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The Ghost of Her Grandmother at Death

Main Transcription:

Collector: Hello JS, so I know that you have mentioned before that there are ghost stories and interactions in your family. I would really appreciate it if maybe you could share some of your experiences.

Informant: Okay so when I was little my family had like a lot of encounters with ghosts and spirits; it’s happened for me a lot. I will share a story that happened with my mom and myself. I think it’s like the craziest experience. So when I was little I was looking out our window just like looking outside like anyone would do, I was maybe 10 and I saw this person walking down the street and we lived in a pretty small neighborhood so everybody pretty much knew everyone.  I saw this person walking down the street and I’d never seen them before, so I called to my mom who was in the kitchen and said, “Mom, who’s the pretty girl walking down the street?” My mom was doing something and could not see out the window, so I yelled to her explaining what she looks like. I said “she’s in this red dress with flowers on it, she had long brown hair and she’s really pretty.” At that moment my mom walked over and looked out the window and was like “Oh my God that’s exactly what my mom, your grandma, wore when she died”.  I supposedly had seen my grandma that I’ve never met before in the clothes that she died in.  I find this really creepy and my mom tells that story all the time that it looked like real life and we thought it’s a real life person that we could touch, but no one else in our family had had any other encounters with our grandmother.

Collector: Do you think are any reasons in particular why your Grandmother showed herself to you and your mother?

Informant: Well I think that my mom and my Grandma are really similar and my mom talks about my Grandma as like she is her Guardian Angel. My mom attributes small occurrences to her mom.  Little super random stuff like if something like drops in our house or sometimes like come up in her dream. My mom can connect those things, but my mom also sees auras around people.  The auras are the colors that you associate with people and it allows my mom the extraordinary power to know how someone is feeling or if something’s wrong.

Collector: Does she think this ability comes from her grandma? 

Informant: No, I think she thinks that she has like this connection with her, but I don’t think she got it from her.

Collector: Have there been other times where you have experienced other sorts of supernatural events?

Yeah, my sister and I often have the same dream and wake up seeing figures of old people standing in the corner. This makes me sound actually insane, but more often than not, my sister sees the person and I could like feel the spirit. I think it’s crazy and not a coincidence that both encounter similar things at the same time. Okay, that sums up most of it.

Collector: Would you be willing to share any more of your experiences?

Informant: Ummm, for the most part I have told you the interesting parts.

Collector: Well, thank you so much more sharing and I really appreciate you taking the time to tell your story.

Context and Relation:

JS grew up in a small town outside of Chicago. She later moved to Seattle for high school. There are pieces of her story that are from her time in Seattle, but the first encounter about seeing her grandmother took place in a small suburb outside of Chicago. She remembers this story because of the abnormality of the situation. It was extremely strange for JS to see an accurate image of someone that she had never met before. JS is a caucasian teenage girl who is attending an American university.

Personal Reflection:

Personally, I have never had an experience quite like JS’s with seeing a dead grandparent or parent or experiencing a spirit. I found it interesting in JS’s story that her Grandmother was wearing the clothes that she died in and that the grandmother took the body of a younger girl, similar to her age. I don’t know exactly what this detail means, but it is definitely worth mentioning. I agree with JS that these events are scary, but I find it really interesting how nobody else in her family has connected with her Grandmother except JS and her mother. Personally, it would make sense to me if other family members came in contact with the Grandmother ghost being from the same family, especially if her sister has had visions of figures from dreams. In conclusion, JS had an amazing encounter with a ghost of her grandmother that she will never forget. 

The Woman In The Green Dress

I am interviewing a friend (ED) from high school who is describing an old house his family used to live in that he claims had a ghost of an old owner. My friend is a member of a family with one brother, one half brother, one step brother and one step sister.

Me: What is the background of this house you used to live in?

ED: The house was a vintage, white mansion that reminded me of a colonial era home. I was only about eight years old when we moved in, but I distinctly remember being told that the old woman that used to live there died in the home before it was sold to my family.

Me: Was there any remains of the past owner in the home when you first moved?

ED: All the furniture was moved out of the house for the most part. The odd part was that throughout the house, family pictures were littered around on the walls and remaining furniture, almost as if there were no family members left to take them or want them.

Me: And this is where your story begins as I recall?

ED: When you first walk into the house, a giant portrait of the old woman was still up on the main wall of the foyer. I couldn’t keep my eyes off of the image. The lady had on a long, green dress that shined through the portrait. As we settled into the house and set up our rooms to move in, we took down the portrait and threw it out. After about a week, all of my siblings started seeing this woman in a green dress roaming around the house and coming into our rooms at night.

Me: Your family all saw this while you were together?

ED: No, each of us had our own room and would come downstairs the next morning each claiming that we woke up and saw her in our doorway or walking in the hallway. I would hear footsteps coming from outside of my room and by the time I could get out of bed to check, she would be gone.

Me: And did your parents see this ghost as well given that they were sleeping in the master bedroom?

ED: Surprisingly not. Neither of my parents saw this lady and claimed that we were all just goofing around or seeing things.

Me: Did this ghost ever do any harm, or take any actions on you or your family?

ED: No, it was almost as if this lady was just hanging out around the house and checking up on us. You would think that she would try to get us out of the house that was previously hers, but she seemed okay with us being there.

Me: And why do you think that would be?

ED: Because the lady didn’t seem to have any family left by the way her house was left without taking the pictures of her and her family, I think the woman enjoyed our company in her home after living the end of her life in it by herself. I was never scared to see her at night since she always seemed to be smiling at me as she moved on throughout the house.

Me: Did you continue to see her until you moved out?

ED: After a few months, all of us stopped seeing her or noticing her movement around the house. It was almost as if one day, she dipped out of the house and officially gave it to us.

This story given by my friend was very interesting because it did not go how I expected. When I first talked to him about it vaguely before interviewing him, he just said he used to live in a house that was haunted. After interviewing him and diving deeper into the story behind it, I came to realize that this house may have had a spirit within it still, but in a friendly way. I always assume that in a story such as this where a family moves into the home of a deceased person, the person who died in the home would come back to haunt the newcomers and push them out of the house. In this case, it was actually the opposite. Even though the informant’s family threw out her belongings and images, the spirit or ghost of the old owner never went out of her way to induce harm or wrongful actions to scare the family. Instead, she rather seemed to enjoy their company and never went out of her way to punish or scare any of them. The way the spirit, still with her beautiful green dress on, just roamed around the house at night checking on the children without bothering the parents has impactful meaning to her intentions. In my analysis, I believe that the spirit was looking out for the children she never had in a way of making up for her loneliness. She never bothered the parents or went near them, but was seen coming in and out of each of the childrens rooms. I had my suspicions that this was the case, and when my friend claimed that she “always seemed to be smiling” at him, it occurred to me that this spirit is enjoying the company and family in her home that she didn’t have before her death. Spirits such as this are interesting because although they are still roaming around trying to fulfill their lives and move on, they aren’t necessarily taking any action. This spirit potentially was fulfilling her need for family and care was finding this by simply watching over the new family in her home. My informant and his siblings grew to genuinely enjoy this spirits company, which must have fulfilled her need and let her spirit move on, away from her home as she let a new family in.