Monthly Archives: November 2011

Grandmother In Katy, TX

Nationality: Asian American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 11/10/2011
Primary Language: English

Dante Caravaggio, 21

Caucasian

Los Angeles, CA

11/10/2011

One of my roommates and close friend Dante Caravaggio, often spoke about these spooky occurrences that him and his family as a teenager. I decided to sit Dante down and hear the whole story. We were casually eating dinner and after I was done, he started his story:

“…So after living in um Katy, Texas, which is near Houston, my parents wanted a break from the city life. So we rented a ten acre ranch that had horses and uh a guest house among an indoor swimming pool, it was one of the greatest houses I’ve ever seen. The most fun house ever, three stories with an indoor swimming pool and a two story guest house. My sister, each of us had our own room, and she stayed in the basement and she was the first to hear noises that we couldn’t explain. We used to blame these noises on our cat, but she said that she was hearing the bathroom door opening and closing. Obviously the cat couldn’t open or close a door so we told her the door was creaking since the house is over forty years old. And um, her room was kind of an eerie room because the entire floor was a walk out room and her room was entirely surrounded by glass instead of the regular drywall. So she just said she saw shadows which she hoped to be the cat and the occasional sounds she would hear would be the bathroom door opening and closing. So that was the first thing. I used to hear footsteps up and down the stairs like a lot during the night. And uh you know like your mom would come check on you at night while you were in bed, so for years my mother would come into our bedrooms and check on us when we were like 13, so like we would hear, like I would hear, and I’d ask my brother if mom checked on him, and he said no. We were the only two on that level of the house, so there was a very distinct sound of footsteps going up and down on the stairs and we would hear it every night and we had suspected my mother to check on us, but it didn’t make sense at the hours of the night these events had happened.  So that was the second clue. My mother who had never felt comfortable in the house in the first place and was the biggest skeptic so there’s no way she could have made this up, she was sweeping leaves off of the basketball court and she swears that she saw an older woman wearing an apron standing in the kitchen. She was wearing a red apron, and was a little larger in size. She ran inside to see if the woman was actually there and of course there wasn’t anything there. I also hated showering because I felt like someone was watching me and I remember one time I was using my parents shower because it was way better than mine and it was a super sick shower of course. I was showering and I’m shampooing my hair and I looked through the stained glass and hand on the holy bible and I swear someone walked by. At first I thought it was my dad, but I soon realized that my parents weren’t home and like my brother and sister are in school. I was trying to explain to myself what was going on, but nothing else but a ghost made sense. We asked the former homeowners about the house, and they explained that their grandmother had a heart attack in the kitchen and the ambulance couldn’t make it in time. “

Dante and his family had lived in this house in Katy, Texas for about a year, starting from summer 2003 to summer 2004. After Dante told me the accounts that he and his family had encountered, he later called his mother that night to ask for more details of the unexplained events. His mother had spoken to the former house owners that had lived in this house before the Caravaggio family. According to Dante, the house and ranch was over forty years old, and had been passed down from generation to generation starting from the original family that had built the house. The previous house owners informed the Caravaggios that their grandmother, who was about 80 years old, was cooking in the kitchen one day, minding her own business, and then suddenly she had collapsed in the kitchen. The woman had died before the ambulance could make it to the house. The apparition of the larger woman in a red apron standing in the kitchen that Dante’s mother had seen is more than likely to be the same grandmother that had previously lived in the house. However, the door opening and closing, creaking of the stairs, shadows, and the shower event remain unexplained. We can infer that the house is home to at least the ghost of the grandmother. If the grandmother is the only spirit in the house, we see a common theme of motherhood that is portrayed in ghost stories. The occurrences of Dante’s room to his door opening and closing, the creaking of the stairs, and the shadows that his sister had seen, may be the ghost of the grandmother performing her daily duties in the household, which would usually comprise chores like checking on the children and cooking in the kitchen. The ghost of the house does not seem to be hostile, but seems to be more nurturing and taking upon a caretaker role, just like the grandmother was when she was alive. In conclusion, I believe that the ghost of the grandmother had bounded itself to the house, forever taking care of her house and family.

Yen Hoang, 20

Student

University of Southern California

Los Angeles, CA

 

Phoenix’s Hotel San Carlos

Nationality: European/Caucasian
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Cardinal Gardens apartments, Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: November 9th, 2011
Primary Language: English

The storyteller was a USC student from the city of Scottsdale, Arizona, near the larger city of Phoenix. She grew up in Scottsdale and before that, Minnesota, and is from a European, Caucasian background. This ghost story was collected around sunset, in my bedroom.

Me: So where did you hear this ghost story?

K: Uhm, from my friend who came back from one our school trips. She told me at school. *Long pause*

Me: Ok, you can go ahead and tell the story now.

K: Oh, ok….uhm, so, every year my theater club, we take a trip downtown for a convention and we stay in this old historic hotel.

Me: Downtown where?

K: Phoenix. Yea, its called the Hotel San Carlos and it was built in like, the late 20s? And it was this really nice hotel for stars to come if they came to the desert, like Marilyn Monroe has a room named after her and so does Clark Gabel….and all that jazz. But, uhm, I guess, a year, like, according to legend, a year after it was built one of the hotel workers, Leone I think it was? She was “pushed” out the, I think, I don’t know what story but it was pretty high up. She was pushed out, died, and so apparently her ghost wanders the halls of the hotel. And yea, and there’s also apparently this little girl who will go around and nobody knows what her story is but guests will say that she comes into their room and they hear this little girl crying. And you can see her sitting at the edge of the bed or in a chair in your room. And apparently, they think that she is a ghost of a kid that used to go to a school that was on the property before the hotel was built, who probably died in this huge flu epidemic. So my friend was staying there and she told me that both nights they slept in the hotel, she would wake up in the middle of the night and she would hear people getting ready in her room, and she’d hear voices. So she turned on the light and all of her roommates were still sleeping, and nobody was there, so she went back to sleep. Then she heard it again, so she went to the bathroom, and their bathtub was running. So she freaked out, turned it off, and went back to bed. And the second time it happened, the water started running again, and so she woke up her friend, and they both went and checked it out and turned it off. And they stayed up a long time, waiting for the ghosts. But they didn’t see anything, they just kept hearing these noises, and then I thought when I stayed there that something would happen, but nothing did…so….

Me: So do you think it was a ghost?

K: I don’t know, I don’t believe in ghosts so I really don’t know. Uhm yea, that’s about it.

This ghost story falls in one of the classic categories of ghost stories, in which the ghosts’ motives are driven by their untimely or un-respectful death. Leone and a little girl supposedly haunt because of the way they died, unfairly and untimely. The storyteller claimed that she didn’t believe in ghosts, yet she stated that she had thought she would see something when she stayed at the hotel. She didn’t clarify whether she expected to see ghosts, or some sort of optical illusion. Had she been told the story in a different setting, rather than at school in a casual setting, she might have a better chance of believing the story to some extent. Also, if she had told me the story in a darker, later setting she might have had more belief and enthusiasm in her tone.

Moorpark’s Gravity Hill

Nationality: Japanese-American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Cardinal Gardens apartments, Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: November 3rd, 2011
Primary Language: English

The story teller was a USC student from the city of Moorpark, about an hour north of LA. She grew up in Moorpark, and is from a Japanese American background. This ghost story was collected late at night, walking on a dimly lit street through campus.

 

Me: First of all, where did you hear this ghost story?

K: Uhm I mean, someone told me, it was just a casual thing, someone told me at someone’s house, it wasn’t a dark scary night or anything. But everyone hears this story at one point or another living there.  So, there is this place in Moorpark, called Gravity hill and its back in…people don’t live back there. Its like farm land, getting into the orange trees and everything, I don’t know anyone who lives back there. I’ve only been back there for this place. So basically, there is this place where supposedly there used to be train tracks and a bus full of kids stalled in front of these train tracks, a long time ago, no one ever told me when. And they couldn’t get the bus off the train tracks, and it was full of kids, and a train started coming and hit the bus and everyone in the bus died. All the kids died. So they say this place is haunted by these little kids, and that if you put your car….if you go to this place and you go to this certain spot and put your car in neutral, and let it sit there, the kids will come, and think you’re stuck there, and they will push your car up hill to try and save you, you go up gravity hill. So we tried it this one time, homecoming night, freshman year, went there before the dance. So we went to this place, and it was my friend’s older sister who was driving the car, and so she had to find the right spot. So she put her car in neutral, and we’re sitting there, and then all of the sudden the car started moving forward. And, I mean, its not that big of a slope, its like a little tiny bit of a slope, and your car starts rolling up hill. Its like, the creepiest thing ever. I heard that some people like to put flour on the back of their car and they check it when they get up the hill, and check for handprints later. Which, I mean, there are rumors about people finding handprints in the flour but I don’t really believe them, but people say that they do.

 

Me: At the time did you believe any of it?

 K: Uhhhh, I don’t know. I don’t really believe in ghosts. I honestly don’t, I mean, I would have to actually look up the history to see if there were actually train tracks there to believe it. If I found out that there were actually train tracks and this did actually happen, I might believe it a little.

Me: Do you think there is any other explanation other than some sort of other worldly spirit?

K: (Laughs) Uhh, I mean, maybe putting your car in neutral doesn’t really put your car all the way in neutral and maybe you have a little gas putting you up the hill? I don’t know, the hill is really small.  So it’s not like….maybe people don’t realize at the very end of where you put your car at there is a little down slope first, you know? I don’t know. You do roll a significant amount forward though, I don’t know. It ‘s kind of creepy. I got goose bumps there, and I was freaked out. I locked my doors.

 

After I heard this story, I was quite speculative myself. Being an engineering that trusts in the good laws of science, I knew this was physically impossible, and that a car could not roll uphill. I did some research using the keyword “gravity hill”. I found an interesting article covering an in depth investigation of how this happens, at it is reported as a common phenomena at various places around the world. The conclusion that they came to was that the car does not actually roll uphill, but rather downhill, and the upward slope that people see is actually an optical illusion caused by the surrounding landscape and curvature of the road. What I find fascinating about this ghost story is that it has an interesting legend, complete with spirits of children, and people are able to go and see it for themselves. Due to the variety of places that have reported this occurring, there is great potential for a variety of different ghost stories to explain why this occurs. These ghost stories could vary by location or culture, and have unique stories, different than the children pushing the car.

 

Source:

 

Richards, David. “IIG | Gravity Hill Investigation.” IIG | The Independent Investigations Group. Independent Investigations Group, 07 Jan. 2006. Web. 05 Nov. 2011. <http://www.iigwest.com/investigations/2006/20060107_gravityhill.html>.

Lindsay Strongin-ghost story 2- Boy Scout Camp

Nationality: African American/Jewish
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: California
Performance Date: 11/5/11
Primary Language: English

11/5/11

This interview took place as follows:

 

Me: So you said you have camp ghost stories?

 

M.G.:  I have one.  So this campground is in Rancho Los Flores which is a desert.  It was a Boy Scout camp. I heard this story from the Boy Scout patrol leader of troupe 450.  Every time the boy scouts go camping there we always took the younger scouts on a snipe hunt.  A snipe is a bird that can’t fly but doesn’t exist in this part of the country… so it’s a goose hunt.

 

Me: Wait I thought it was a Snipe hunt.

 

M.G.:  Ha-ha…very funny.

 

Me: Okay sorry, back to business.  So basically, no one is ever going to actually catch a snipe on the hunt.  Go on.

 

M.G.:  So one night the troupes had taken 3 or 4 cubs out and three of the scouts went with them and they came back with two cub scouts and the other two were missing.  They searched all night to find them and couldn’t.  It was about 3am when one of the cub scouts came running back and had informed the older boys that the other scout was gone.  So they took the one Cub Scout and went out looking in the area where they had lost the Cub Scout.  They searched to find a trail of some kind and one of the boy scouts had found the neckerchief of one of the cub scouts and then they found other pieces of his uniform further down the trail…a hat… a compass…the compass was pointing south which was the opposite direction they’d come from so they had pretty much begun to give up and go back and then they began to hear this whimpering.  They followed the sound and as they got closer the whimpering turned into sobbing.  When they got to the source they looked down and found this little girl who was covering her face.  The boy scouts told the Cub Scout to go back and when they turned around he wasn’t there anymore so they turned back to the little girl asking questions and she just kept crying.  One knelt down to her and the sobbing turned into this creepy hysterical laughter and he said “what’s wrong?” and she said “I killed them” and they said “killed who?” and she responded “your friends.”  So all of a sudden they heard a loud scream from the two boys… and after that they were never heard from again.

 

Me: So what/who was this girl in the woods?

 

M.G.:  Whatever she was…she wasn’t good.  There was enough physical manifestation of her for these boys to think she was human…or alive in some way.  I think the point of the story was that while you’re looking for kids lost…you find another kid that’s lost…but this story is just purely to scare the kids and the snipe hunts are real and when you’re a kid and you hear these older boys talking about this stuff and the whole point is you’re never going to catch a snipe! They don’t exist on this part of the country!  It’s a ritual. They trick you consistently into thinking you’re going to catch one.  It’s a tradition.  The horror story is part of that.  The idea is that weird stuff happens at this specific camp ground. It’s just a scary story for the kids.

 

Me: Right, is this legend or story supposed to be true, or is it supposed to be fun fiction in the woods?

 

M.G:  This is supposedly a true story.  It’s told only to scare the kids but not enough so they never want to come back, it’s for fun.  We had an experience where we went out snipe hunting with the older boys and we all split up and you don’t travel far from the group and we all came back but the boy scout that had told us the story…well they came back him and his cub scout said “oh when we were out there I saw a girl out in the field and she kind of just disappeared”  and we thought oh maybe he had told the kid to say this but we weren’t that far from each other so somebody would have heard him egg the kid on and the reaction the older boy scout had seemed pretty genuine.  He looked pretty shocked.  After that I sort of remember everybody kind of immediately going back to their tents not really wanting to stay outside.

 

Me:  So is this area known for being haunted?

 

M.G.:  I don’t think so…although that weird personal incident makes me think otherwise, but the story is only told by the boy scouts every year as a Boy Scout tradition.  I’m sure they’d tell it no matter where they went camping.  So whether or not the story is true or whether or not the girl is in the woods, the boys are going to tell the story to scare the kids no matter what just to keep the tradition alive, it’s part of the fun of being a boy scout.

 

Me:  Yeah I loved being a boy scout…

 

M.G.: Good one.

 

Me: Thanks.

 

As emphasized in various cultures and texts regarding ghost stories, this one seems to emphasize the importance of ghost stories as a cultural ritual.  There is a sense that we often tell ghost stories for the sole purpose of sustaining traditions in our culture and passing these rituals down through the generations.  I am not sure I necessarily believe the truth behind this story, considering the ambiguity of the ghost girl’s existence, even as a ghost (non-existence?), but I do know that this story holds importance and prominence in a sense that without it, the boy  scouts would be without a whole tradition. The telling of this story, and even the snipe hunt are both a bonding experience—the story probably provides a bonding between the scouts in fearfulness and nervous excitement while out on the camping trip with the other boy scouts which provides for an overall exciting retreat and a feeling of camaraderie as a team.  There is perhaps a sense with this story that they are strengthening the bond between the members, and initiating the young ones into the club allowing them to build their bond with the older members, bringing them all together.  In a way, this story is more about building relationships and life-long companions through upholding traditions, than it is about the ghost itself.

Lindsay Strongin-ghost story 1- New Hampshire

Nationality: Caucasian
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: California
Performance Date: 11/4/11
Primary Language: English

11/5/11

Interview takes place as follows:

 

Me: Tell me your ghost story

 

L.M.:  Okay. So this takes place in New Hampshire in an area where this place was converted from a Catholic school into apartments and the building used to be a dormitory in the catholic school.  So the rumor goes that during the last five years of the catholic girls’ school, before it got turned into an apartment, there were about 15-20 murders that took place.  Behind the dormitory they were getting buried behind the school area. But after these were turned into apartments there was a rumor about the dance hall that they had kept the same.  The rumor was that after a certain hour, you could hear the tapping across the dance floor as if people were dancing and you could hear a live orchestra as if there was a ball going on.  Apparently this would happen late at night or early in the morning between 12am and 2am. I don’t really know what would trigger it other than the idea that it always occurred late at night…it was almost the idea that if you were in there past a certain hour, you were disturbing them…

 

Me: them being?

 

L.M.: the spirits…

 

ME:  spirits?

 

L.M.: Yes because we couldn’t really see anything. I think the difference between a spirit and a ghost is that with a spirit you can’t see anything but with a ghost there would be some type of physical manifestation.

 

ME: Who did you hear this story from?

 

L.M.: I heard this from my friend whose dad lives in the apartment building.

 

ME: Do they still live there?

 

L.M. My friend doesn’t but his dad still does.

 

Me:  So is that the extent of the tale or is there more?

 

L.M.:  No, there’s never been anything truly scary happen.  It’s just spooky and the rumor is basically that if you stay past a certain hour, you’ll definitely hear them.

 

ME: I see.  So you said you had a personal experience in there?

 

L.M.: Yes.  So I was 17 years old going out to New Hampshire.  We were staying with my friend and they had converted the room next to the dance hall to a game room.  My friend had told me the ghost story the night before and we didn’t really think anything of it, but the next night we were in the game room.  The only division between the game room and the dance hall are two glass double doors so you can see right through them.  It was 12:30am and we were playing pool and we stopped because we heard this tapping and my friend went to the door to see if anybody was at the entrance and nobody was there.  Then 15 minutes later we heard the tapping again and this time it was a little louder, a little stronger…maybe more forceful, and we stopped to listen and it stopped again.  Then about ten minutes later we were listening to hip hop music, all of a sudden it sounded like there was a classical orchestra/ballroom orchestra playing music but nobody was there.  So we turned off the radio and the ballroom music continued.  Then we went into the dance hall and the music got louder as if we were in a ball.  We basically ran out of there.

 

ME: So you think the ballroom music and tapping were “spirits”?

 

L.M.: Yes and the reason why  was because when the tapping started we thought maybe it was somebody upstairs and we asked but there’s no room between the roof of the game room and the dance room, so basically it was in its own designated area and there was nothing above us.  Then when we went out onto the dance floor, you could still hear everything as if it was there, but it didn’t feel like there was a presence there…it was as if it was separated from this dimension, yet we could hear it.   This building is people’s homes, so it’s probably not that accessible in terms of visiting for ghost sightings but it is definitely a building that one would be able to find.

 

Me: What city in New Hampshire?

 

L.M.: Near Lake Winnepasaki

 

Me: Do you know how old the story goes back?

 

L.M.: It was a pretty well-known catholic girls’ finishing school before it was an apartment building.  The apartment building was the dormitory the girls used before it was refinished and fixed up a bit.   It was probably a finishing school around the late 80s.

 

ME: Alright.  Any other thoughts you’d like to add?  Interpretations?

 

L.M.:  No, I mean it was a spooky experience that I don’t really understand.  The legend proved itself to me that night though, what was supposed to happen pretty much happened and we weren’t going to stick around to see what might happen next.

 

Similarly to the way others avoid admittance of belief in ghosts, L.M. did not want to fully conceptualize the existence of ghosts in her story.  She had not seen anything, and as you can see, she attributed that to the idea that ghosts can be seen as opposed to spirits which can simply be heard according to her personal theory.  Therefore she did not fully want to admit to having had an encounter with “ghosts” per say, but she did respond with this tale when I had initially asked about “ghost stories.”  Personally, I’ve never been one to distinguish specific differences between ghosts, spirits, phantoms, or whatever else people might refer to these “things” as.  In my opinion, if you have an encounter with the paranormal, it’s the paranormal—there’s not much of a difference.  I tend to think of all of these manifestations as ghosts and/or spirits, with plenty of overlap and equality between the two terms.  It sounds as though the occurrence of the ballroom music and the tap dancing are unexplainable, and I believe in these experiences; I believe in ghosts.  It theoretically could be explained by means of psychological illusions, other sounds that were mistaken for tapping or music, or tapping and music coming from somewhere else, but considering the ghost story that accompanies the dance hall, and the fact that her personal story matched it, I feel that there is definitely the possibility that this story is one of ghosts haunting the remains of an old catholic school and that’s all there is to it.