Author Archives: ranzani@usc.edu

Plane Safety 101

Main Piece: KC: My brother touches the side a plane before we get on it every time we fly, and makes all of us touch it too. I thought he was just weird but I guess it’s a superstition we all have now.

 

Context: This practice takes place every time KC’s family boards a plane.

 

Background: As KC’s family is particularly logical, and generally doesn’t take place in ghost stories or superstitions, this one superstition that her brother learned is of particular interest to her and her family.

 

Analysis: This is interesting, as it shows that folk beliefs can be learned from outside your family as well; KC’s brother would never have learned this superstition from his family, as they don’t practice any superstitions. Through school and his friends, he learned that to be safe while travelling on a plane, you were supposed to touch the side of the plane as you were boarding. As he began to believe this, he asked his family to do this while they would travel, and now the whole family partakes on it anytime they fly. Usually, folk beliefs are seen to be passed down from generation to generation, but this is an interesting example of a younger person teaching an older generation a new superstition.

 

Santa’s Sack

Main Piece: KC: At Christmas, instead of having stockings we have pillowcases and they like act like Santa’s sack. I also used to leave cookies and brandy out for Santa, because apparently Santa really liked alcohol, haha!

 

Context: KC practices this tradition every Christmas, which she spends with her family in England.

 

Background: KC is very tied to her British roots, as her parents moved from England while her mother was pregnant with her, and so she has grown up with this and countless other British traditions being passed onto her through her direct and extended family.

 

Analysis: Pillowcases as stockings was not particularly interesting, but the thought that Santa left his sack for kids instead of filling a pre-left sock was super interesting! KC told me that at a very young age, she helped her grandmother fill the sacks, and until she explained this I was extremely confused– I wasn’t sure what sacks she was talking about. I like the idea that in England, Santa has thousands upon thousands of little sacks to leave for kids, as opposed to here in America where Santa has one big, giant, magical sack.

 

Mary Queen of Scotts is in my House!

Main Piece: KC: So basically… (looks at phone), my grandparents live in this house called Hipper Hall in this tiny tiny town called Holymoorside in England and its the main farmhouse, it has one tiny town hall thats just one room and then there used to be the village post office and the local village shop and a local school, but my grandparents house was the farm house– it has barns and fields and a slaughterhouse and a pigsty all made out of stone. Growing up… my family is completely logical and doesn’t believe in ghost stories, we’re very scientific, but it was always known that there were two things to look out for: bats that were in the barn, but apparently you could only hear them until you were 14… I remember my grandfather asking if i could still hear the bats, but basically there was always a story my grandfather told me that I believe was passed down from previous owners and there’s a ghost! There’s also supposedly a tunnel between our house and the biggest house of the neighboring village. She’s apparently a female ghost and is very friendly, and even my grandfather has seen her which freaks me out the most bc he’s a normal straight-shooting guy. She comes out on the full moon of November which is close to my birthday! She just kinda closes doors and stuff but only on this once specific night… I don’t think I’ve actually been there during this night but it has been a source of horror in my childhood. (looks up Hipper Hall Ghost on google) It’s on the internet! People have reported seeing hooded figures walk through barbed fences and a woman disappearing out of nowhere– oh yeah here it is! The supposed ghost of Mary Queen of Scotts has been reportedly seen at the barn door of Hipper Hall! Love my life. Wow.

 

Context: This story has been passed down her family for years– she has always known about the Hipper Hall ghost.

 

Background: KC’s family is very logical and scientific, to where they have so few superstitions and folk practices that it was difficult to collect form her. The fact that her entire family believes in this ghost helps make it more real for her.

 

Analysis: This was such a cool story! KC was doing research on her computer as she was telling me about the ghost, and at the end she found two articles online about this ghost in her grandparents’ house. It’s super interesting, because this is her family home, not just some random place or some famous home in Hollywood, but there is so much information done by other people on this topic that it makes it real. KC was also so skeptical about it at first, playing it off as just a family legend, but when she started doing more research and found other people who were talking about it, she became scared and even said “I can’t imagine my literal grandfather just hanging around with his ghost buddy, Mary of Scotts.”

 

A Little More than a Prank

Main Piece: SR: In high school, there was another girl that was in band… and we used to toilet paper everyone’s houses, but she didn’t have any trees in her front yard, so we went and stole a tree out of the ground, and went to her front yard and dug a hole and planted her tree, and then toilet papered the tree! And today, you can drive by and the tree is still in her front yard. We then wanted everyone to see the new tree, so her best friend lived across the street and had a circular driveway, and then we toilet papered their house and thought it would be super fun if everyone had to drive through her driveway to get to school to see it! So we spent the night driving around stealing traffic cones and detour signs and then made it so that every road going to school was blocked off, and anyone who wanted to get to high school that morning had to drive through her driveway.

CR (wife): I can attest to this, because I didn’t even know him and I remember having to drive through her driveway to get to school! I remember when he told me this story the first time, I said “That was you!”

 

Context: This practical joke, alongside many others, was done while SR was in high school.

 

Background: SR was a huge prankster in high school: he did this, he stole street signs, he painted someone’s car without them knowing… SR has always loved jokes and pranks, and even in retelling this story he was cracking up.

 

Analysis: Toilet papering someone’s house is a widespread high school tradition throughout America. Everyone has either toilet papered or been toilet papered. SR’s version gets much more unique, because not only did he literally plant a fully grown tree in someone’s yard, but in order to have people see his handiwork, he toilet papered a neighboring house and forced everyone at their high school to drive past it. This practical joke is a large variation on the standard joke of toilet papering, but in SR’s family this story in itself has become a tale– SR has told it, his wife has told it, even his daughter has told it to friends whenever pranks come up.

 

Grandpa and the Friendly Ghost

Main Piece: CR: So, I’m not sure if the ghost came with the house in Winchester because after I finally told Grandpa about the ghost he then told me that the house I grew up in also had a ghost, so I don’t know if its a new ghost or like a continual ghost, but um, yeah there was the two specific things that happened! So we had bookcases in the den, built in bookcases that had books and knick knacks, so one day sitting in the living room I can see the den, out of the blue one of the knick knacks, a little fairy, literally falls off the bookcase on to the ground. No animal had walked by, nothing had happened. So I went to pick it up, and I put it back and I thought “well, maybe it was just learning funny, maybe it got bumped and finally fell off” so I put it back. I sat back down. Within a couple of minutes, from that same area on the bookcase, a book fell off and hit the ground. That’s the one that freaked me out because there’s no way a books just gonna fall off and hit the ground from the same area that that fairy was! In addition, things would go missing forever, we’d look and look and look for something, and a week later bam it’s just sitting there where we had looked 47 times, and I also would notice little peripheral lights in certain areas, and i’d look and it would go. So that’s when I made a deal with the ghost, I said “you can stay, but you cannot freak me out!.” and so I feel that when we moved to the first condo, I feel it came with us, because I still had the lights and things would still go missing, BUT when we moved to the second condo was within a few months of grandpa dying, and I have had very little issues at the new condo, so I don’t know if Grandpa is running interference with us with this ghost.

 

Context: These ghost sightings were noticed years ago, in an old house which happened to live in a city with a lot of Native American culture.

 

Background: CR tends to believe in these things: she meditates, she collects healing crystals, and she firmly believes that this ghost was real. She just as firmly believes that her father, after he died, has sent signs to her and has possibly protected her from this ghost.

 

Analysis: Ghosts are always interesting, especially when dealt with from the perspective of someone who firmly believes in ghosts. It seems difficult to find any sort of logical explanation for CR’s items falling off of her shelf other than a ghost, as books flying off shelves just isn’t something that regularly happens. The most interesting part of this story, however, is when CR mentions her father; it is definitely worth noting that her father died around the same time that her ghost stopped making problems for her– perhaps the ghost was tied to her father, since he mentioned that they definitely had a ghost in her childhood house. Perhaps the ghost was helping her recently deceased father get situated. Or perhaps, as she said, her father is out there, protecting her from this ghost that just wants to knock things off of shelves. Her firm belief in the presence of this ghost, and the relationship of the ghost to her father, is what makes this story truly unique.