Transcription:

Interviewer: “So you’re from Fontana?”

Informant: “Yes that is correct.”

Interviewer: “And from what I understand there are some myths about Fontana.”

Informant: “Yeah! What kind of myths are you looking for?”

Interviewer: “Anything. Can you give me an example of one?”

Informant: “So basically, it is said that Fontana was built on…not to sound like a gentrified, Fontana was built on ancient Native American ground. Aaaand I don’t know how true that is but the city nearby, San Bernardino, was most definitely built on tribal ground. There’s evidence to prove that. And because it’s a nearby city, it’s not much of a stretch to say that there were communities nearby too. So basically, the idea is that a lot of Fontana locals report that weird shit happens in their house all the time. Excuse me let me rephrase. Weird stuff happens in their house all the time. So a prime example with my mom is that when she’s cleaning the tele-the television, and you know like it’s plastic so you can see like see out of it to a certain extent or you can see a reflection to a certain extent. So if someone was walking behind you, you’d be able to see them creeping up on you. And there’s been a few times where’s she’s alone in the house, and the dogs are tiny mind you so they’re not even tall enough for the tv to catch their reflection. Cuz the tv’s like all the way up here. She’ll be cleaning it and then she’ll see something move behind her when she’s standing perfectly still. And that’s happened multiple times. Then she turns around a says ‘that’s odd! It looks like someone’s walking behind me but there’s no one home’. I’m at school. Dad’s at work. So it’s really weird and really kinda creepy. And also there’s times where it sounds like someone’s calling your name. Like someone will say Olga. But again, no one’s home so it’s weird.”

Interviewer: “And is your mom the only one who sees this?”

Informant: “My cousin adamantly believes that one time when she walked into my mom’s room in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, that she saw a woman in a white dress, standing by the door. And she screamed. And she ran out. And she grabbed my mom and my aunty. And when she went back  to tell them, basically crying, that there was a woman in their room, there was no one there. She was very adamant about that and it’s been over a decade since that happened. And she still refuses to go into that room. Whatever she saw shook her.”

Summary:

The informant has some stories about her hometown, Fontana. It’s possible that the town was built on top of a burial ground, as a nearby town was also built on top of Native American land. The informant credits paranormal activity that may take place in the area to this. She has no personal experience with the matter but she has a story from her mother. One day her mother was cleaning the tv and saw the reflection of someone move behind her. However, the house was empty save for maybe dogs. There was also an instance where the informant’s cousin saw a woman dressed in all white in the mom’s room. Upon going to find someone else in the house to tell, she discovered that the house was empty. She still has fears of the room because of that. This story in particular reminds me of one that I heard as they both feature a woman in a white dress. The other story I heard is the first one that opened my mind to the possibility that ghosts and spirits actually exist in the world.

Transcription:

Interviewer: “Do you believe in ghosts?”

Informant: “Um…I believe that may…that we contextualize possibly as ghosts but I’m not sure if they are ghosts. And when I say things, I mean things that are both…normal…and things that are a bit more than normal. Extranormal or even paranormal. But I don’t know if they’re ghosts as we traditionally define them.”

Interviewer: “Do you have any personal experience with the paranormal?”

Informant: “Ah yes my friends and I would often drive around late at night and do things like break into old Tuberculosis hospitals umm or drive on really unpleasant mountain roads. Umm or there was like a couple of…there was one place that was like an unmarked uhh and then repaved over grave in town that a man who had been killed in the town by bandits was buried at. So in the process of doing these things, we had a number of really strange experiences. And also the house I…the house I spent most of my childhood in umm was an old Victorian house that was almost…certainly…like I don’t like the word ‘haunted’ but had a number of freaky and creepy things happen in it. The most well documented thing was that a number of guests in one particular room of the house- this is like a large…old Victorian there’s this there’s this room on the second floor, that was different than all the other rooms. It was like painted all white. It was essentially a guest room, designed to be a guest room. And we had three people who did not know each other and who…who had no opportunity to talk about this experience, who stayed in that room. And each of them reported waking up in the middle of the night to see an old man hovering over them and staring down at them. Um…and a similar- someone who worked in the house uh… like who did catering and stuff there um… said that she saw some like somebody walking down the stairs of the house and then…disappear. Halfway down. Like the same sort of…described as an old man. And then…many-and so I never had this experience personally when I was living there throughout my entire time being there. But, this was years later, like many years after I moved out of that house. My friends and I were driving around one night, and the house was unoccupied aside from like uh…professional events. Like like it’s not designed- we didn’t own it, we just lived there because my dad worked for the place that it was for. But um… we were there and I’m like ‘this house has nobody in it. This is the house I grew up in. You guys wanna go inside?’ And it’s like yeah so we broke in. My friend picked the back door lock and we were walking around in this dark house at night. Um…and… we made it through most of the house. And we were like freaked out because it’s like a dark Victorian house and it’s like no furniture. It’s like freaky. Very little furniture. But we were pretty unfazed. However, we walked into that guest room and it was like 10 15 degrees colder than the surrounding air. We walked in and just immediately this blast of cold air and just chills and just compl-just this terrifying feeling.  And we’re like ‘okay we’re leaving’ and we like sprinted out. We sprinted down like the…the second floor stairwell and we left house and it’s just like ‘all right! That was terrifying’.Um…and so I I I have some experience. That one is the one where it has the most sort of…a number of people reported different experiences including myself. That one stands out to me as something where it’s like ‘that was uncomfortable…haha and there’s something going on here’.”

Interviewer: “And that was in Colorado?”

Informant: “Yes it was.”

Summary:

The informant doesn’t exactly believe in ghosts. He believes that there are indeed things that we perceive as ghosts but may not be ghosts as we know them. He has personal experience with a paranormal experience. In an old Victorian house that he grew up, there was a guest room that was painted completely white. Three different guests, completely unknown to one another, reported that when sleeping in the guest room, they would be woken up by an old man staring down at them. A worker also reported seeing the same old man walking down stairs and disappearing halfway down. However, these were all stories and nothing that the informant had experienced himself. Years after the informant moved out of that house, he and some friends visited the house again. Upon entering the room, the temperature was immediately 15 degrees lower and he had a terrifying feeling. I somewhat wish I could visit the house myself so that I could experience it for myself. I would like to experience something like this to be able to confirm my belief in ghosts or not. As for now, though, I’m still on the fence.

Transcription:

Informant: “I’m like agnostic about ghosts. Does that make sense? I am unsure whether like I have no firm…like belief or opinion as to their reality or not. I know it’s strange but I- I’m not totally against the fact that there could be paranormal stuff I guess.”

Interviewer: “Do you have any personal experience with the paranormal or something resembling it?”

Informant: “The only one, not really me but I’ve had like stories told from like my friends and like my mom. The one she talked about was in her…her mom’s old house. It was at my grandma’s house when they were first looking to buy it. My mom…and her brother both thought they saw like a woman run past up on like the front and they were like ‘oh she must live here’ so they tried to go and find her and they couldn’t find her anywhere. So they were like ‘whoa that’s pretty spooky’. Um…and then my aunt’s…well my aunt at a party at that house…her hair caught on fire. Um…and so they like so like and she didn’t…she was not near like a flame. This is what my mother has told me but it influenced me a lot as a child.”

Interviewer: “And they only saw this person who ran by once?”

Informant: “Yes.”

Interviewer: “Okay. Well did anything else strange happen at the house?”

Informant: “Um…not that I remember but I know that my…my mom, my cousin, and my uncle were all pretty skeeved out by the house… for a multitude of reasons. Just from thinking that they saw things or like felt weird under certain situations.”

Interviewer: “And how old were you when you were told these stories?”

Informant: “I was…I think I was like 11 when my mom was telling me the stories about the woman and when my aunt’s hair caught on fire. But I used to go to my grandmother’s house all the time.”

Summary:

The informant isn’t sure whether to believe in ghosts or not. She herself hasn’t experienced anything paranormal. However, close family had experienced ghost encounters. For one, when her grandmother was buying her house, her mother claimed to have seen a woman run by. Assuming she was the owner, she went to talk to the lady only to find that she disappeared. There is also a case of the informant’s aunt’s hair randomly catching fire while in the same house. The story was told to the informant when she was young. There seems to be no deceptive purpose to telling the story. It seems true to me. It’s a very interesting ghost story to me because it sounds so convincing but I’ve still had no personal experience with ghosts.