Author Archives: fenguyen

Dead Man’s Cats

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: 11/3/21
Primary Language: English

AO: So um, my parents told me about when they first bought the house I was raised in, this old man used to live there. Had a ton of cats. And he passed away in the house. Most of the cats escaped, but some just stayed in the house cuz they were raised domestic or whatever. As the old man decayed for like a month, the whole house reeked of cat piss and shit, they weren’t being taken care of. Obviously his cadaver was removed– but when it was, they found that his corpse was like, completely unrecognizable. We assumed the cats ate the remnants of the corpse because it was so decayed. It was a lot of cleaning to do, cuz there was a lot of damage around the house. And a couple nights after it was being refurbished and totally cleaned out, my mom would walk into the kitchen and see a pair of glowing eyes in pitch darkness. Or she’d see blinds move, hear scratching of fabric or sofas. There was scratching at the doors too. And it went away for a while, but when we first got my dog, he always avoided a spot in the back yard. And my mom realized it was one of the ways the cats would get into the house from the streets and stuff. In fact, it got to the point where we wouldn’t see a single cat on the street for a couple years, and my dog would still go crazy at that spot near the house.

Context: collected during an in-person conversation.

Thoughts: This story felt especially morbid to me– especially with the gnarly cat-corpse ordeal. It’s such a disgusting and disturbing visual. Upsetting too. I think it’s interesting that this deals with the presence of animal ghosts, but not at all with the ghost of the old man.

“The Haunted Lesbian Dwelling”

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: 11/2/21
Primary Language: English

JF: So I lived in this house, um, in the suburbs of Georgia. It was built in the 50s or 60s, and it was a modern house at the time. And it looks really interesting now because it’s like an outdated style of house, but looks modern.

Me: Right.

JF: It’s just a weird house. I called it the “Haunted Lesbian Dwelling”. Um, so essentially when I was in this house, I had extremely bad depression. I wasn’t eating some days, sleeping all the time. I’d like, go to middle school.

JF: *laughs*

JF: It was terrible, I was so sad there. So anyway, the people who lived there before were two lesbians who currently owned the house cuz they don’t like the city. And two people had died in the house, of natural causes–

Me: The lesbians?

JF: No, not the lesbians. they were still alive. They just didn’t like living in the city and were renting out the house. But there were two families who’d lived there prior to the lesbians, we were told they died of natural causes. Well, we were told that, at least.

Me: What was it like there? What made it haunted?

JF: It was a very creaky house, we thought it was just old at first. But then things started to move on their own. And my mom just thought we were fucking with her. There was a wing of the house where things would just move, my mom would come back in the house and see things just moved, but my brother and I weren’t even home, so we couldn’t have moved it. Lights started to flicker– and these were just things that happened maybe because it was an old house. But, it happened in such a pattern that my parents were convinced it was haunted.

Me: Besides the things moving, lights– was there anything else that convinced your parents of this?

JF: Well, that and my dad said he heard voices of children in the walls when we weren’t home. My mom too. And I didn’t notice any of this shit the whole time, cause I was just in bed for most of this.

Me: Was there any reason you called it the “haunted lesbian dwelling” besides the fact lesbians owned the house?

JF: Nope, just thought it had a ring to it. And it was haunted. It was an accurate descriptor, so sue me!

Context: Collected during an in-person conversation.

Thoughts: I feel like this type of ghost story is classic to America. Older but not too old house has people die in it (whether of natural causes or not), and subsequent things such as lights flickering or objects moving occur. Minor, not too insane occurrences, but eerie enough to feel like a haunting.