Category Archives: Digital

Late Night Newspaper Room Ghost

Age: 58

Location: Boston, MA (Tufts University)

Text:
“when I was in college, I worked for the student newspaper, and I pulled a ton of all-nighters. I was always in that newspaper office at like 2 or 3 a.m., laying out pages, fixing articles, doing all the last-minute formatting before everything went to print. At that hour the building was basically dead. There were never really any students, no professors. Most of the time it was just me and maybe a few others from the school paper.

One night I was alone in the office working, and I heard this knocking on the door. I got up and opened the door but nobody was there. The whole hallway was silent. I didn’t really think much of it though I thought it was a bit creepy. I figured maybe someone was messing around or walking by, so I went back to work. But about twenty minutes later, the same knocking happened again. Again, I opened the door and there was nothing there.

At this point I was still trying to stay focused, but I was definitely getting freaked out. Then, sometime around four in the morning, it happened a third time. Same knocks. Same pace. Like someone was trying to get my attention on purpose. Now i was scared.

This time I didn’t open the door. I figured that if whatever it was was trying to play tricks on me, then then now would be the time that there was finally something there. So I didn’t answer it. But then it knocked again. So I got up and opened the door. There was still nothing there!

After the fourth time it never happened again. Ever. No explanation, no ending, no clue what was going on. Just knocks in the middle of the night that stopped as suddenly as they started. It was weird. Part of me thinks it was just someone messing with me. But that room could’ve been haunted”

Context:

This memorate was told to the informant by their father, who experienced repeated unexplained knocking while working alone in his college newspaper office late at night during production deadlines.

Analysis:

This memorate fits perfectly into campus ghost lore, where late-night workspaces become settings for strange and unexplained events. The repeated knocking creates a sense of intentional but invisible presence. What gives the story its power is the lack of resolution: no culprit, no explanation, just unexplained knocks that never returned. The mystery itself becomes the haunting, turning an ordinary college office into a space marked by unease and unanswered questions.

Maybe a ghost on internet?

Age: 28

Informant: Last year, in December, I was talking with someone online who seemed to have a strange sense of humor and way of speaking that made our conversation difficult and confusing. That person was mainly sharing philosophical thoughts, which seemed too much, as every word and topic would be followed by unclear and irritating sentences. He talked about death often as well, and luckily or unfortunately, I do not remember the details. Thus, we have been talking and even fighting for hours through these messages. The next day I woke up and learnt that one of my relatives had died. It was very unexpected, because even though that person was old, he was strong, full of life, and energetic. For some reason, I saw a strange connection between the conversations I had and his death because later I was told the hour his heart stopped at, and that is exactly when we were talking with this person without any plans of ever speaking again. The death of my relative made a huge psychological impact, and for weeks, I was falling out of life and was in a vulnerable emotional state. In February, almost two months later, I accidentally found the same person again. I remember telling him about everything that happened during the first two months and how I connected that death with our conversation. I remember him telling me that he is sick and needs to leave, and I was so deeply immersed in my emotions that I kept saying to him, “No, you will answer all my questions, and help me, and then you can go. It started with you, it will end with you.” It was half a joke, as the person could obviously just stop writing and leave, but still talked to me until I received all the answers that I thought would help me feel better.
It worked, and I started getting back to my normal life after our second and probably last conversation. While this experience is mainly about how I perceived this situation, connecting our communication with the death incident and mentally ending the suffering of grief that stopped me from moving on with my life, I still find it to be a strange coincidence with the timing of meeting the same person twice, with the topics we discussed that left an unusual feeling, and then such an important life event occurred and then ended like it had any power over the situation. And while telling this story, my bag fell down from the place where it had been for hours.

Context: The informant told this story to me through voice recording.

Informant thoughts: The informant does not believe in ghost and folklore, but did feel a little surprised or spooked with the coincidences in this particular event.

My analysis: While it does seem far fetched that a stranger, ghost or not ghost, could have some power over affecting people’s death and emotions. I think if we are to look at this story through the possibility of internet ghost, this story becomes very interesting. Assuming this encounter with this stranger online was in fact a ghost encounter, this fits the narrative or at least the idea of trans-humanism: Where one’s soul or mind can be uploaded, trapped within the digital space. This might also explain why this particular internet stranger is so fond of death. What might have happened could be that the ghost was angered and possibly brought misfortunate upon the informant, but after they made peace again, the ghost seems to have the power to help the informant to go on back to life.

Gacha Gaming Luck Rituals

The Informant

CM is a long-time gacha player who players multiple different gacha games and stays up to date in the community news of gacha games he doesn’t even play. The informant admits to doing one of the following rituals in the past, having played the game genre since he was 13.

The Text

“Gacha” games are a from of video games that involve a “gacha” element, deriving from the Japanese toy-capsule vending machines of gachapon, in which rewards are drawn through lottery as a monetization system. As a very luck-based system, it lends itself to superstitions and magical rituals, particularly when players are investing their in-game resources into “pulling” for gacha. Most gacha games tend to sell particularly desireable limited characters or equipment, and the lottery mechanic incentivizes players to quite literally perform summoning rituals to “pull” the right character or equipment.

According to the informant, there are two big ways to perform a luck ritual in gacha community. In the past, one method was to change your social media profile picture (Discord, X, etc.) to the target character before you pulled for them. Other people draw summoning circles, placing the phone in the middle of the diagram with merch on the periphery. Some people would assemble entire shrines in dedication of the target character before they roll. The informant recalls an episode where a particular player put their phone into a circle of salt to keep away bad luck before rolling.

In Grand Blue Fantasy, a particular gacha game, the most incentivized way to pull would be to pull 300 pulls at once for an incentivized reward, and you must play a song, like related to the target character, on loop as the game rolls through the 300 pulls. If the player ever repeats a song used for a previous character, the rolls would be atrocious, from an anecdote. The informant also recounts a method where the player would go to a specific location important to the target character or have related characters active in the party while pulling for the character.

Analysis

What I find most interesting about this ritual is the homeopathic nature of summoning for a fictional character, as described by Frazer’s sympathetic magic, despite the target of the homeopathic connection being completely fictional. This operates off the belief that the target character will be bound to other characters, locations, and merchandise that have a connection to them. Setting one’s public profile picture also morphs the player’s cyborg identity to be closer to that of the character, again evoking a homeopathic bond. Because the user’s are invested in the characters and want them to “come home” to their account, they will perform rituals to improve their odds, especially as losing to the lottery odds can be quite costly to an account, forcing the player to either pay for more rolls or miss out on the character. As many gacha games sell their characters through story, the narratives the players experienced with the target character also incentivizes their investment on pulling for the target character, going as far as to perform rituals to better their luck when rolling.

Slender Man

Nationality: Korean- American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Language: English

Text: I watched a youtube video in the fourth grade, with some of my friends, that described the lore behind Slender Man. I didn’t really believe in his existence, but I would be lying if I said I wasn’t afraid of the possibility of him being real. I used to live in a densely forested area, and walking back from my friend’s home at night, during the peak of the distribution of Slender Man information, I would always run to avoid any possible encounters with this entity. Its not even that I saw him, or a figure resembling it at all, I was just worried at the possibility. When the trend of talking about slender man died down, though, I found myself not being fearful.

Context: Informant first became exposed to the idea of Slender Man in the fourth grade. They describe that it was a sort of “trend” to be knowledgable or discuss the figure at school and amongst friends. The informant believes that The Slender Man’s ability to scare the younger populations is what lead to its prevalence in the community. Informant believes that The Slender Man legend had the ability to create unity within younger populations through a collective fear.

Analysis: I find the contemporary legend of Slender Man to be very critical to understanding the interaction between folklore and the internet. It is undeniable that the propagation of his lore was attributed to social media, and many agree that his origin point was the web. Though he originated on a digital platform, he quickly took on the qualities of traditional folklore. He began to spread by means of oral tradition, and his stable presence proves that, even with technology, folklore continues to prosper.

🐝 + 🍯 = “Be Honey” → “Be Happy”

Age: 20

Date: 02/22/2025

Language: English

Nationality: Singaporean

Occupation: Student

Primary Language: English

Residence: United States

Text:🐝 + 🍯 = “Be Honey” → “Be Happy”

Growing up, I remember seeing rebuses in kids’ books and classroom activities, and they always felt like a game. They made learning words exciting because instead of just memorizing letters, you had to decode the meaning through pictures. But rebuses aren’t just for kids—they’ve stuck around in all kinds of ways. You can find them in logos, ads, and even internet memes, where visuals and text blend together to say something clever in a way that’s quick and eye-catching.

At their core, rebuses show how creative language can be. They prove that communication isn’t just about words—it’s about how we interpret meaning from symbols, sounds, and context. Even though they come from ancient times, they still feel fresh and modern, which is probably why we keep using them. They tap into something universal: the joy of figuring things out.