Author Archives: Christina Oti

Ghost in a Blue Pencil Skirt

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Houston, TX
Performance Date: March 16, 2017
Primary Language: English

Subject: Ghost Story

 

Informant: Lily Fitzpatrick

 

Background Information/Context: When I asked Lily if she had or knew of any ghost stories, she said:

 

“Oh I’ve seen a ghost before! In my cousin’s house in Baltimore! I swear to God, she was wearing a blue skirt suit and holding a clipboard!

 

There’s a whole narrative behind it because I didn’t realize what it was at first because I was young, but I remember what it looked like so specifically for, like, forever. But I didn’t know, like, what it was exactly at the time, but Charlie [her older brother] saw a ghost. He went to his friend’s ranch and went to the bathroom and opened the door, and he saw, like, a Native American woman standing there. And he got scared and closed the door, and then he opened it again and saw just the outline of the woman. And so he ran to his friends and told them that there was a ghost in the bathroom, and they all ran to the bathroom to see it, but when they got there, it was gone.

 

And his friend whose family owned the ranch told [Charlie] this used to be a Native American burial ground. And [Charlie is] the most rational, practical person I’ve ever met, so if he says he saw a ghost, ghosts are real. And then I got to thinking about my ghost story, like, hmm, I think I saw a ghost.

 

So anyway, I was at my cousin’s house in Baltimore, and it’s an old house that’s kinda scary, like with creaky staircases and stuff, and I was sitting in the living room. I was probably, like, eleven, and I looked up, and standing in the doorway, standing there, was a woman in a blue pencil skirt holding a clipboard. And then I looked away, and I thought ‘Oh that was weird. I must have just seen something out of the corner of my eye.’ And so I looked back, and she was still there, and it was a ghost. But I wasn’t scared at all. Like, it wasn’t scary. I think ghosts are good—at least, they’re not bad.”

 

Conclusion: As someone who does not completely believe in ghosts, I was surprised at how fully Lily believed that she and her brother had seen ghosts and that ghosts actually do exist. I found her story really fun to listen to though because of how enthusiastic she was about the story and because I could tell that what she was telling me actually happened to her.

Toys-R-Us Haunting

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: California
Performance Date: April 26, 2016
Primary Language: English

Subject: Ghost Story, Legend

 

Informant: Megan Andersen

 

Background Information/Context: The following dialogue is from Megan, telling me about a Toys-R-Us store in her hometown that is supposedly haunted. Although Megan has never had a personal ghost encounter at the store, this is her knowledge about the ghost legend:

 

“There’s a supposed haunting in my hometown. It’s at our Toys-R-Us. I’m not completely positive about the backstory, but if you mention my city, which is called Sunnyville, to any ghost enthusiast they’ll know about the Toys-R-Us thing.

 

So, there was a plantation owner, and one of the workers was an African American man, and he got in a relationship with the owner’s daughter, and the owner got mad and killed the guy, and the daughter killed herself after. And then a Toys-R-Us was built on the land.

 

I haven’t personally experienced anything strange when I’ve been in it, but a lot of people have had weird experiences, and a lot of employees have also reported strange occurrences.

 

They tried to do a séance a few years ago.

 

And then there’s another version I’ve heard of the story: Johnny was the name of the guy who worked on the plantation, and he wanted to marry the daughter. But in this version, he was crazy, so the daughter didn’t want to marry him, and when he was chopping wood one day, he accidentally chopped himself and died. And so now he’s supposed to be roaming around on the land still looking for the daughter, who obviously later died since then.”

“What-a To Do”

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Houston, TX
Performance Date: April 5, 2017
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Subject: Game, Song

 

Informant: Natalie Thurman

 

Background Information/Context: Natalie, like me, is a theatre major. I asked her if she had any theatre games or warm-up activities at school, and she thought of this one:

 

“There was this theatre exercise we used to do at my high school called ‘what-a to do.’ We would just do it before rehearsal or before shows to warm up our voices and articulation. It was just like a little song that went:

 

What a to do to die today

At a minute or two to two

A thing distinctly hard to say

But harder still to do

For they’ll beat a tattoo at two to two

A rat-a-ta-rat-a-ta-ta-ta-ta-too

And the dragon will come

When he hears the drum

At a minute or two to two today

At a minute or two to two.

 

I had never really thought about what we were saying because we focused so much on our articulation, because that’s what we used it for—as a warm-up. But when I got to college, we used it in one of my acting classes in a completely different context. We had to build a story around it. And we talked about the text in class and, like, what it was actually saying. It’s a children’s nursery rhyme, but it’s one of those nursery rhymes that’s like super dark, like ring around the rosy.

 

It’s about a soldier going to war for the first time, and at the beginning of it, it takes place on the battlefield, right before the two armies are about to charge at each other, and he’s really scared and knows he’s going to die in a few minutes—‘at a minute or two to 2:00. And then the ‘tattoo’ is a drum that the drummer person beats, signaling the charge forward. And then right after that is the climax of it. And then when it ends, the soldier looks around him and sees that everyone has died but him, and he’s the last one standing. But like all of his friends are dead around him. Wow, that was really dark, sorry! But yeah, really different from using it as a warm-up.

 

Bailey’s Prairie

Nationality: American
Age: 24
Occupation: Entrepreneur
Residence: Houston, TX
Performance Date: March 16, 2017
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Subject: Legend, Ghost Story

 

Informant: Tye Griffith

 

Background/Context:

 

Tye: Well, Colonel Bailey was a colonel in the Civil War, and he got his head chopped off while in battle from his horse. Like, he was riding his horse in battle, and his horse ran him into someone’s bayonet.

 

Now around the ranch, which is on a big piece of land called Bailey’s prairie, in the fog you can hear the noise of the hooves of his horse with Bailey on it looking for his head.

 

Me: Is your ranch where the battle took place?

 

Tye: Yeah, it’s where Bailey died in battle. On what’s now the prairie.

 

Me: Have you heard the hooves before?

 

Tye: Yeah, I totally have. I was with my brother and his girlfriend a few years ago, and we were driving out by the prairie late at night, and we stopped somewhere to have a beer or something—I actually forgot what we were doing—but we thought we heard a horse running around. And then we started exploring and trying to see where the noise was coming from, because we don’t have any horses or anything. And the noise was like really distinctively a horse running around. My brother was trying to look macho in front of his girlfriend and started walking into the woods area and shouting like, ‘Hey! Is anybody there?’ but obviously we didn’t find anybody. It was just scary because we all knew the story.

 

Origins of the Gulf of Mexico

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Houston, TX
Performance Date: April 23, 2017
Primary Language: English

Subject: Legend, Folk Belief, Origin Myth

 

Informant: Lauren Herring

 

Background Information/Context: Lauren and I live in Houston, Texas, and for a beach, we go to Galveston, Kemah, or somewhere else along the water. The “beaches” aren’t usually what you would think of when you picture a beach. They are usually just a drop-off into the water. Sometimes, like the Galveston beach, you’ll have rocks that lead into the water, or occasionally some sand and some sort of beach. The water is murky brown, almost black, because of the pollution and oil spills that are in the water. The body of water is called the Gulf of Mexico, which is shaped roughly like a semi-circle, and leads out into the ocean.

 

“So, I don’t know if you’ve heard this one, but I learned it at Kinkaid [the high school we both went to]. But it was in a science class I think in middle school, and I remember believing it when somebody told me it. It was that the asteroid that made the dinosaurs go extinct struck Earth where the Gulf of Mexico is, and that’s why it’s shaped like that.”

 

Conclusion: I had not heard about this belief, but I can see why Lauren would believe it if a classmate told her about this story when she was a little younger. I do think it’s funny that one of our classmates made it up.