Author Archives: liaarnol

The Face that was Later Called Grandmother

Age: 19

Context:

One evening, while in front of a campfire at my high school, my friend and I began talking about strange experiences we have had. She suddenly recalled something that had happened to her as a child that had haunted her ever since. It was a moment of confused fear, imagination, and something she still can’t fully explain. This is the story she told me.

The Story:

When she was around six years old, she lived with her parents and two siblings. One spring day, her family was hosting a gathering with relatives. While the adults were occupied, she and her siblings were playing roughly, and their energy escalated into play-fighting.

At one point, she swung at her sister — not hard, but enough for her mother to step in. As a punishment, her mother placed her in time-out in the front foyer, a quiet space near the door where guests would remove their shoes.

A few minutes into sitting alone, she began to feel restless. She turned her attention to the nearby window and looked outside. In that moment, she describes what she saw “not as a typical ghost,” but rather as “a presence that was spying” on her. 

She could not make out a full face or body, but she distinctly remembers the expression: “feminine, stern, and filled with anger.” It was intensely disapproving. The feeling it gave her was immediate and overwhelming.

In that moment, her sense of guilt deepened. What had just been childish misbehavior suddenly felt much more serious, as if she were being judged.

Terrified, she ran away from the window and out of the foyer, breaking her time-out, which led to her mother making her stay in time-out for even longer.

Years later, while reflecting on the experience by the campfire, she came to associate the presence with her grandmother. However, this interpretation was not present at the time it occurred. In the moment, the figure felt unfamiliar and unrecognizable; it is only in retrospect that her memory has recontextualized it as resembling her grandmother.

Informant’s Thoughts:

What unsettles her most is how her interpretation of the event changed over time. As a child, the presence felt completely foreign and threatening. But as she grew older, she began to associate it with someone familiar and close to her—her grandmother.

This shift raises questions about memory itself: did she actually perceive something external, or was the experience gradually reshaped by her mind in order to give it meaning and familiarity in retrospect?

My Thoughts:

I think my friend’s story is definitely connected to spirits that haunt us after making immoral decisions. My friend felt feelings of deep shame for attempting to hurt her sister. I think it’s also interesting that she got in even more trouble as a result of running away from the presence.

What makes this story compelling isn’t just the possibility of a supernatural presence but how closely it ties to guilt. In that moment, my friend had just done something she knew was wrong. The appearance of a disapproving figure, whether real or imagined, seemed to reflect her internal emotions.

Rather than a traditional ghost story, this feels more like a psychological haunting. The “presence” may not have been a spirit punishing her but a manifestation of her own conscience, shaped by childhood fear and authority.

At the same time, the later association with her grandmother adds another layer of unease. It suggests how memory is not fixed but something we reinterpret as we grow older. The blending of emotion, family, and imagination into something that feels real.

What lingers is not the image itself but the uncertainty: was she being watched, or was she learning right from wrong? 

The Nightmare that Growled Back

Age: 34

Context:

One day, as I was leaving my dorm room to walk to class, the maintenance worker for my hallway stopped me to share that a vacuum that had been standing perfectly upright suddenly fell. He said, “It took force to get that down,” however, there was no physical force apparent. I stopped and listened to what he had to say about what he had just seen and then began talking about encounters that he had while living with his mother and grandmother. This is one story he told me. 

The Story:

About fifteen years ago, he lived in a Los Angeles home with his mother and grandmother. There wasn’t one specific moment, but rather a collection of strange experiences that impacted everyone in the household. He said, “Nobody was talking about it until things started getting more physical and hands-on.”

He described a series of nightmares that grew more intense over time. At first, they were recurring dreams of being chased, and he would wake up in a panic. As time went on, however, the dreams began to resemble sleep paralysis. “I would be in heavy, heavy sleep and couldn’t wake up because I felt like an energy was holding me down.”

One specific dream he shared involved him running through a parking lot, trying to escape someone who was chasing him with a knife. He couldn’t wake up while it was happening, and when he finally did, he was exhausted and out of breath, as if he had actually been running.

The dreams continued to worsen and feel more and more real: “I was waking up heavy, sweating, and gasping for air. We all started sharing similar stories, and we all started talking about what we were feeling or how it was feeling.”

Both his mother and grandmother shared experiences of “feeling like somebody was sitting on their chest and wouldn’t let them go. It was the feeling like you wanted to scream and yell, but something was holding you from it.”

One night in particular has remained with him until this day. It happened in the middle of the night. He shared that his grandmother would frequently come in and out of the rooms, so initially, he wasn’t afraid. He described that he was staring at a shadow that was short just like his grandmother.  

Another thing that he and his grandmother used to do was jokingly growl at each other. He said that as the shadow began walking away to leave the room, he began growling at it. 

“When I growled, it immediately turned around 360 degrees, but the way it looked towards me, I immediately knew that that wasn’t her anymore.”

It stood over him and began growling back at him louder and louder. “That was the for real moment that I felt that black presence, that black shadow was staring at me, and it was growling at me. That was one of the most physical moments that I had ever felt.”

After this night, he called his family friend who was an exorcist. With a broom, the exorcist fought with the presence in each corner of the house. After he retrieved the spirit, he found it was an old man and placed it in a box to bring to release it at a cemetery. 

Afterward, he, his mother, and his grandmother were cleansed with sage, white roses, and various mists.

Even now, he says it’s eerie to think about. Both his mother and grandmother have since passed away, and he hasn’t shared this story with many people in a long time.

Informant’s Thoughts:

He doesn’t find the story unsettling just because of the shadow itself, but because of the shared, physically impacting experiences that all of his family members had that were unspoken at first. What stays with him is the identical sensations and the way something unseen seemed to move through all of them at once. Now that his mother and grandmother have passed, there’s no one left who remembers those nights the way he does. No one to confirm what happened or to question it. 

His experience also strengthened his belief in ghostly presences, and he has become more attentive. When something reminiscent of those experiences occurs in everyday life, such as the broom story in the dorm, he is more skeptical, whereas prior to this experience, he never thought twice about spooky presences. 

My Thoughts:

To me, it is very interesting that the exorcist discovered that the presence was that of an old man. It makes me wonder if the man had lived in the house before Alex and his family moved in. If so, what happened to him?

I’m struck by how all of these experiences occurred during sleep at night. Sleep paralysis is most common among children and young adults, which is interesting because all three people living in the home were full-grown adults. This makes me further consider the possibility that the presence was real. It could also suggest a kind of generational haunting, potentially significant in the way it connects us to our ancestors.

This story lingered with me long after he told it, partly because of coincidence—when I heard it, I was on my way to my ghost stories class.