The informant told me of a ghost story that happened where he was living. Prior to it happening, three years before, the informant’s cousin was living in the same guest house (in Calfiornia) the informant was living in. The guest house was conjoined with a shed that had a lot of spooky things in it. The cousin was telling the informant of a time when he woke up in the middle of the night because he heard loud breathing around three in the morning. Upon hearing this, the informant’s cousin ran outside in a panic. The cousin had informed the informant and his family the morning after it had happened. “Fast forward a few years later,” the informant said, “I randomly think of how my cousin told me this story and how eerie it is that I live in the same room as he did now.” As the informant is thinking this, out of nowhere, a pipe burst and water starts spewing all over the place. The informant said he felt totally surprised and scared, yet finally believed at that moment that his cousin had experienced the supernatural. The informant later went on to learn that someone did die on his property. After that, the informant moved out of the guest house a few weeks later and spoke about how the grounds he lived on were definitely haunted by a ghost he thought to be named Dave. The informant went on to say that supernatural events like this seem to only happen to the men in his family, each male family member having some sort of weird event happening to them. I found this piece to be exhilarating to hear spoken. I could really hear the emotion and feeling from the informant upon his descriptions. I got an overwhelming sense of spookiness just by listening, with myself even getting goosebumps.

The informant told of story passed down from her great grandpa. The great grandpa lived in Iran, but his name was Israel. He was a doctor and his family was very poor, and so was the whole village. His family was ostracized for being Jewish in a very anti-Semitic part of Iran, that was mostly Muslim. However, he was the only smart enough guy there to become a doctor. Even though he faced tons of judgement from his neighbors, he was still always there to help the sick, despite how rude they might have been towards him, and despite how they might have always treated him. Israel would still help if they couldn’t pay him anything too, even though he and his family was poor and needed money too. But he believed in helping others because of Tikkun olam, a fundamental Jewish belief… the informant paused at this part of the story to define it as, “a means to repair the world.” This story was told to informant who is no 19 when she was only ten. At such a young age, she understood the moral of it immediately but thinks the story is more impactful now because there seems to be even more hatred than there was in the past, and perhaps “I am just more attuned to hatred now and am much more familiar with it; so confronting malevolence with such kindness is really amazing and inspires me today.” The informant is proud of her family and proud of her Jewish heritage and thought it was beautiful to help others who had acted abhorrently towards Israel and to be the bigger person proves a sense of benevolence that is the real cure to metaphorical diseases of apathy and hatred. Being Jewish, I related to this piece a lot and found it to be truly inspiring with the current state of events going on between Israel and Palestine. I hope that the informant’s grandfather can shed some light on how human beings ought to be treated and something of peace comes one day amongst all religions at war.