The informant is a 20 year old girl and also my current roommate. I have always been aware of her belief in ghosts, and in this interview, I asked her to tell me about her experience with ghosts in her home. She currently resides in Mission Hills, Kansas in a home built back in the 1800s. Her home is right on the border of Kansas and Missouri.

Me: Can you tell me about the ghosts in your house.

Informant: *Thinking* I don’t know where to begin…okay…So… I moved upstairs into my sister’s room. It’s third story of my house, and it is right next to the attic. When we first moved in, there was this really creepy closet that had all of these… like… graffiti markings around it. There were these rules in it, that said ‘no breathing’ ‘no eating’ ‘no sleeping’. Really creepy stuff. But a teenager lived there before we got there so we were like ‘okay whatever this is really creepy. This teenage is on crack or something’ and didn’t think anything of it. But I moved upstairs. I have always been really kind of scared of it. And my sisters all left so it was just me living upstairs on the third floor and I would always hear things at night, but I never really thought anything of it. I would hear footsteps up and down my hall… Didn’t think anything of it. And then it got to a point where my mom was finding underwear with the crotch eaten out of it… really freaky stuff. We found out we had a rat problem. But besides the point, we got rid of those and I was still hearing footsteps down the hallway and stuff. Then finally, one day, I was sleeping and I heard purring. Like a cat in my ear. And I was like ‘okay I am not making this up.’ Shot up in my bed and there was a bat flying in circles around my bed. So I screamed and ran out! We caught the bat and it was fine, whatever. Then, after 2 weeks of me being afraid of my upstairs, I went back to sleep in my room and I was sleeping and I felt something slapping both of my cheecks. I opened my eyes and it was another bat. And it had landed on my face. So, swatted that away, but we could not find it. I had to get a series of rabies shots. Wasn’t fun. Then, after that, I continued on, kind of got used to the shadows and footsteps in my hall. Then one night, I was not feeling well and I was home alone so I slept in my parent’s bed and I had my best friend sleep in my bed. But she left at 6am that morning, and I had no idea why. She didn’t talk to me for like 2 days and then finally called me and was like ‘did I ever tell you what happened to me at your house?’ and I was like ‘no what happened?’ and she said she was laying in my bed, she heard a big thud on the wall behind her from the attic, and she shot up to see what it was. Didn’t see anything, laid back down and then heard someone sprint down the hallway. She shot up and there was a man at the end of my bed, staring down at her. She screamed and he disappeared into thin air. She went underneath the covers and did not sleep for the rest of the night and left as soon as the sun came up.

We always tell these stories as jokes, just being like ‘oh yeah there is a ghost on my floor’ but now we are serious because Audrey first hand saw it. We told my friends, and they all told us we were full of shit. Even one of my friends who dose not take to this stuff was like ‘no way you are so full of shit.’ Really did not believe me. I had a huge group sleep over on prom night and she, my friend Madison who doesn’t believe in any of this stuff, was like, ‘I never wanted to tell you this, because I don’t believe in this stuff, but I saw him standing by the pool table on prom night. I didn’t believe it until the next morning when I walked over to the pool table to see what was making that weird shadow, and there was nothing there.  So it had to have been him.’  Ever since, I always say I swear there is a ghost there. I think he is friendly. I think he just lost his way, but he is nice. I think he is just protective. I just think he isn’t happy with strangers sleeping in my house.

My analysis:  Similarly to the other informant I interviewed about ghosts, this informant also believes that they mean no harm.  Both women have views of ghosts being very docile and simply lost.  I would say that this story is an example of a memorate. The informant had it in her head that there were ghosts in her house, so when her friend came to sleep over and heard weird noises/saw a shadow, she immediately jumped to use this as evidence of their being a ghost. In reality, it could have been a dream, or a shadow from a tree, but instead the informant deemed it as the ghost. From there, what was initially just a joke became real.