Category Archives: Folk Beliefs

Motherly Spirit

Nationality: Caucasian
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Seattle/Los Angeles (University of Southern California)
Performance Date: 4/6/17
Primary Language: English


Informant: A B was born in Sacramento, California and then raised in Seattle, Washington from ages 3 until 18. A B is a freshman undergraduate student at University of Southern California majoring in Business Administration. A was baptized christian and is also a confirmed christian.

Original Script: “When we moved from Sacramento to Mercer island, the mother of the family that lived in the home before we did, died from cancer. The family had 3 kids and a husband who lived in the house 6 months after the mom died until deciding they needed change and moved to Seattle. About a month after moving in, creepy things began happening at night. The first thing that happened, we have a sink in the kitchen and in the laundry room and both faucets turned on and began running all night. At first my parents thought it was a plumbing issue because the house was new, my parents weren’t scared but rather just confused since the house was built so recently. A couple nights later, our big panasonic speakers (like as big as a door) began playing ‘Its A Small World’ (yes, the disneyland song) super loud and these speakers are so loud they will blow your eardrums out. My mom went to the neighbors the next day to ask if they heard the loud music last night and the neighbors said they hadn’t heard anything. This is odd because the speakers are so loud, there’s no way the next door neighbors wouldn’t have heard this music. Nothing happened for about a week until there was a huge bang noise onto the window, and when my mom went downstairs to see what it was it looked like the someone threw a ball at the window from the inside. The window wasn’t shattered but clearly damaged. My mom went to the neighbors again and the neighbors then informed her that the mom of the family before was dead and that maybe all the activity in their home was because the spirit wanted to find her family. So they then decided to write the address of the new place that the spirit’s family had moved to in order to help the ghost find her family. My mom left the note out and nothing ever happened again.”

Background Information about the piece by the Informant: The story takes place right after the family moved from Sacramento, CA to Mercer Island, Washington which is directly between Seattle and Bellevue. The informants new home in Washington was located in a living community in a sort of figure 8, so two loops, and three lakes in each loop, so basically a very closed and private community. At first they thought the activity was someone breaking in but realized it couldn’t be because there is only one entrance and exit from the island meaning that it is nearly impossible for someone to get in or out without being caught.

 

Thoughts about the piece: This piece is interesting in that the informant made it clear that the ghost wasn’t particularly scary, just noisy in a sense to get the family’s attention. In many ghost stories, the ghost is often that of a recently deceased loved one trying to say goodbye one last time. This major theme can be seen in this story when the spirit came back to say goodbye to her family and her family was gone, she began to get loud and make disruptions to get the new family’s attention to hopefully redirect her to her real family’s home.

Negative Energy

Nationality: Colombian
Age: 18
Occupation: SMC Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: March 19, 2017
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: English

Informant: Isabella Milkes was born in Colombia and moved to the U.S. before 6th grade. Her immediate family does not follow a religion but they do believe in spirits; however, her mother’s side is very devoted Christians. Her aunts on her mother’s side live in Colombian and are leaders of their Church. Her ghostly experience takes place in her own home, where she later found out that before her family had moved in, there were already negative energy inside the house.

IM: “So what happened was that before New Years my mom likes to clean the apartment like really well to like start the year “fresh and new”, and so my mom was doing that and then she read something that if you want to clean all the negative energy in your home, you should clean everything with saltwater. So my mom did that and every since that happened, like weird things were happening to our apartment. For example, my brother would wake up around like 3am and open his eyes, but his body wouldn’t be able to move, and he would see a black shadowy figure with the outline of a human, or sometimes his bed would shake randomly during the middle of the night. Another thing strange that happened was that there were burnt cigarette spots on our carpet and it was freaky ‘cause NONE of us smoke and the burnt spots smelled like flavored cigarette. I also had an experience, where I woke up in the middle of the night and saw like a shadowy hand coming near me. Also my mom started getting really sick. So over summer, my mom went back to Colombia to visit her family and in Colombia, she and her family went to a one of those spiritual mediums who can contact the ghostly world. She told her that there was a stable bad energy in our apartment before our family moved in, and once my mom did the cleaning with salt water, it kind of awakened that energy and that negative energy needed to be released. She did some rituals and prayers during the religious cleanse in order to safely release the energy. And when that was over, and my mom came back to America, all the haunted things that were happening went away. My mom told us that apparently when you do those sort of cleanses, you have to shield yourself with something, like a prayer, before you do the cleanse, so that the bad energy doesn’t affect the person who is performing the cleanse.”

How did this experience impact you?

“Well, it didn’t really impact me in anyway. I mean me and my family don’t believe in ghosts, because we think of these things as negative energy. We also don’t believe in Western medicine. So, for example, when I’m sick, I don’t eat Tylenol or Advil, instead I drink homemade remedies my mom makes. If something is bothering us, such as something worrying us, or we’re not happy or stressed, then we do medication or therapy through a holistic credited psychologist, because we need to release the energy that’s making our body energy unbalanced.”

My thoughts:

This story scared me on multiple levels. Firstly, it makes me wonder what’s the difference between cleaning the house with bleach and salt water? Another thing I found scary about this story was the intensity of the presence of the ghost. The ghost affected her brother, mother’s health, her house, and herself. The ghost reminds me of the Japanese Gaki that are hurtful to or are seeking revenge on the living. Another aspect I found interesting was that usually one would see, hear, of feel ghosts, but in her story, the ghost gave off a smell from the cigarette spots. I also found it pretty amazing in that the rituals they performed in Colombia affected their home in America.

Najar: The Evil Eye

Nationality: Indian
Age: 18
Residence: Texas
Performance Date: March 15, 2017
Primary Language: Gujarathi
Language: English

“We were probably like – I was probably like 11, and [my sister] was probably 9-ish so it was kinda long ago, but I remember we were at my grandma’s house [in India], and she had three different stories. No one goes on the second story; it’s just like boarded up. And then the third story is a terrace. So, we go to the third story, and we’re just talking and my sister said something like ‘dumb’ or ‘stupid’ or something, like literally those words. And so I was like, ‘Oh my God, dad’s gonna get so mad at you, you said a bad word, blah blah blah.’ Usually she would be like, ‘ok stop, you’re not being funny,’ but like legitimately she was like, ‘oh my god, you’re so right,’ and she just starts bawling. She’s crying, she’s losing it, she’s like freaking out, like legitimately I thought she was going crazy. She was like ‘I have to tell dad I said it!’ and she’s like running everywhere and she’s like ‘when’s dad coming home, when’s dad coming home? I have to tell him, I have to tell him, he’s gonna be so mad at me.’ And like, she’s nine years old, so she’s old enough to where it’s like ‘ok you’re being weird.’ And so, like no one thought much of it, and then my dad comes home, and she’s like ‘dad, I said “dumb”’ or whatever the word was. And he was like, you know, like, ‘don’t say that word again’ and whatever, and she was like ‘I know, I’m SO sorry.’ She just starts crying and crying. And she was doing weird stuff like that for three or four days, and we were like ‘ok what’s going on?’

“[It started] since she was on the terrace, I guess – because – we had gone somewhere, we had like taken the train somewhere and it’s super common knowledge that the train stations are like  the most haunted places in India because people commit suicide and stuff; they jump off while the train is coming. And so, they think that she got some “bad air” – so like a ghost, like, spirit thing. Because they don’t – it’s not like a ghost possessed you, but it’s just like you picked up on some bad aura or like a bad spirit from the train station and it kinda like made her go crazy. So like, I was freaking out. I was like, ‘Get her away from me. I don’t want her in the same room. She can sleep outside!’

“But yeah, so we took her to the pandit, which is a priest, and he like, did all this like, fire smoke stuff, and like put it around her and stuff. And he like gave her this bracelet and was like ‘okay, after doing that, this bracelet will collect the bad spirit inside of her, and then you take off this bracelet and you like dispose of it.’ If you were in India, you would throw it in one of the holy rivers, but we were going back home [to the United States], so he was just like ‘just put it in a river anywhere.’ I honestly think we took it to the Trinity River, I’m being so serious. It sat in our garage for a while. But yeah, he put that bracelet on her, and a couple days later, she was like fine, like it immediately went away. So I don’t know if it worked or like she was doing it to herself, like a placebo-type thing. I don’t know, but she was just acting super weird for a couple of days, like freaking out about things that didn’t matter. She was like losing her mind over stuff, like she couldn’t get over it. So yeah, I think that she picked up on some…some sort of bad air.”

 

When I was researching Indian ghost belief, I came across the belief of “najar” which roughly translates to “evil eye.” I asked my Indian friend that I knew from Texas if she knew of or ever had an experience with “najar,” and this is the story that she gave me. I find it interesting that her sister never caught this evil eye while in the United States, but it was only a trip to India that spurred this occurrence. I asked her to elaborate more on “najar,” and she told me a bit more about how people typically act when they have new (cute) babies.

 

“If you have a child – and some babies are ugly, but some are super cute. So if you have a baby and everyone’s like, ‘Aw, your baby is so cute, blah, blah, blah,’ – my mom would like freak out. She hated that, she would not let people like – you know how sometimes you like see a cute baby at Walmart and you’re just like staring at it like ‘aw that baby is so cute!” and you just look at it? – she would not like that at all. She would like turn her kids, us, around. She always said that if people were staring over you, like gawking over you, they’re gonna get jealous because you have this cute baby. And that jealousy is like evil, you know? And so your child is going to catch that evil eye.”

 

My informant also told me a bit about the steps that mothers would take to protect their babies against the evil eye, other than just staying away from potentially jealous people.

 

“Babies will sometimes have black dots on their foreheads to protect them from the evil eye. I guess it’s just symbolic of evil, like evil is black. You [also] always have this silver bracelet with black beads; I’m pretty sure my mom still has all three of ours. Because like, you wear it for a long time, until you’re older. Because I guess as an infant, you’re more vulnerable to the evil eye because you’re younger.”

 

In conclusion this interview, my informant expressed uncertainty as to whether her sister was affected by a spirit or simply rattled from leaving home for a prolonged period of time.


“I don’t know if it was actually a ghost or if she was just like being weird, but she was acting really weird and spooked me out too. There’s so many things; it could’ve been like we’re home now and she’s calmer; we had been gone a while. Or it could’ve been like the ghost left her on the plane or something. But yeah, she was back to normal when we got back home.”

A Figure in the Night

Nationality: Chinese & Vietnamese
Age: 20
Occupation: student
Residence: Boston, Massechusetts
Performance Date: 4/1/17
Primary Language: English

“When I was 12 or 13, one night I woke up to go the bathroom around 2 or 3 morning- you know, the witching hour. I cam back to bed, and was still fully awake- it usually takes me a little bit to go back to bed. I was alert. I was looking out my open doorway, which was lit only by the light of the nightlight in my bathroom coming out into the hall. Then I saw a figure walk out of one room, past my door, and into the next room. And it wasn’t, like, a dark, shadowy figure- it was very clearly a person, a person-shape. It wasn’t dark either, it was fair- more white and washed out than how an actual person would look in the dark. It looked white, and it was wearing some sort of clothes- nothing specific. I didn’t know what I saw at first, but my entire body just froze. I had never been so scared in my life. I just froze in my bed, and eventually was able to fall back asleep.”

My friend who told me this story also told me a lot about her mom’s beliefs, and it was interesting to hear them, and also see how they affected her own personal beliefs. Her mom is Chinese, but grew up in Vietnam. She is a strong believer in the supernatural, as well as the many superstitions that are common in her culture. One thing that I found particularly interesting is that her mom believes all young children can see ghosts up until a certain age, because they are still in the liminal early stages of life. Her superstitions were also interesting, a couple being that owls are an omen for death, and that if a cat jumps over a body at a funeral the body would sit up straight in its coffin. That latter one amused my friend who told me, and said she had asked her mom if she had ever experienced it, to which she replied that she hadn’t but didn’t want to take any chances by having cats at a funeral. It seemed like her mother’s, and grandmother’s as well, pronounced belief in ghosts actually caused her to be more skeptical for a while, not believing all the crazy stories they told her. However as she got older, and experienced the story she told me, as well as others, she began to accept it. She said that now she still doesn’t know if she believes some of the more out-there stories her mom has told her, or the superstitions. It was interesting to see the affect of prevalent ghost belief at home on someone who grew up in America (in Boston, Mass).

The Haunted Third Floor

Nationality: Japanese & Chinese
Age: 20
Occupation: student
Residence: Hawaii
Performance Date: 3/30
Primary Language: English
Language: Japanese

“When I was in 5th grade, the school that I went to was really old. It was founded in 1841 and had a long history, and a lot of ghost stories. This one building that used to be dormitories, the third floor of it was supposed to be really haunted. My class was on the 2nd floor, but we could charge our laptops in this one room on the 3rd floor. It was always locked since people’s laptops were in there. One day we went up there to put our laptops away, but our teacher forgot to come meet us and unlock the door. So we were standing in the hallway and there wasn’t anyone inside the room. But then the doorknob to the room started shaking a lot. At first we thought someone was in there, but then we realized no one would be in there if it was locked. We got really freaked out and went and got the teacher, and went back up with her. She opened the locked room and no one was in there. It was eerie”

My roommate told me this story about her school back in Hawaii. She does believe in ghosts, so she obviously thinks that is what the cause was. It is interesting to hear this, as it is not such an overt siting, so someone more skeptical on the subject would probably write it off as nothing. While collecting this story from her, we began to talk about Hawaiian ghosts and how they relates to their culture. She said that ghost belief is very prevalent in Hawaii- more so than the rest of America- and intertwined with the native culture. She observed that Hawaii has had a large influence from Asian immigrants from many different countries, especially Japan, which has a more pronounced belief in ghosts. Since she is of Japanese and Chinese descent, we talked about how those cultures have also influenced her beliefs and led her to be more open-minded to ghost belief.