Tag Archives: ghost stories

The House Ghost in Singapore

Background/Context:
The interlocutor, EF, is a close friend of the interviewer (INT). EF’s parents were staying in Singapore. They were sharing a house with another person during their time there.

Description (as told over email):
(EF): “okay story time: this takes place in singapore. my parents were washing dishes at around 2pm and they share a house w another person. that person wasnt home and was away in the philippines. their bedroom door was locked and no other person had access to tht room. when my parents were finishing up washing dishes. they noticed in the hall tht leads to their housemate’s room, that there was a white figure and they saw it walk through the door into the locked room

When my dad was playing around his house at night and he noticed that there was somebody sitting on his neighbor’s porch. When he approached the figure, there was a very dim light so he couldn’t see anything but a shadow or a silhouette… nothing too defining. The weird thing tho was tht the figure’s eyes were glowing orange-red but my dad didnt really think abt it at the time bc he thought it was normal. he went up to it to ask where his neighbor/playmate was. The figure didnt answer and nobody really knew what my dad was talking abt when he told other ppl

one night my mom was cooking and she heard the front door closed so she peeked to see who it was and she saw like a shadowy figure pass by and walk into their housemate’s bedroom so like she thought it was her housemate. when she turned around, the fire on the stove was like WAY higher than it was before and she had to turn it off right away. and then after a few mins, the front door closed again and when she looked it was the housemate she thought was already there. she asked him too like “didnt u just come in?” and he said no and tht he just came back.”

INTERLOCUTOR’S OPINION:
(INT): “do you think it was actually a ghost?”

(EF): “i mean, kinda, yeah??? idrk how else to describe something like that happening over and over again yknow? it’s just too weird lol like if that happened in my apartment i think i would definitely think it was a ghost plus my parents and their friends are all 100% it was a ghost so…

then again Filipinos can be pretty superstitious lol so u should also take that into consideration”

FINAL THOUGHTS:
I definitely find EF’s interpretation of this story interesting. I’m sure that something odd or seemingly unexplainable occurred in that house that made EF’S parents feel some unnatural presence. The roommate being in the Philippines also eliminates a possible explanation for these strange occurrences. Perhaps it was her parents’ superstitious nature that led them to believe these separate instances were indicators of the supernatural. Overall, I don’t doubt their story but I do think that other factors should be considered before downright saying it was a ghost.

The Old Slaughterhouse

A Tale about an old slaughterhouse up in Northern California and the ghosts that haunt the decaying building.

C: There’s an old slaughter house, up near some of the old, um–not old, it just got bought out again — golf course on March Creek Road.

L: Up in Brentwood?

C: Yeah, well, yeah. Well up in, kinda, there’s like this big farm area and there’s like, these hills that lead, like, up towards Mount Diablo. You keep going that direction, and in that area is this old slaughter house. I don’t know if it was actually a slaughterhouse, but it’s like this old, decrepit building in the middle of nowhere that you can hike out to. And rumor has it you can go up there at night– Ghost!

L: What kind of ghosts?

C: Like, ha-ha-ha, the most real thing that happened is like, someone saw a figure with a gun. But it’s also like, spooky shenanigans, strange figures, weird noises. Ooh, spooky. And, like, teenagers hanging out in a place where they’re not supposed to noises.

L: Is it just because it’s a slaughterhouse or did something happen?

C: I think it’s just because it’s a slaughterhouse. And like, there’s other– there’s a hill and I don’t know where it is because I’ve never gone there, but, um. I’m just thinking now because it’s like, yeah, because it’s a freaking hill, like um, where people would go to do “the make outs” and it was also considered haunted for some reason. The one that I remember is like, “Oh your car will start moving” and I’m like, yeah, duh, it’s a hill. You don’t put your car– haha–you don’t  put your break on that’s gonna happen.

Thoughts:
There are a plethora of spooky tales about areas that are associated with death. Graveyards, hospitals, and in this case, a slaughter house are all places that fill our imagination with ghost hauntings. Death– whether it’s human or animal– forces people to confront their own mortality, and so, stories of ghosts haunting this slaughter house are passed by word of mouth from person to person in the Brentwood town it neighbors.

La Mano Peluda

–Informant Info–
Nationality: United States of America
Age: 30
Occupation: Lead Associate of Operations, Chase Bank
Residence: Laguna Niguel, CA
Date of Performance/Collection: 4/19/2021
Primary Language: English
Other Language(s): Spanish

Main Piece:

The following conversation is transcribed from a conversation between me (HS) and my co-worker/informant (MR).

MR: So La Mano Peluda translates to “hairy hand.” It’s basically an old legend that my parents used to scare me with when I did something that I wasn’t supposed to do, like not taking out the trash or doing chores. So I would literally crawl into a ball at night and make sure that my legs weren’t hanging out of the covers because I genuinely thought that this terrifying hand would come out from under my bed and drag me by my ankles out of my room to who knows where.

HR: Hahahaha. So how old were you when you heard this story?

MR: It went back to when I was probably like 5 or 6. Because I was in school already, and if I didn’t do my homework my mom would be like, “If you don’t do your homework La Mano Peluda is gonna come and get you!”

HR: And do you know where this legend came from?

MR: Well my mom got the tradition from her family in Mexico, but after you asked me about it I did a little googling. Apparently, it was a man’s hand that had survived from the Spanish Inquisition. He wanted to seek revenge on the people who had pillaged his home or something like that. But when I was little, I didn’t really care about the origin and just got freaked out when I thought about an old hand hiding under my bed.

Background:

My informant is my co-worker from my job. She is essentially my supervisor and she enjoys helping me to practice my Spanish and telling me a lot about her culture and heritage. She was raised in a Spanish-speaking household by two parents who both immigrated to the United States from Mexico. She used to be intimidated by the legend of La Mano Peluda as a young child but grew to see it as a funny way that her parents made her do her chores. 

Context: 

The legend of La Mano Peluda was brought up while having a general discussion with my co-worker about her culture and traditions. She had told me about the legend before but I asked her to go more in-depth for the sake of the collection project. We were sitting next to each other on the teller line at work and we would chat in-between customers. 

Thoughts:

The story of La Mano Peluda is a classic legend that is prominent across a wide range of Latin-American cultures. I would equate it to classic American campfire stories where the goal is to scare and entertain the audience. I have heard multiple recollections of this folk tale and they all seem to stem from having a fear of something hiding under one’s bed. For particularly young children, the legend of La Mano Peluda is used as a sort of scare tactic to get them to do their chores, while in older adolecents it is seen as an entertaining folk tale. What is interesting is that there is a pattern of “hairy hand” stories across the globe.

For another “hairy hand” story, see:

Mary Curtis Special to The Star. “Dartmoor Nights and Scary Tales Stir Imagination: SA2 Edition.” Toronto Star, Torstar Syndication Services, a Division of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited, 1990.

The Lake Arrowhead Hand

The following conversation is transcribed from a conversation between me (HS) and my friend/informant (DS).

HS: So what’s your take on The Hand?

DS: Alright so first of all we’ve gotta explain how this lake story came to be. In water skiing, there are different ways of holding the cable that are more efficient than other ways. In some cases, some ways of holding the cable are more dangerous than others. So there’s this way of holding it where you kind of wrap it around your back, but it’s really risky because there’s a risk of you losing your hand if things go wrong. So back in the 1980s, there was this girl who was water skiing in that risky position, right. And she messed up and her hand came right off. My parents talk about this story all the time and I’m pretty sure that it is a true story. The girl even lost her wedding ring because she was wearing it on the hand that she had lost.

HS: So what stories did people start to tell after she lost her hand?

DS: It kind of turned into a ghost story. People around the lake have reported seeing walking hands and all that kind of crazy stuff. They see the old, rusted wedding ring on the hand. They say the hand is still trying to find the body that it used to be a part of. It haunts all night swimmers at Lake Arrowhead and whenever you’re out on the lake at night, and you see a sparkle off in the distance, people wonder if it’s the shine of the ring on the walking hand.

Background:

My informant is a friend that I went to high school and now college with. He spends a lot of his summer in Lake Arrowhead and has a lot of folk stories and traditions that he has gotten from the area.

Context:

So I was visiting my informant up in Arrowhead last summer and I was with him and seven or eight other people. It was late at night and we were all on a boat in the middle of the lake. Besides us, there was no sound coming from anywhere- complete silence out on the water. It was also almost pitch black, with only small amounts of light coming from the surrounding docks. We were all winding down for the night, kind of relaxed sort of vibe. We all started telling ghost stories and legends that we knew in an attempt to scare one another. Amongst the stories was that of the Lake Arrowhead hand. A year later, I was in need of folklore stories and so I asked my friend to act as an informant for me.

Thoughts:

This is the second collection that I have done regarding ghost stories that involve hands, which is an interesting coincidence. I’ve gotten the chance to do a decent amount of reading on the subject of ghost hands in the process and found this example to be compelling for a few reasons. First, this folklore is unique to a small, concentrated population that lives on the crest of Lake Arrowhead. But even though it is local folklore, it still had properties of similar legends from around the world. It is almost as if we take stories from a predisposed list and then augment them to fit our local context, which is a trend that I found to be extremely interesting. I also found it interesting that these folk stories can be generated from true events. The fact that a woman lost her hand in Lake Arrowhead was true, but for some reason, we as humans find it fascinating to add all of this superstition to scary events. Why is that?

El Cucuy

–Informant Info–
Nationality: United States of America
Age: 30
Occupation: Lead Associate of Operations, Chase Bank
Residence: Laguna Niguel, CA
Date of Performance/Collection: 4/19/2021
Primary Language: English
Other Language(s): Spanish

Main Piece:

The following conversation is transcribed from a conversation between me (HS) and my co-worker/informant (MR).

HS: So tell me about El Cucuy.

MR: El Cucuy was a lot like other legends that my friends and parents used to scare me when I was little. A lot like La Mano Peluda, my parents would say things like, “El Cucuy is going to come and get you!” When I was really little, probably 5 or 6, I would be scared to get clothes out of my closet at night because that’s where I was told El Cucuy was waiting to get me and eat me. I honestly don’t even know anything about El Cucuy, he was kind of just like a boogeyman type thing that I use now to scare kids into behaving.

MR: *Googles El Cucuy on her phone for the first time*

MR: Oh wow. This story is crazy weird. Hahahaha. Apparently, a father was cursed after forgetting that he left his kids locked in the closet while their barn burned down, so all his kids were killed. After years of looking for his kids in other families’ closets, he grew an appetite for them? That makes no sense but it’s nice to finally know where the story of El Cucuy came from after all these years.

Background:

My informant is my co-worker from my job. She is essentially my supervisor and she enjoys helping me to practice my Spanish and telling me a lot about her culture and heritage. She was raised in a Spanish-speaking household by two parents who both immigrated to the United States from Mexico. She comes from a devout Catholic family and has taught me a lot of traditions that I didn’t know pertain to Catholicism, seeing as to the fact that I myself was raised in a Catholic family. She also knows a lot of Mexican urban legends and ghost stories from her childhood.

Context:

This story was brought up while having a general discussion with my co-worker about her culture and traditions. We had just finished talking about La Mano Peluda and other legends such as El Chupacabra. She had told me about these traditions before but I asked her to go more in-depth for the sake of the collection project. We were sitting next to each other on the teller line at work and we would chat in-between customers. In a lot of the audio recordings, you can hear us having a conversation and then stopping abruptly because a customer walks in.

Thoughts:

Something that I found interesting, and I don’t know if this applies on a broader scale, is that there was a significant difference in my coworker’s response to talking about El Cucuy as opposed to other legends. In the case of La Mano Peluda, she recited many childhood experiences where she was genuinely afraid of it, along with talking about her scare-filled experiences of searching for El Chupacabra. She was not as passionate or enthusiastic about El Cucuy, perhaps because the legend wasn’t as effective at scaring her as a child or because it wasn’t used by her parents as much. Regardless, El Cucuy is a typical urban legend. My coworker’s comment on how El Cucuy is similar to the boogeyman made me realize that, like many other legends, it is part of a global pattern of stories made up to scare children into behaving.

To see how El Cucuy links with these other boogeyman stories, read:

Hayes, Joe., and Honorio. Robledo. El Cucuy! : a Bogeyman Cuento . 1st ed., Cinco Puntos Press, 2001.