This story is told by a friend, Lauren, whose perspective on ghosts is not scared or intimidated, but rather Lauren seems to be at peace with ghosts and lives in harmony with them.

“My aunt and uncle have an old Victorian house is Redlands, California, and we’re pretty sure the ghost that’s in there is the ghost of the girl that died of Cholera in about 1833. Throughout time, every one of the kids when they’re little have seen the ghost. They’ve disappeared for a couple of minutes, and no one knows where the kids go, and then the kids will show up and say “I just saw the ghost”. No one really understands it. I did it, my little cousin did it, my second cousins have all done it. There’s kind of evidence that the ghosts exist and the house is probably haunted, but the ghost is pretty chill.

After my uncle passed away, my aunt and I were sitting there and talking about how sad we were, and we heard something that sounded like a sigh. We didn’t know where it came from, but we think it was the ghost sympathizing with us.

My cousin and I were probably about 15, and we were going up to the attic and we had walkie talkies with us, and as we were climbing up to the attic, they started getting scratchier and scratchier with the sound. We thought it was just because we were gaining altitude, it probably doesn’t have the radio connection. Then the minute we opened the door, the walkie talkies just shut down completely. It wasn’t that they completely lost reception, they turned off.

Later when went downstairs we took the batteries out and put them back in, and there was nothing wrong with the walkie talkies.

[Were you scared when it happened?]

It was a little freaky, but we’ve have encounters with the ghost before, and its never been a bad encounter so we didn’t really care. ”

It is common for children to see ghosts, perhaps because they are just more imaginative, but what are the odds that Lauren and each of her younger relatives all had the same exact experience? They all disappeared for about 45 minutes when they were very young, to return claiming that they had seen the ghost. This was stated very matter of factly and with complete confidence. It seems that in this family, ghosts are a common occurrence and not seen as a threat. This is very different than many ghost stories because often ghosts are seen as intimidating spirits or peaceful ghosts of recently deceased family members. This peaceful ghost that she speaks of is neither, but rather just a friendly ghost of perhaps the girl that passed away in that house.

The problem with the walkie talkies is very odd because after coming back downstairs, they realized that both walkie talkies were not dead. They had just turned off at the same time going up the stairs to the attic. The attic is a common location for ghost encounters because it is a liminal space. Could there have been a ghost up there that decided to mess with their devices? She did not seem to be bothered by this event, but rather accepting that ghosts have their place in the house. Many people would be scared of the common ghost experiences, but Lauren said that everyone in her family all feels the same way; ghosts are not something to be frightened of, but something to respect and accept.

This old house was the location for many ghost encounters, but the technological mishap was her most recent experience with the ghost of the house.

A friend recounts a story of her friend falling down stairs after yelling at a ghost:

“In highschool my friend, Katie, moved into a house, it was a historical landmark in our town, Palo Alto. There were weird parts of the house, like the basement the completely concrete. The floor, the walls, the ceiling, all concrete. There were square holes in the walls that really just looked like a coroners office, like in TV shows, where they pulled the dead bodies out of it. It was really really wUpdatee

The wifi in the house was named TobeyHouse after the alleged original owner who died in the house. And they couldn’t change the name because they were renting it. There were always weird things happening. The owner of the house, my friend’s mom, really believes in ghosts, she holds seances and has ouija boards. The lady that lived in the back of the house, named Dylan, was super into it, super into connecting with the spiritual realm.

Tobey had done some things like door slamming. But one day my friend Emma was standing at the top of the stairs, and a bunch of doors were slamming, the house was creaking, and my friend yelled “F you Tobey” at the top of the stairs, and she immediately fell down them. And my friend’s mom called ghostbusters and ghostbusters was like “theres definitely a spiritual presence in this house, there’s a bad spirit here.” But Tobey didn’t really do anything after that though.

[Were you scared when it happened?]

I wasn’t there, but my friends were genuinely freaking out.

[Was everyone sober?]

Yeah, but I think part of it was my friend was wrapped up in a blanket when she fell. So it totally could’ve been that she lost her balanced, but everyone said she got pushed.”

Was Katie really pushed by an angry ghost? Or did she just slip? Everyone part of the experience believes that it was the ghost that pushed her down the stairs, but that could have been a result of their preconceived notion about their location and because they were already scared from hearing the unexplainable noises, like the slamming doors.

This ghost encounter took place in an unusual house with a disturbing basement and a mysterious history. It is odd that this house even had a basement, as they are very uncommon in California. The residents of the house at the time of this event might have also affected the outcome. Katie’s mom was very convinced that evil spirits resided in their home, and the woman who lived in the separate house still on the property also felt a strong connection to the spirit world. These perspectives might have worked to convince Katie’s friends that a ghost had suddenly appeared and become violent, because the house reminded them of the ghosts that the residents believed so strongly in. But regardless of this, all of the witnesses to this were confident that a ghost had intervened.

It later turned into a running joke, but those at the scene maintain that a ghost really did become angry and violent.