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.
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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.