Category Archives: Narrative

College Ghosts

Age: 19

Date: 12/3/24

Language: English

Collector’s Name: Lia

Nationality: American

Occupation: Student

Primary Language: English

Residence: United States

Subject: I haven’t personally experienced any ghost stories myself, but there is a story in my dorm about some freshmen with spirits. Would that work?

Interviewer: Definitely. Could you tell me a little about it?

Subject: Sure. Okay, in August of the 90s, three freshman guys were roommates. Two of the guys were trying to join a fraternity, and the last roommate was a little bit different from the other two. Let’s call him Jake. Jake spent a lot of time in his room alone, was not that conversational, and secluded himself from the other roommates. One night, Jake randomly invited the other two roommates to partake in a haunted ritual to connect with spirits. The roommates were excited that Jake might finally begin to open up, so they agreed. 

Interviewer: Wait, so there wasn’t any sort of hesitation from either of the roommates about a haunted ritual they are only just hearing about? 

Subject: No, not at all, really. They are teenage boys who likely felt invincible and thought the whole thing wasn’t real. Jake started telling them about how to perform the ritual, which needed to take place in the haunted dorm room of the college. The three roommates walked over to this room that nobody stays in anymore, and messed with the lock to get in. Jake instructed them on how to begin the ritual, where each person would stand in one corner of the room with their eyes closed, leaving one corner of the room vacant. In increments, all of the boys would switch corners. They repeated this process on Jake’s command until being told to abruptly stop. Jake told them all to slowly open their eyes and shift their heads to the vacant corner. They all did as he instructed, and in the corner was a boy, one that looked just about their age. He was a little bit translucent, and his eyes had been scratched out from their sockets. There was dried blood all over his hands. The most notable thing about him, they say, is just how silent he was. His presence could take noise away from anything around him and leave this empty silence. Until he began to scream. He screamed the loudest any of the boys had ever heard, and all of the roommates covered their ears with their hands. He continued to scream with his piercing, angry voice and then started to walk towards the roommates. Immediately they all ran out of the room, closing it behind them. They returned to their dorm, trying to find somewhere that felt safer. They locked themselves inside of their room and sat down trying to catch their breath. Slowly, one another looked at each other, noticing that each of their eyes had scratches around it, and were slowly starting to swell. 

Interviewer: Did anyone else in the dorm building hear any of this?

Subject: It is a very well-known story, but that night nobody but the three roommates heard anything. Now, people who have a dorm room near the haunted one claim that every once and a while they will hear screams through their wall, but only one room can hear it at a time. Nobody really knows who that boy is, or what his story is. 

Family Comfort

Collector’s Name: Aarushi Kumar

Nationality: Indian

Relationship: Mother 

Occupation: Employed

Performance Date: November 30, 2024

Age: 53

Primary Language: Hindi

Context: When talking about ghost stories with another subject, K willingly chimed in with her story. To maintain confidentiality, names and adjectives suggesting relations to the interviewer have been removed. This recollection has been transcribed from the interviewee’s native language, Hindi, to English. 

A.K is the interviewer, K is the interviewee

Transcription: 

[A.K] Do you see any of your loved ones who have passed away in your dreams?

[K] I have very vivid dreams, yes. I see “Daadi” (the subject’s mother-in-law) more than [her husband] does– he never sees her, but I do. 

[A.K] And what is she doing?

[K] Oh, she’s always doing what she did before she died. Cooking food, sitting at the dining table, chatting on the phone. It’s like she never left.

[K] I often see my mom in my dreams. She appears usually, uh, after big events, like when I got into the car crash– the one by the stop sign– and she’s always there to give me advice. She never speaks- she normally gives me, like, a nod or a smile from the corner [of the room], but that- that is her way of saying what she needs to say. Like when I got married– I did not want to get married at all. I really didn’t! I argued so much with [her father]. But, the night before the wedding, I saw my mother in my dreams with a reassuring smile. That’s how I knew I would be okay, and only then did I feel ready to marry. 

The Subject’s Thoughts: 

[A.K] Why do you think you see her so vividly and only in crucial moments of your life?

[K] She is watching over me. I think she is resting peacefully, but she died so young. She didn’t get to raise her children properly, and I think that is what makes her reappear in my dreams. She wants to raise me, so she.. I think she does it in the afterlife by showing up in my dreams.

My Thoughts: 

K’s story demonstrates a very heartwarming instance of an ancestral ghost story. 

It’s common for people to see their loved ones in their dreams, and, like in K’s story, they often are there to provide some sort of reassurance. For K, her mother appears to her in very anxious moments of her life, and K always feels calmer and more in charge after her appearance. Often, as an adult, there are fewer sources of comfort for people to turn to because you are usually emotionally and physically farther away from your birth family, and this is the case for K as well. Having her mother make appearances, therefore, is very important to K because it’s one of the only times when she can feel not alone. This is especially important to note for K’s instance because K immigrated to the United States and away from her family 3 decades ago. She has been very isolated from her birth family due to this, so these appearances by her deceased mother help bridge the distance between her childhood and her adulthood. 

It is also important to note the cultural background of this story. K had an arranged marriage, a custom that was very standard at the time in India, and her reluctance to get married makes more sense in this context. She would have rather stayed in India with her birth family, but the marriage opened the door to a new family and, soon after, a new home across the globe. Although she is very happy with her life now, K describes how she always misses home. Seeing her mother in her dreams is a way to go back home without physically going back, adding to why it is so comforting for K.

Haunted Houghton Mill of St. Ives

After asking my dad for some ghost stories of his childhood he remembered this specific one that he heard in primary school (elementary). It was based in his small village where he grew up, outside of Cambridge called St. Ives. It was based on a thousand year old Houghton Mill that was seen as a monument and preserved as a historic sight. The ghost story is a spooky story that the older kids would tell the younger kids on the bus to scare them and be funny. Haunting the kids, there was a sense of shaken up when walking past the mill in town.

GP “There was a story of the ladies who would mend the sacks for storing flour or grain at the Houghton Mill in Cambridgeshire, UK. It was a type of local legend that was passed down from the kids of the town to scare them into staying away from the watermill that was on the River Great Ouse, it was such a crucial hub for primarily grinding grain. The legend was based on the tasks of mending sacks and these women supposedly fell into the mill pond that powered the millwheel, they drowned and died. The reason they fell into the water was unclear and never confirmed but it was assumed that the women could have been caught off balance when they were working around the edge or a mishap on the structure. The story continues around the town that the mill is haunted by their spirits, and apparently the visitors and locals have heard some ghostly sounds around the mill and felt some eerie sensations like a ghost was present near the millpond. Being told this story in primary school led to my friends and I steering clear of the mill.”

Analyzing this haunted tale, I felt as though the idea of the ghosts presence is wildly seen through eerie feelings near the place of death or hearing sort of ghostly noises that would represent the souls that have died is such a common functionality of spirits reappearing in the real world. Hearing this story made me realize that ghost stories are passed down through ages and are told with a purpose, it was told to my dad in primary school from the older kids which would try to scare them into running past the old mill in town.

The Piper Piping

Speaking to my mother about ghosts and tales in Ireland led to one significant story that stood out to her as a child when she would visit the nearby school in Co. Donegal to play Irish football, better known as gaelic. The town Ballintra was renowned for the Pullan Caves on the Brown Hall Demesne estate. This story was passed down throughout the years to scare away the kids from intruding on the Brownhall House, my Mom’s older brothers would tell her and her sister these spooky stories to frighten them whenever they would travel down to Ballintra. My mom took this haunted legend seriously as a child and then later grew out of it which later led to less and less visits to the town Ballintra as she got older. 

GP “We would travel down to the Ballintra football pitch to either watch my brothers games or for my sisters and I’s games, the pitch was just on the outer parts of the Brown Hall Demesne forest. This forest had the Brown Hall house that had many caves in it and they were known as the Pullin Caves. The story started with a group of traveling pipers that went around Ireland from pub to pub performing gigs most nights, and one of their stops was in the town pub of Ballintra so they stayed in the Brown Hall house. The next morning after their gig one of the pipers went on a walk and wandered into one of the caves, he had his pipe and started playing it which made a very large echo that the rest of his piping band heard but it suddenly stopped. The piper that walked into the cave walked too far and never came back, he was named dead after being missing for so long. The last memory of him was the sound of his pipe, which lingered ever since he died in the cave. As time went on, the cave would make sounds of the pipe echoing and would happen more frequently on nights of full moons; it was the sound of the ghost of the piper trying to find his way out. The cave was then named the Piper’s Hole and everyone stays well away from the Pullin caves of Brown Hall Demesne but especially the Piper’s hole.”

After hearing this story and being able to connect with it on more of a deeper level, I realized that Ireland has many spooky traits to it due to the history that lies beneath the architecture and nature all around. Having visited Ballintra plenty of times, I noticed that the town is much more grim as some others stemming from the lack of lively-ness and having such a bland main street. Leading this ghost story to fit right into the town’s persona. Highlighting the functionality of music in ghost stories as well caught my attention, the idea of spirits playing an instrument that would represent their presence.

Water Ghost

AGE: 56
Date_of_performance: November 27, 2024
Informant Name: Jongsoo Park
Language: Korean
Collector’s name: Sunghun Park
Nationality: South Korean
Occupation: Businessman
Primary Language: Korean
Other language: English
Residence: Busan, South Korea

Main description:

JP: It was 27 years ago when I was serving in the military in Gangwon Province. Then, a serious rainy season came for a while. I thought that this rainy season would reduce work because it was early on my duty at that time. 

However, with a lot of serious rain, I started to have more things to do. There were even floods and casualties. My unit started to help local firefighters and help restore small villages. The first thing I had to do was find the missing person. While traveling with Sergeant Park on a boat, I found what appeared to be a human head among the reeds. But Sergeant Park kept saying no, in an uncharacteristically hard-line manner. 

Later, when I told the other firefighters about this, one of them asked where it was. The next day, the firefighter who asked where he was went missing during a search operation. In the midst of shock, Sergeant Park kept muttering that the body in the water could not stand upright, and that it could be a ‘water ghost’ who wanted to ascend by making another victim when he got close. After a few days, the village recovered normally, but the firefighter was not found. Years later, the area still experiences strange drowning once in a while. Even today, the incident and something in the water keep popping up in my mind every time I visit again. 

INFORMANT’S OPINION:

MP: Do you think the weird thing you witnessed during the finding missing person process was really a water ghost or do you think there’s a more substantial explanation?

JP: I’ve been thinking since it happened that it really was a water ghost. Given what I saw and the firefighter’s disappearance since I brought it up, I don’t think those two things can happen by accident. And even the Sergeant Park’s claim about the water ghost, I think what I saw that day was really a water ghost and why the firefighter who was going to check it went missing. 

PERSONAL INTERPRETATION: 

The story is deeply related to the ‘water ghost’ that has been discussed a lot since ancient times in Korea. These events, such as seeing a head among reeds, the disappearance of a firefighter, and the warning of Sergeant Park, are other supernatural phenomena that JP cannot understand. The core of many ghost stories is the soul trapped in a certain place for a certain reason, and repeated drownings in this area might be the proof of this. The story as a whole really suggests that JP has witnessed supernatural warnings linked to the local faith.