Author Archives: tokemper

The Ghost in the Crisper

TK: Do you have any ghost stories that happened to you or someone you know?

BQ: There’s that one time Christian who was working at The Lab with me felt a ghost grab his hand when he reached into the crisper.

TK: So what happened?

BQ: Ok so Christian was closing the restaurant and he was the only person left and when he was in the kitchen he reached into the crisper where they keep all the lettuce and stuff and he felt something grab his hand and jerk his arm forward but he opened the drawer and there was nothing there obviously.

 

THE INFORMANT: Brynne is a former USC student who worked at The Lab restaurant and bar just off campus on Figueroa for the years of her undergraduate education. It’s common for food service employees to develop a tight camaraderie, which is what happened when Brynne was working at The Lab. Christian was one of her fellow servers who has several stories of this nature, seemingly connected to when he was alone in the building.


ANALYSIS: Having a ghostly apparition seize your hand is not as common as feeling one seize your foot, which seems to happen (or allegedly happen) quite frequently. There are plenty of stories online (so due to be taken with a grain of salt) but most ghost stories have to rely on anecdotal experience in the absence of real proof. Another interesting thing about this type of story is that often those who experience it are prone to sleep paralysis or other types of anxiety dreams that they have mistaken in the past for supernatural occurrences, yet have learned to distinguish them; the difficult part to understand is how they so frequently insist that this type of occurrence is separate from the other types of disturbances they have encountered that have a more logical explanation.

The Lanesborough Hotel Ghost

Lanesborough Hotel

 

TK: Can you tell me the story of the Lanesborough Hotel ghost again?

RK: I went in the middle of the winter and it was snowing and really cold.

TK: How long ago was this?

RK: I don’t know. Ten years?

TK: Who were you with.

RK: Myself.

TK: So what happened?

RK: Um. I don’t like heat but I put it on because it was so cold and like at three in the morning I woke up shivering and I went to go look at the heater and it was switched to air condition so I tried to push it and change it and wouldn’t change so I called downstairs and they sent an engineer up so he comes in and starts working it and then he fixes it and puts the heat on. I go get back into bed and the air conditioner comes on again so I’m freaking out. I put on a robe on and I’m laying here and all of a sudden the bed started to shake.

TK: No way. Then what?

RK: So then I called again and they go ‘but I’m sorry we’re going to have to move your room, the engineer has gone home.’ So in the middle of the night they came and moved my stuff and I moved into the new room. The guy said that it used to be a hospital so a lot of people died there. Your mom says that it was this woman whose son was injured during the war and died in the hospital. His mom was the nurse. She never got to say goodbye to him so she continues to roam the halls looking for him. This is only on the third floor.

TK: Didn’t Richie have the same thing happen to him?

RK: No he actually saw her.

TK: Wait explain.

RK: He was staying on the third floor, alone, also, and he was asleep, only on one side of the bed. He turned over in the middle of the night and she was laying there, next to him. She then just got up and walked through the door.

 

THE INFORMANT

 

The informant is my father. He goes to London a lot for business and his favorite hotel is the Lanesborough. I’ve heard this story from him before but I wanted a clearer understanding of it, but although he is usually talkative and remembers small details, I had to pry it out of him because he wasn’t that into remembering it.

 

ANALYSIS


This story is the second one I have heard from a family member regarding a ghostly visitation that did not actually involve seeing anything, but rather a distinct sense that something was happening out of the realm of the ordinary–like my mother’s story of Woburn Abbey. Rather than seeing a ghost they each just felt like one had been there but did not see it.

Shabbos

 

TK: What did you do every Friday night?

GK: We had Shabbos dinner, I lit the candles, with a table cloth. My mother always had food for us; she was such a wonderful cook. Your daddy would go to synagogue with my father and he would walk 8 or 9 blocks. And in schul he was the most behaved boy you had ever seen. Everyone giving him candy. He loved afterward when they had the drinks and food. Ross was my father’s only grandson. He had 6 granddaughters. We went to synagogue in the morning–

TK: Saturday morning?

GK: Yes, Ross, my parents and me. After we came home all the nieces came over for lunch because they all loved my mother’s cooking.

TK: So lunch was a big thing?

GK: Very special because my mother made the chicken well done and everybody was fighting for it. But Ross got service first, your dad, because he was the only boy. They were fun times; we always had big dinners.

TK: Was there a certain dish or food that was at every dinner?

GK: My mother made white fish that was delicious. We never bought fish from a store. She was also a very good cook because my grandfather was in the baking business. Strudel, everything the kids loved. She loved the kitchen. Everything was spotless, all white. And the kids loved her food and she made everything the way the children liked it. Then we moved to Florida.

TK: So in Florida you started hosting dinners?

GK: Yes, I started making dinners. We went to a congregation and the rabbi had married me. He was from Michigan which was very weird.

TK: Who used to come to dinners in Miami?

GK: My children. My husband’s brother and his wife. And my aunt used to come from the winter with her husband. We always had relatives and friends come in. We were always very busy. And then six years later we moved back to Michigan and did the same thing. It was joyous, a very joyous time.

TK: Were you orthodox?

GK: We were very orthodox. My father was ultra religious. We couldn’t eat meat out or anything. Papa’s family was religious but not as quite as religious. I used to change all the dishes and everything because I had lunch at my house after services. But you know you don’t stay as religious.

TK: When daddy was growing up were you conservative?

GK: Yes, we went to a congregation that was conservative. The men and women sit together. In Orthodox the men and women don’t sit together.

 

THE INFORMANT: The informant is my dad’s mother, who grew up in Michigan, where she lived until she moved to Florida. She came from a family of immigrant Russian Jews and maintained the Jewish religion in her own life, which has evolved through living in America.

ANALYSIS: The tradition of Friday night shabbat dinner is still very intact in modern Jewish homes. The dinners my grandmother is referencing from fifty years ago are still quite similar in their existence in today’s world; those more religious families go to synagogue, but even those without this weekly tradition often still maintain a culinary tradition. It is very family-oriented, showing the emphasis on family, tradition, and memories.

La Siguanaba — El Salvadoran Witch

 

 

TK: Is there any legends or myths in El Salvador?

MC: Haha there’s so many but they’re scary. (Very quickly) I don’t know but my grandma used to say when you walk alone after midnight this woman comes after you with the long hair and she chases you and you couldn’t talk and you got to your house all freaking out and you get to the house and everyone is looking at you and you couldn’t talk for 24 hours because this woman touched you.

TK: So did you ever see this woman?

MC: NO! because I never was walking in the middle of the night. But they say this happens to all the guys because after the guys drop the girls off on the date they would be walking alone and see this woman and you know she was really pretty and sometimes she would look like the girl.

TK: Could she change the way she looked?

MC: Ya she looked like the girlfriend of the guys so they get confused and you know they start talking to her and then she changed to a really scary looking…

TK: A really scaring looking what?

MC: Like, you know, like an evil witch and they got scared but by that time they were already scared and touched by her and they couldn’t talk. And my grandma says they happened to a few people that she knows and the next day they start telling the story what happened to them when they could talk and not to go on that path and this woman was called La Sigwanata? (laughing) TK: What? How is it spelled?

MC: Let me spell it for you (goes and gets a pen and paper) this story has been going on for years… (spells it on paper “La Siguanaba”).

TK: Has this been going…

MC: (cuts me off) This story has been going on for generations and generations and I told this story to Nicolas (her son) and he was like ‘tell me more tell me more!’ And the story is still going on there like if you go by these trees you get touched by this woman.

TK: And that’s it?

MC: That’s it.

TK: And people know about this?

MC: Everybody (eyes widen).

TK: So this is a story?

MC: I think it’s a legend because at school it was in our books and we had to write about it.

 

THE INFORMANT: Maria grew up in El Salvador and therefore has different legends than the ones I grew up with in America. Her immediate recollection of this story shows what an effect it had on her growing up, as she can still recount the details and remember people it supposedly happened to that she knows.

ANALYSIS: La Siguanaba is a well-known El Salvadorian legend. Siguanaba means “horrible woman” and it is said she bore the child of a god but was an unfit mother, so the god cursed her to her fate of wandering alone at night and mostly appearing to solitary men walking alone. From behind, she looks like a beautiful long-haired woman but is actually horrifically ugly, like a witch. Some people say they can see her washing clothes in a river and looking for her son.

Reina de los Militares — El Salvador independence day

TK: What’s one of the most memorable cultural experiences you remember from childhood in El Salvador?

MC: Independence Day? Over here you guys just do fireworks. Over there you have to rehearse with marching bands. It’s on September 15. If you’re an honor role student, you wear this blue and white sash to represent you’re one of the best of the school.

TK: Were you one of those kids?

MC: One time. But I was a princess so I was a different thing.

TK: What?

MC: They choose, like, a queen from the school and one for the military, and I was a princess from the military and I was marching with the whole military crew. That’s what they do over there.

TK: So the real military?

MC: Mhm, the army over there.

TK: What do you mean queen?

MC: You’re the pretty girl of the whole army and then you march with the military instead of marching with the school.

TK: So how often did you do that?

MC: Well you’re queen for a year, and you do that for Independence Day, and if it’s a holiday, let’s say…. Every city has a party and you dress up and represent the army in every single social event for the city for a year.

TK: Is there a saying in Spanish that everyone says for Independence Day?

MC: Dia de la independence? Queen of the army in Spanish – raina de los militares.

TK: How old were you?

MC: When I was that? I was 14.

TK: You marched?

MC: Yes with the uniform, the army uniform and you go in the front. Like here, like the Rose Parade, like the princess goes in front.

TK: Where do you march?

MC: Around the city.

TK: What city?

MC: Santa Ana, El Salvador

 

INFORMANT: Maria, who has worked in our household for ten years and grew up in El Salvador. Her recollection was happy and nostalgic, laughing a lot as she retold this part of her life.

 

ANALYSIS: This segment shows one of the key differences between how America and El Salvador celebrate their respective Independence Days. Maria used contrasting language to explain that, while in America we just have fireworks, the celebration in El Salvador is more prolonged and involves a military parade and the naming of “queens” from the school and from the military, who retain that title for an entire year after the parade.