Category Archives: Rituals, festivals, holidays

Great Grandma’s Chair

Age: 72

Age: 19

Text:

“In our family, we have unassigned assigned seats for dinner. After my mother, Elizabeth, passed away in the house, we would keep that seat at the table empty out of habit. Well, one day, about a year after her death, we had a guest over and so I offered my seat up to the guest. I would sit in my mother’s seat. When I sat down, I felt an immense weight on my shoulders and an overwhelming feeling of sadness. It only left me once I left the chair. I ended up having to sit at a folding chair and the chair remained empty. Since then, I do not let anyone sit in that seat as it’s her chair. Even today when I am eating at the table, out of the corner of her eye it can look like someone is sitting in the seat. I believe it is her.”

Context:

This was told to the informant by his grandmother, about his great-grandmother. It was told on Thanksgiving at family dinner. The story itself took place roughly 10 years ago.

Analysis:

In this story, a grandmother speaks about her late mother to her grandchild to explain why a seat is kept at the dinner table for someone who has died. It is a sign of respect to the dead, as well as slight fear against change. This story sparks the debate of if there is truly a ghost or if grief itself can manifest into a spiritual form. The story functions as a warning against erasing past relatives, as well as a loving tale that past relatives never actually leave the family, even in the afterlife.

Late Night Newspaper Room Ghost

Age: 58

Location: Boston, MA (Tufts University)

Text:
“when I was in college, I worked for the student newspaper, and I pulled a ton of all-nighters. I was always in that newspaper office at like 2 or 3 a.m., laying out pages, fixing articles, doing all the last-minute formatting before everything went to print. At that hour the building was basically dead. There were never really any students, no professors. Most of the time it was just me and maybe a few others from the school paper.

One night I was alone in the office working, and I heard this knocking on the door. I got up and opened the door but nobody was there. The whole hallway was silent. I didn’t really think much of it though I thought it was a bit creepy. I figured maybe someone was messing around or walking by, so I went back to work. But about twenty minutes later, the same knocking happened again. Again, I opened the door and there was nothing there.

At this point I was still trying to stay focused, but I was definitely getting freaked out. Then, sometime around four in the morning, it happened a third time. Same knocks. Same pace. Like someone was trying to get my attention on purpose. Now i was scared.

This time I didn’t open the door. I figured that if whatever it was was trying to play tricks on me, then then now would be the time that there was finally something there. So I didn’t answer it. But then it knocked again. So I got up and opened the door. There was still nothing there!

After the fourth time it never happened again. Ever. No explanation, no ending, no clue what was going on. Just knocks in the middle of the night that stopped as suddenly as they started. It was weird. Part of me thinks it was just someone messing with me. But that room could’ve been haunted”

Context:

This memorate was told to the informant by their father, who experienced repeated unexplained knocking while working alone in his college newspaper office late at night during production deadlines.

Analysis:

This memorate fits perfectly into campus ghost lore, where late-night workspaces become settings for strange and unexplained events. The repeated knocking creates a sense of intentional but invisible presence. What gives the story its power is the lack of resolution: no culprit, no explanation, just unexplained knocks that never returned. The mystery itself becomes the haunting, turning an ordinary college office into a space marked by unease and unanswered questions.

Skulls, Watermelons, and the White figures

Age: 18

Informant: So the story goes like this: One time in my dream I was near a Watermelon field. It was a dark night, and I was walking inside the field. As I was walking, I had an odd sensation that the watermelon beneath me are not watermelons, but rather human head. With that realization I think I saw a human head cracked open, and watermelons near it also cracked. Then, A white, shadowy figure appeared next to that watermelon. It’s appeared so suddenly, and quickly disappeared. I was shocked by what I was seeing as I woken up from my dreams. Then I saw a white figure flying out of my room’s door in great speed, but I was so tired out that night that I fall asleep again after that encounter.

Informant’s thought: The informant take this as a possibly a hallucination out of tiredness he felt during that distant night. This event happened in his early Childhood, supposedly back in his hometown.

My Analysis: While I suspect this can be serve as an account for ghost, I do think this story featured many motifs in ghost stories such as the midnight time, and seems to imply that those watermelons could be a product of spirit possession: Hence the cracking watermelon seems to “release” the spirit within.

Maybe a ghost on internet?

Age: 28

Informant: Last year, in December, I was talking with someone online who seemed to have a strange sense of humor and way of speaking that made our conversation difficult and confusing. That person was mainly sharing philosophical thoughts, which seemed too much, as every word and topic would be followed by unclear and irritating sentences. He talked about death often as well, and luckily or unfortunately, I do not remember the details. Thus, we have been talking and even fighting for hours through these messages. The next day I woke up and learnt that one of my relatives had died. It was very unexpected, because even though that person was old, he was strong, full of life, and energetic. For some reason, I saw a strange connection between the conversations I had and his death because later I was told the hour his heart stopped at, and that is exactly when we were talking with this person without any plans of ever speaking again. The death of my relative made a huge psychological impact, and for weeks, I was falling out of life and was in a vulnerable emotional state. In February, almost two months later, I accidentally found the same person again. I remember telling him about everything that happened during the first two months and how I connected that death with our conversation. I remember him telling me that he is sick and needs to leave, and I was so deeply immersed in my emotions that I kept saying to him, “No, you will answer all my questions, and help me, and then you can go. It started with you, it will end with you.” It was half a joke, as the person could obviously just stop writing and leave, but still talked to me until I received all the answers that I thought would help me feel better.
It worked, and I started getting back to my normal life after our second and probably last conversation. While this experience is mainly about how I perceived this situation, connecting our communication with the death incident and mentally ending the suffering of grief that stopped me from moving on with my life, I still find it to be a strange coincidence with the timing of meeting the same person twice, with the topics we discussed that left an unusual feeling, and then such an important life event occurred and then ended like it had any power over the situation. And while telling this story, my bag fell down from the place where it had been for hours.

Context: The informant told this story to me through voice recording.

Informant thoughts: The informant does not believe in ghost and folklore, but did feel a little surprised or spooked with the coincidences in this particular event.

My analysis: While it does seem far fetched that a stranger, ghost or not ghost, could have some power over affecting people’s death and emotions. I think if we are to look at this story through the possibility of internet ghost, this story becomes very interesting. Assuming this encounter with this stranger online was in fact a ghost encounter, this fits the narrative or at least the idea of trans-humanism: Where one’s soul or mind can be uploaded, trapped within the digital space. This might also explain why this particular internet stranger is so fond of death. What might have happened could be that the ghost was angered and possibly brought misfortunate upon the informant, but after they made peace again, the ghost seems to have the power to help the informant to go on back to life.

The Boy Who Returned

Age: 78

Text: TT told me a family story involving the death of two boys and the belief that the same soul returned decades later through another person.

When TT was younger, she was very close to her teenage cousin P, who treated her like his elder sister. When they used to play together as kids, TT always remembers how P was loving and protective of her. When P was 16 years old, he was diagnosed with a very aggressive type of bone cancer. They had to amputate his leg at the femur where the cancer was, but it spread quickly to the rest of his body and he died on December 18th at 5:30 ​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍‌P.M.

The following year, TT had her first child named S who was a baby boy. A few days after birth, doctors discovered a fracture in S’s left femur. It was broken in the exact location where P’s leg had been amputated. The family found this strange but was too overwhelmed with medical concerns to interpret it at the time.

S recovered from the fracture and was a normal, active infant until he fell suddenly ill around six months old. Despite TT taking him repeatedly to the doctor, his condition worsened, fever, diarrhea, dehydration, and he died in the hospital on December 18th, at 5:30 PM, the exact date and time of P’s death, one year later.

Because of the mirrored injuries and the identical death date and time, TT came to believe that S was P returned to her. The boy who once loved her as a sister in life came back to her as a son, if only briefly, completing some unfinished time he felt he still needed with TT.

Decades later, another figure entered TT’s life: a young man, called R (who was the same age that S would have been at the time), who helped care for her very sick husband during his declining years. R handled every detail of caregiving with deep loyalty, devotion, and emotional steadiness. TT often said that even a biological son might not have shown such unwavering dedication.

Over time, she began to feel that R carried the same soul as S and P. She described his presence as a spiritual continuation of the boy she lost and as someone who had returned yet again, this time in adulthood, to help her husband through illness and to make sure she was not alone.

TT also believed that R’s actions reflected the qualities of Lord Ram, the Hindu figure symbolizing duty, righteousness, and service. She often said R was “like an incarnation of Ram”. He not a literal divine rebirth, but a way of saying that he embodied the compassion, loyalty, and spiritual purpose associated with Ram in Hindu tradition.

Following her husband’s death and R’s eventual departure, TT remarked that it was as if she were losing a son all over again. The sorrow she experienced at that time was similar to the pain of her children leaving home for the first time and even the grief she had carried since losing S many years ago. To TT, R was more than just a caretaker, he was the living continuation of a soul she believed had returned to her twice before. Letting him go was painful, as though she were watching that same soul walk away yet again.

However, their relationship was not affected by this separation. TT and R are still very close. He calls her before making major decisions, visits when he can, and treats her with the same reverence and affection that a son would show his mother.

Context:​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍‌ TT shared this story with me when we were having a private conversation for a folklore assignment. While she was speaking from her apartment in India, I was listening from Los Angeles. 

This is a story that is hardly ever shared and only with very close family. It is brought up when one thinks or talks about fate, reincarnation, and the secret ways in which the people we love might come back to us. 

In a South Asian setting, the interpretation of such occurrences is highly influenced by the concepts of reincarnation, destiny, karmic ties, and spiritual return. For instance, if somebody is said to be “like an incarnation of Lord Ram,” it is a way of acknowledging that person’s admirable traits and not as the actual god reborn, but as a recognition of the person having high moral or spiritual qualities. 

The Narrator’s Perspective: TT does not talk dramatically when she tells this story. She talks softly, but at the same time, with complete belief that it is not a matter of chance that the coincidences are very exact. 

She believes that P came back to her in the form of S, maybe only for a short time and one of the signs of a spiritual unity were the same death dates and both having broken legs. She also believes that after a long time, it is through R, whose love for the family was way beyond the ordinary, that the same spirit comes back to us. 

The traits of R, the goodness, the quietness, the indestructible faith, was that of Lord Ram, thus, to her, the return of this spirit was to give her family security and protection. To her, it is not a scary story but rather a reassuring one. It revolves around the idea that love never dies. 

My Thoughts (Analysis): From a folkloric perspective, this is a classic reincarnation memorate (classic in Hindu/Indian culture), where lived experience is interpreted through cultural beliefs about soul continuity.

The story contains several motifs common in South Asian reincarnation narratives:

Firstly, mirrored injuries as a reincarnation marker (fractured thigh matching an amputated leg). Also, identical death dates and times signaling a cyclical spiritual pattern. Finally, the soul returning through multiple forms across a single lifetime.

What makes the story striking is not only the coincidences, but how the family uses them to create meaning from profound loss. Instead of viewing these tragedies as disconnected events, TT interprets them as part of a spiritual continuity that kept her connected to someone she loved deeply. Personally, I find the story powerful because it shows how families turn grief into meaning, transforming randomness into relationship.