“I was driving along a road in Essex County, Massachusetts where I’m from. A lot of spooky things happen around here because we live in such a close proximity to Salem and the area has been inhabited for such a long time. I was with my friend and her boyfriend, who is a firefighter in the area. As we were coming around a bend, he yelled, ‘PLEASE SLOW DOWN!’ We were confused because nothing was in our way and we were the only car on the road. He responded by saying, ‘just please go slow, I’ll tell you why when we clear the bend.’ After making it around safely, he went on to tell us that every so often, someone spins out of control and gets badly wounded in wrecks on that turn. After the first responders arrive, every victim emerges from the car asking the same question. ‘Is the child ok?’ or ‘What happened to the kid?’ As is turns out, back in the seventies someone was driving too quickly around that very turn and hit a young child, killing him. Since then, its ghost shows up sporadically, trying to make the trip across the street it was never able to complete.”

This story features some pretty classic elements of the ghost story. Spooky area, untimely death, and dead children. Another aspect of the story that Zan later communicated to me was that the driver who killed the child may have been drunk at the time, which adds an element of liminality to the story. An intoxicated person is not wholly conscious, but certainly not unconscious.

My mother, Jennifer, was able to share with me an encounter with an apparition of her grandmother.

Jennifer: “Well, it was with my grandmother and we were really close. And, we always said that if one of us died first we’d come back and let the other one know if everything was okay. So she passed away on September 24^th 1994. And I remember about a week after she passed away, I was just about to fall asleep, and someone came and grabbed my hand. And that was our symbol; we’ll grab your hand to let you know that everything is okay. At that point I was grief stricken so I had forgotten about the pact that we had. And (pause) as I was laying there somebody came and grabbed my hand; I realized that it was her. And telling it was okay. That same night, my dad, her son, um he has this sterling silver little baby cup that has a music box built in, and it’s in his china cabinet and it’s been there forever and it’s never been wound or player or anything. And that same evening, um, the same cup that he gotten when he was a baby started playing for no reason. So we think it was my grandmother coming back and letting everybody know she was okay.”

During the interview, I noticed how casual and calm she was in telling her story. I assumed at first that she would get emotional because she was delving into an emotional event in  her life. It turns out she reacted quite the opposite. It was almost like the experience gave her comfort because she realized that her grandmother was safe and “okay” in death. One of the motifs that I found in her story was the idea of the ghost coming back for unfinished business. My mother and her grandmother had made a pact to let each other know that they were fine after death. When her grandmother died, her ghost seemed to have returned to uphold the deal she made with my mother. I also noticed how my mother didn’t confirm that it was the ghost. She seemed to say that they “believe” it was a ghost rather than confirming that it “was” a ghost.

My best friend, Maggie McMeans, is a current freshman at New York University studying theater performance. I have known Maggie since I was four years old, for we have lived 2 houses apart since then. As young kids, Maggie and I would play almost every day after school and always on the weekends. Maggie has always been an extremely animated, perky character, but some days as a kid she would seem a little “off” or disturbed by something. This would last for a couple days and then she’d go back to her normal self; I always asked her what was wrong but she wouldn’t tell me. One night when we went on a camping trip, 11 year old Maggie decided to tell me what had been bothering her for so many years at such random times. She told me about a “lady in red” that visited her about once or twice a year at night. I would continue to hear this story countless times over the later years of our friendship, so by the time I finally recorded this interview Maggie’s story was well rehearsed.

The story:

“When I was about 5 years old, I woke up to a strange sight. It wasn’t quite scary or anything; just…compelling? Compelling I would say…at least to a five year old. (chuckles) I remember having a bad dream and waking up…or at least I thought I woke up… that part I’m not sure of. Anyways, I sat up in bed to the sight of a young woman — probably in her late twenties — wearing a long flowing red dress. I couldn’t tell if she was floating because the dress covered up her feet, but her gown flowed with a breeze that was absent from my room. Like, there was no wind at ALL in my bedroom and her dress was still moving. I don’t remember what she said to me, but I do remember that she told me something that I later found out to be true. It was like she was a personal ghost psychic that came to predict my lame future. (sarcastically laughs) Every year that same ghost visited me on random nights — only a few nights a year though — until I was 12. When I was 9 I remember finally telling my mom about the lady in red, and she confessed that the SAME THING happened to her and her two sisters when they were children, and to their mother when she was a child. This ghost has apparently been (finger quotes) “haunting” the McMeans girls for generations, but we don’t know why. Perhaps it’s a dead ancestor paying her descendants a visit, or maybe we’re just cursed. (sarcastically) LOL.”

Maggie has been telling this story for years, and every time she tells it it becomes more like a performance. This is, as we discussed in class, an active barrier. The “Lady in Red” story seems to suggest that there was perhaps a past relative that died many years ago who feels as if she needs to look out for the women in her family, for she continues to come back and give them “psychic advice”. Stories from her mother and aunts seem to verify that this ghost must be real, but no women have officially recorded their experiences with the lady in red….until now…

You must have been 15 months old, we were leaving on the Swiss border in a large duplex on the top floor. I was traveling in Seoul (South Korea) for business. I was ready to flight back to France when your mother called me to tell me the following story.

The night before my arrival it was around 3:00AM and as usual you woke up and started crying. Our bedroom was close to yours separated by the bathroom (a French bathroom nothing as large as in the US). Mommy woke up went to your room and took you in bed with her. You went back to sleep, she was not sleeping when she heard a voice in your bedroom. It was the voice of child singing like he or she was playing with your stuffed animals (you had quite a few). She could not make sense of it, was she dreaming? She did not go to check it out.

The day after I arrived, we went to bed and as usual you woke up in the middle of night. One of us went in your room, picked you up and put you in between the two of us in the bed. You went back to sleep but not me and all the sudden I heard a voice in your bedroom. It was a joyful voice, voice of a child, seemed like a little girl playing with your stuffed animals. I was wide awake, petrified, the will to check your bedroom had left me. The memory of this is still vivid in my mind. How long did it last I do not know exactly but not long, a few minutes. But it seems to me an eternity. I can tell you I believe in ghosts.

My thoughts:

I have no recollection of this; I was too young. I want to believe it because it’s my father’s story. My dad believes in ghosts more so than my mom. My mom’s account of this story is similar except that she does not easily attribute it to a ghost. She just says it’s very weird and could be a ghost. I don’t know if there was death in this apartment at any time or even if a child used to live there. The story is definitely creepy to me.

One day, when my mother-in-law was young (she was a strong Catholic due to her education), she went to sleep in a villa that belonged to friends of her family. She was very open to spiritual and paranormal things (some people are more open than others). That night, she couldn’t sleep. She felt that something was different than other places; she felt like she was being observed. She began to cry and called her mom. So her mom came upstairs. While she going up she could hear the stairs creaking (the stairs were wooden since it was a house from the 1600s or 1700s). When her mom finally got to the room, my mother in law was holding her cross (which was her necklace). Her mom tried to calm her but she could not. Annoyed, she returned downstairs to continue talking with the house’s owners! Her mother explained the situation to them. Michel (one of the owners) went upstairs to explain that about 100 years ago, a woman was killed in this house, and apparently she’s stayed here. However, she wasn’t mean. All she did wander around the house, go up and down the stairs, and even sometimes, she would lift a hatch to go inside the attic and then brutally close it, despite the fact that the hatch was difficult to open, even for men.

And, later that night, the hatch opened and the stairs creaked…

My thoughts:

Well, this guy is one of my best friends so I believe in it. But the stairs creaking in the end could definitely have been any of the adults; the hatch could also have been moved by an adult. There’s no proof that it wasn’t a person so believing that a ghost caused these noises is a big assumption.