Author Archives: redingto

Personal Proverb

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 27, 2016
Primary Language: English

Be good to the earth,

respect all mankind,

with these simple words

all else falls in line.

 

Is this something you made up yourself?

My dad.

 

And did he get it from someone else?

Nope.

 

What does this mean to you?

It’s tattooed on my arm. It’s about treating people with respect and its about acceptance. It’s the only two things I try to judge people on – if people are nice to the earth and nice to others they’re probably good people.

 

Background: I conducted this interview live, so this story was given to me in person. This is a proverb that was invented by the informant’s dad, and he lives by it, which is interesting. He just said it is a short mantra which he lives by, and I think this is something I will continue to think about after he told me this. This is something that is so important to the informant that he has it tattooed on his arm, which says something about how highly he regards this statement. I like how it is a brief statement from which he can make many decisions and judgements in his life.

The Lady in the White Dress

Nationality: American, English, Thai
Age: 16
Occupation: Student
Residence: Manhattan Beach, CA
Performance Date: April 24, 2016
Primary Language: English

Ok ready? Okay so one night when I was going to bed I had an uneasy feeling that something was watching me, you know… I normally felt this every night… I was never able to go to sleep and… wait can I start over? Ok, so I kept the light on, and that’s what I did very night because I would never be able to fall asleep. Eventually I fell asleep and … sorry… um and in the middle of the night I woke up again, and I was tired enough to know that if I turned the light off I would fall asleep without being scared. After a few hours I woke up again and I looked into my closet which was open and I saw a lady in a white dress standing there looking at me for … maybe… a millisecond, and I turned around to my left… didn’t look back my heart started pounding. I started to sweat, and I wasn’t able to go back to sleep the whole night. I couldn’t move. I was paralyzed… just paralyzed. In the morning I told my mom what had happened, and I looked into my closet and I had no white dresses that could have ever been seen from my bed, and my mom said don’t worry, its ok, just pray to God to protect you everything is gonna be fine. I told my dad and he thought it was bullshit. Then, I just kept the light on every night before going to bed, A few months later, I come home and James, my brother says that he saw a lady in a white dress standing in the living room. Then I looked at my mom, and we said “oh shit…” we then talk later and said we need to get this house … like this house needs to go under an exorcism like call the priest or whatever… but after awhile we just sort of forgot about it, but I was always still scared … couldn’t go downstairs by myself, and always thought someone was watching me from behind my back. Like six months later, I remember my sister telling me that our cleaning lady Martha saw a lady in white dress walk from my mom’s room into my room in broad daylight. And my mom and I freaked out… we… my mom called a clairvoyant and… who came to the house and said to my mom, “Oh, what does the lady look like? Is she tall? Does she have brown hair?” And my mom was like, yes, that’s the description…that’s what she looks like. Then the lady started to talk to the ghost lady and got information. She said the ghost lady accidentally died in our house from drug overdose, and basically…her unfinished business was that she didn’t want her family to think she had left them on purpose. The ghost lady was very protective of me and my mom. And she was supposed to have been a very successful doctor. We then talked to our neighbor across the street, who is an old lady, who remembered her – the lady across the street who we were talking to about the ghost lady … our neighbor said she was a very private person and didn’t know her that well, however she was very nice. Um…then the clairvoyant woman did something where she like led the ghost lady to the light or whatever. I’m not really sure what happened after that … the clairvoyant asked my mom, “Oh has anyone recently died in your family?” And my mom said, “Oh yes my dad died a few months ago,” and the clairvoyant said that “Oh he’s here now and he wants to let you know that he’s always here for you when you’re thinking of him and especially in a time of need and he … he has other lady figures here on Earth that he likes to visit as well, like Aunty Pas and Aunty Isabel.” And so when my mom was telling me all of this I realized that all these times as kid … ever since I knew what a ghost was, I was never able to fall asleep, and I always had to have the door open, the light on, or my parents snuggle with me because I always felt that there was someone watching me someone standing next to me and in all reality it actually was true.

 

Background: I have heard this story many times as the informant is my sister. However, hearing it again from her perspective is very interesting because she tells this story in a very different way from the way I tell it, probably because I heard it first from my mother, who may have had a different experience throughout all this than my sister did. Considering that my sister was the main person who had to go through all this, I am assuming this version of the story is more accurate than my version, but then again, that is the essence of folklore – the constant multiplicity and variation that comes with a story. Even my sister, as she was telling it to me this time, had made some small changes to her story that she was probably not aware of. I conducted this interview live at my house, so this story was given to me live. This story is particularly important to me, since I believe it occurred in my house and I feel bad that my sister had to suffer from so much anxiety as a child along with many of our family members refusing to believe her. This story is something I will never forget and something I’ll probably pass down to my children, which will probably get passed down to their children. It is very interesting for me to be present at the beginning point of a story that will probably become part of my family’s folklore later on.

Presence in our House

Nationality: Mexican American
Age: 53
Occupation: Hospital
Residence: Glendale, CA
Performance Date: April 24, 2016
Primary Language: English

Ok so when we bought our house – I don’t believe in this stuff – but in the house around the kitchen area, I just had a sense that there was a presence, and it was definitely what I believed to be the wife of the previous owner. She just seemed to be lurking around there. Like I said she…she just…

We would come upstairs from the garage to the kitchen, and I would feel that she was looking at us and peering at us. For several years I felt that this was going on, and that she was looking out from the kitchen window outside to us as we approached the house. It went on for several years. It wasn’t a scary feeling… it was just as if she was checking things out. And then one day, she kind of just disappeared. She wasn’t there anymore. I kind of forgot about it and then when I remembered, I thought about how she didn’t really come out anymore like she used to. It’s been 15 years in the house, and she hasn’t been around for…I don’t know… maybe 8 years.

You never saw her?

It was just a white, vague presence but you felt it. And then it was gone. Haven’t seen her since.

Did you feel a sense of relief when you thought she had gone?

It’s interesting you say that because it didn’t really bother me. It bothered me in the beginning, but I just got used to it. I just don’t know.

 

Background: This was a narrative my uncle told me about his house where he lives with my aunt and my cousins in Glendale. It was significant to him because it was the only type of supernatural interaction he claims to have ever had, but it wasn’t super bothersome to him, because as stated above he said it wasn’t the most strong presence and that he didn’t really mind it. I conducted this interview live at my uncle’s house, so this story was given to me live. I thought this was an interesting story because first, the presence he felt was not very strong, which is fairly different from the rest of the stories I have collected, which all otherwise state that whatever they felt was very strong and trying to communicate something to them.

Haunted House in Jakarta

Nationality: Thai
Age: 75
Occupation: Retired
Residence: Van Nuys, CA
Performance Date: April 24, 2016
Primary Language: Thai (laotian)
Language: English

Papa’s (my grandpa’s) friend and him were living in Jakarta and in the house they were staying in… a house which they rented… which was haunted because the wife sees all the spirits when the men are out working. There are always noises and sometimes she saw people in the kitchen… doing something in the kitchen, and the husband doesn’t believe her. He says, “I don’t believe. That is nonsense. I wish I could see the ghost. I wish he would show me.” One day he was sleeping, and he looked up and he had a calendar of two girls dancing. He looked at the calendar and it was moving and dancing. The girls pictured in the calendar were moving as if they were real. He was so scared. So from that time on he believed. They eventually figured out that under that house was a cemetery. The ghost followed them from this house to another house they lived in, I even heard stories about it later on. Since that time he was so scared and never mentioned it anymore.

Background: My grandpa was a civil engineer whose work required him to constantly move from place to place. This is interesting to hear secondhand from my aunt, as my grandfather passed away. He told this story to her many years ago. This really embodies the essence of folklore as this version of the story may have been different from the original that my grandfather would have told. I conducted this interview live at my uncle’s house, so this story was told to me in person. I really find this story to be very compelling as the belief of each person who lived in the house varied about the spirits — from the wife and husband, to my grandfather. This was very interesting for me to hear about some of the interesting places my grandfather lived and some of the amazing things he did all over the world.

Nang Nak

Nationality: Thai, French
Age: 75
Occupation: Retired
Residence: Van Nuys, CA
Performance Date: April 24, 2016
Primary Language: Thai (laotian)
Language: English

Nang Nak (Nang meaning Mrs. in Thai) was married to her husband when he was sent off and had to go away to war. she was pregnant and she died they say when the woman died with baby inside the spirit is very strong and she loved her husband very much. She died and no one told her husband that she had died and when her husband came home she was there to welcome him, but it was actually her spirit. The Asian houses are very tall, and one day she was making curry and pounding the chicken and she dropped the tool all the way down. The husband offered to get the pounder but instead she extended her arm unnaturally and got it. The husband ran away and she cried and cried but at the end he ran away. Everytime you say it in Thailand people will know what you’re talking about. People make it into a movie and people like to go see the movies.

 

Background: This is a fairly well-know story in Thailand, according to my great-aunt. There have been several movies made about it. She said she used to get really scared as a child because people would circulate this story. She knows it just from hearing it from many different people as a young child. I conducted this interview live at my uncle’s house, so I heard these stories in person, but it was still sometimes fairly hard to understand because my aunt has a very thick Thai accent which is sometimes hard for me to hear, so I have to ask her to repeat certain things. I think this story is a great piece of folklore, especially as it is well known in Thailand and there are a few different versions of the story – regarding what she is cooking specifically and what she drops and picks up with her extended arm, and what happens after the husband runs away. I really enjoyed this piece even though it was kind of freaky.