Tag Archives: ghost stories

Woman in White– A Ghost Story

Collector: Please, madam, pray tell us your ghost story.

Informant: Alright. I will tell you now this story of my ghost encounter, encounter with the paranormal. Ok, so, um, it took place in the Netherlands, um, we were going– me and four other girls that were studying abroad in Germany, we were gonna take a trip to Amsterdam, and, um, we took the overnight train, the cheapest option from Germany, which was like, seven different trains and all these transfers throughout the middle of the night, so, we get to, um, the Netherlands, um, to this little town about an hour outside of Amsterdam, where our AirBnb was, it was called [name]. 

So we get there around like, 11 AM, um, we, um, have a snack and we go check into our Airbnb, it’s like 11:30, 12, and what we didn’t know, but we didn’t mind at all, is that you have to walk through about a mile of forest to get to the airBnB, which it doesn’t say on the website.. [Laughs] Y’know, we’re not thinking anything of it. um, the forest is beautiful, there’s a nice path, the trees are nice and tall, so, we walk through this mile of forest, we don’t think anything of it, and we get to the AirBnB, check in, and we go straight to sleep, since we didn’t sleep all night. And we sleep, all of us, for maybe like 6 or 7 hours, um, and we wake up, and we’re all in great spirits and we all wanna go hit the town in Amsterdam and go party, and we’re all getting ready, listening to music, and by the time we’re ready to leave the airbnb and take the train to Amsterdam, um, it’s about 9pm, i think it was exactly 9 pm. So we have to walk back through that mile of forest to get to the train station to get to Amsterdam.

 So, um, this mile is just one straight shot path, through the trees, the eact one we had come on the way there, just one straight shot path. We set off on the path, and we quickly realize that it is pitch black– and i can’t stress enough that its pitch black, its like your eyes are closed because trees are so tall, they’re covering the moon and the stars, um, so the four of us, we’ve all got our little iphone flashlights, which are only so good, and we’re all spooked, but y’know, we’re big girls, its fine. Um, so, y’know, we’re walking through this very creepy, um, pitch black, literally– and i can’t stress enough how it was pitch black, as though your eyes were closed. It is– i never– Before, I had never seen such darkness in my life.

So, um, we get about halfway through, about a half-mile out, and we come to a crossroads. And, at the same time, all of our flashlights come upon the same thing– a woman, about 15 feet ahead of us, standing completely still, completely straight, she’s wearing a wedding dress, and she’s standing completely still, right in the middle of our path. And we all stop– and, it was about two seconds, all together, or less, that we’re standing there, um, and one of us goes “what’s that?” and we realize we’re all seeing the same time, we take off and run for our lives the way we came back to the airbnb, we are running absolutely for our lives, and we all were looking back, and, um, she didn’t chase us or anything, but when we got back to the airbnb, we were all freaking out, all in tears, crying, it was so scary. And, um, we confirmed that all four of us had seen the same thing, a tall woman in a wedding dress, um, like 15 feet ahead of us, standing completely still. 

Collector: Was she looking at you?

Informant: So the thing is, is that none of us could see a face. So, it’s not like– when I remember, i don’t remember, like, noticing a certain faceless-ness that, like jumped out at you, but looking back, none of us can recall seeing a face. But, my three other friends, they recall seeing, like, a sort of blueish greenish tint to her skin, which i don’t personally remember, but all three of them remember it. Um [laughs], so yeah.

Context: The informant is a good friend of mine, and is a Lebanese-American young woman studying music. In 2019, she studied abroad in Germany, and so had the opportunity to travel around Europe. This is her personal experience.

Analysis: I must admit that I am a little biased when it comes to this story, both because the informant is my friend, and because it is a frankly terrifying story. There were several things that I thought of first after hearing this experience. One was the location, taking place not only in a pitch black forest, but on a crossroads as well, which are considered to be liminal spaces, or places of transition. Traditionally, this is believed to be where many spirits can be found, in areas where ownership is uncertain, and so other entities are free to “cross over”.

Another element of the story is the woman dressed in a white wedding dress. Many cultures have a version of a woman dressed in white, lingering in forests, rivers, or other more rural areas where a scene of disaster supposedly happened. In many stories, these women in white have been scorned, or hurt in some way, and now wander the mortal plane in despair, or for revenge. The story is almost always connected to traditional cultural roles for women; For example, the woman kills herself after losing her husband to another woman, thus “failing” in her duties as a wife, or drowns her children in a river, therefore failing as a mother. I wonder if this story works as a sort of precautionary tale aimed at younger woman– to warn them of the monster they could become if they do not adhere to their roles. Another popular version of this story is La Llorona, an entity in Mexican folklore. For more information of the White Woman, please look at :

La Llorona (2020). Retrieved April 28 2020, 

from  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Llorona.

White Lady (ghost) (2020). Retrieved April 28 2020,

from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Lady_(ghost)


Abandoned Nunnery in Oklahoma

Text:

KM: “Apparently there’s this like abandoned nunnery out somewhere in Tulsa, and I had a couple of my friends who got there, obviously trespassing to this place. But it was like, I don’t know, but there were rumors that there were like tapes that were still there even though the place was like abandoned that like showed like really bad things I think that happened there. So they go out there at like night, and they say – there were like 6 of them I think, 4 or 6 or them, and they were like okay we’re going to split up and we’re going to search for these tapes. And so, the person who told me this, he and this other guy, they went up like upstairs, and they were like searching for stuff. But um, my other friend, he went in the basement and they actually found the tape. And when they like picked it up, the like lights flickered in the building. And so, they had to like get out of there and apparently the tape is supposed to be like super creepy and stuff and my friend was just like keeping it in his car for the longest time.”

MS: “Did you ever play the tape, to see what was on it?”

KM: “No I don’t think so – it was a VHS tape so I don’t know. I never really followed up. I’m pretty sure the tape is just in my friend’s car still.”

…

KM: “But for the longest time, I felt like I was haunted by the nuns after hearing this story because like weird stuff would happen with like my phone and I was like “the nuns are haunting me” so I was convinced… My Twitter AV, this is like stupid, but my Twitter AV, which is like your profile picture on Twitter, I would upload it and it would always just turn to black, just like a black picture and I could never like change it back, and I was like I’m really being haunted by these nuns for listening to this story. Because I think part of the legend was that once you hear the story, or once you know about the tapes, they would target you too so I just remember feeling distinctly uncomfortable knowing this.”

 

Context:

The informant is a Chinese-American college student from Tulsa, Oklahoma. This conversation was part of a discussion among a group of similarly aged people about their high school experiences growing up in various parts of America. The content has been lightly edited, and the removed content is indicated by ellipses.

 

Interpretation:

Even though this is not a first-person account of visiting this apparently haunted nunnery, it still provides us with information because this is how legends typically spread – the informant believes she was haunted by the nuns even though she never took a part in directing interacting with the legend herself. She may have experienced the same “haunting” things even if she hadn’t heard the legend but having heard it, she automatically used its mysterious nature as a way to justify inexplicable things in her life. Also interesting is how the mysterious nature of the tapes gives them their value and so even though they were taken from the original site, they were never actually played to verify the legend one way or the other. This may be an instance of the fear of the “other”. For the modern generation, VHS tapes are not something familiar and have this spooky quality because of that.

 

 

Deceased Shaker Babies

Background

Location: New Lebanon, NY

Informant: J.R. – 23 year old male, originally from New York State, attended the same high school as the collector

Context

This legend has been told to me many times from many different sources, specific to a boarding school in the remote mountains of the New York Berkshires.

The boarding school mentioned was founded on land that once functioned as a Shaker settlement. The Shakers were a religious minority that sought out to create a utopian, self-sufficient society centered on God. Many of their principles required the separation of man and woman, absolute abstinence was expected. As a result, should a woman become pregnant while she was a member of the settlement, she would be cast out of the community. I have paraphrased the core legend as told by J.R. below.

Main Piece

It was told to me that, though the old Shakers that inhabited our dormitory buildings were required to be abstinent, there were times where a woman would become pregnant and attempt to hide her symptoms until the child was born. If she carried to term, she would deliver the baby and either leave the community or, much more nefariously, kill the child and hide the remains. This story over time was transformed into the legend that the remains of the dead babies would be placed in the walls of the buildings they were constructing as a way to give them a “burial.”

Thoughts

While the the folklore is based in historical accuracy , the belief in the dead babies represents a superstition specific to the school that added mystique and served to entertain (or frighten) the students, The urban legend would be shared or performed to freshman as somewhat of an initiation in to the culture of the school. Variations or abbreviations of the story would reappear in conversation, for example, “be careful, don’t get captured by the Shaker babies!” Due to the age of the settlement the school was established on, and the previous history of the land, ghost stories were commonplace in the conversation and folklore of the school and provided a link between the past and the present of a place that remained for the most part, physically unchanged.

 

For more information on the Shaker community and its ties to folklore, see:

Wolford, John B. “Shaker Studies and Folklore: An Overview.” Folklore Forum, 1989, pp. 78–107., doi:10.1.1.491.9188.

GamGam: A Ghost Story

It’s not exactly a ghost story. I mean, I didn’t really see a ghost exactly. When we moved into GamGam and PopPop’s house after they passed, I remember just feeling GamGam’s presence.  I can’t explain it exactly. I’d just feel like she was there keeping me company. 

One day, I was in the kitchen and no windows were open. There was a stillness in the house. Then I noticed that a note that was magnetted to the refrigerator was moving – and for quite a while. It never happened again, but I always felt like GamGam was there and wanted me to know.  It was very nice.

While the Informant’s story may not directly involve a ghost, it definitely involves paranormal activity. When I asked if she believed in ghosts, she replied an instant “absolutely!” She then equated ghosts and souls. She believes in old souls and new souls, relating natural wisdom to the age of a person’s soul. A ghost is an unsettled soul, with unfinished business, waiting for a new body. Essentially, ghosts are souls in transit.

This story means a lot to the Informant. She told me that one of the first things that GamGam, slang for grandmother, said to the Informant was that she was an “old soul.” A physical object being manipulated is a common motif in ghost stories, with the Informant’s involving the magnet.

I enjoyed the story. It’s a strange form of a ghost/spirit story. Instead of the intent to frighten, like in typical ghost story fashion, this one seemingly had a happy ending. GamGam just wanted to show the Informant that she was there, have her presence recognized.

Garden Grove Ghost

In March 1933 there was a huge earthquake and Garden Grove High School collapsed. There was a little girl, a Freshman, named Elizabeth and she was the killed when the wall caved in. She was trapped under the rubble in the Hall of Fame in Heritage Hall for hours begging for help, but no one came to save her.

 Nowadays, students say they can still hear her ghost pleading for help.

The Informant was born in the US and grew up in Garden Grove, a city in Orange County. Her parents are both from Vietnam. She is an Economics and Mathematics major at UCLA. The Informant, my girlfriend, told me this story as I distracted her from her own schoolwork on 4/22 at around 2am.

It seems like whenever there is a disaster or tragic event, up pops a ghost story. Ghost stories also appear to be a youthful storytelling technique. So, it’s not surprising that a ghost story exists about the tragic death of one of the areas high schoolers.

The informant grew up in the area, with many friends and family attending the school in question. Unsurprisingly, this ghost story spread via word of mouth from classmates. The story spread from across schools and across classes. The informant says she would never step foot into Heritage Hall because, even though she’s skeptical about the existence of ghosts, in the off chance that they do exist, she doesn’t imagine them as being friendly. Whereas the typical viewpoint sees ghosts as the wandering spirits doing the scaring, she views ghosts as the scared ones. They’re stuck, scared, and angry.

I don’t believe in ghosts, but my belief system on souls is more complex. I don’t question the tragedy that occurred, but if I take a step back and think about it, I question the idea of the “haunting.” For the sake of argument, if I were to accept there are ghosts, why would they haunt their place of deaths? If I were a spirit in the afterlife, I would want to stray far from my tragic place of death and be in the surroundings of my happiest moments.