’t trip, he was just standing there and he felt someone push him, and the next thing you know, he’s falling off of the third floor. So yeah, no one really went up there after that.”

 

A lot of the elements in this ghost story are common to many ghost narratives. For one, this occurrence happened during adolescence, which is a common time for ghostly activity to happen in one’s life. Additionally, the story is set in an “old house,” which is also common in ghost stories, a building with a long history. In this story, the ghost seems to be corporal, though the father does not see or hear the ghost; even still, he undeniably feels it. This story is interesting to me because the father doesn’t just claim he felt a soft touch or a poke; he experiences a hard push that results in him tumbling down three stories and breaking his wrist. It is difficult to imagine why, if his story is false, he would tumble over the edge of the terrace, especially in the absence of wind or other people to accidentally (or purposely) bump him. As my informant asked, “what else would it be?”