Category Archives: Legends

Narratives about belief.

“The Lady In Black” Ghost Story

Main Piece

Informant CH recalls hearing a story from her Mom about “The Lady in Black,” a ghost who dwells on George’s Island in the Boston Harbor.

As told by CH, the Lady in Black was wrongfully convicted for a murder she didn’t commit, and hung on prison grounds. She now haunts these grounds, wailing. Prisoners have heard a woman’s cries in the prison, but there wasn’t anyone there.

The Lady in Black was “not a real person” (in terms of corporealness), and “couldn’t physically interact with anything,” and seemed “bound” to the site of the prison. Hearing her cries startled prisoners, and CH recalls that the legend of the Lady in Black is well-recorded and published in regional folklore. While discussing it, CH was unsure of more specific details and mentioned that I should look up further details, as she’s uncertain if her memory of the story aligns with the published materials.

Interpretation

Informant’s Interpretation: CH sees the story of the Lady in Black as a reminder of the wartime history of Boston Harbor. She also believes that the abundance of stories about Boston Harbor–particularly pertaining to ghosts–has to do with a permeating regional desire to “figure out what happened” and have an accurate understanding of history that’s still so well represented and physically present.

Personal Interpretation: I drew similarities between CH’s story of the Lady in Black to the Irish banshee, a wailing woman who acts as a harbinger of death. Being that the Lady in Black was particularly noted to be heard by prisoners and a victim of a wrongful hanging, I felt her association with death was particularly strong. This seems representative of a place (particularly a prison with heavily militaristic history) that has a great deal of death associated with it. Thus, I felt the haunting and its nature to be deeply tied to the literal and physical history of the island.

Background

Informant CH is a current student at USC pursuing a degree in Theatre. She grew up in Hull, Massachusetts, and noted that her Mom grew up in the same town and the “islands have been her life.” CH heard this story from her, and thinks it likely came up because she mentioned thinking she’d seen a ghost when she was young (elementary to early middle school), and her parents responded by telling her about the Lady in Black. CH notes that due to this story and other personal experiences, she believes in ghosts, as do her parents.

CH is white and of European descent (primarily Irish), and is female-presenting.

Haunted Bookstore in CA

Main Piece

Informant SF tells of their favorite recycled bookstore in downtown Campbell, CA. They associate it with being “full of old things,” and their family believes it to be haunted.

This specific familial legend comes from a time SF, her mother, and grandfather were all shopping at the story together when SF was about 16. Their grandpa, who believes in ghosts, “swore he saw a book fall off the shelf,” and when questioned by SF about the event, their Mom backed him up and affirmed she believed the store to be haunted.

As they had this discussion just outside of the store, all three began smelling cigarette smoke despite the fact that “no one was smoking.” They looked around and waited a while, but continued to smell it without finding a source. SF’s Mom and Grandpa both pointed to this as evidence for the bookstore being haunted, and they “never found out if someone was smoking.”

SF notes that she doesn’t know if she believes in ghosts, but if she did this is one she’d believe in, particularly because the store is “full of things people used to own.” They also found it odd that their Mom leaned into affirming that the place was haunted, as she “doesn’t really say that” about other places.

Interpretation

Informant’s Interpretation: SF attributes her family’s delineation of the space as haunted primarily to its status as a recycled bookstore. She notes that she believes haunting legends are much more common around/associated with items that have been owned by many people and have an unclear history.

Personal Interpretation: I agree with the interpretation above, and add that the impossibility of finding out the history of items / untraceable origins creates a stronger premise for ghost stories to arise. “Nobody really knows” is much more intrigue-invoking than a clear-cut explanation. I also found SF’s story to be indicative of how familial belief frequently strongly influences personal belief–SF noted she was more inclined to believe the space was haunted because she “believes what [her] family says.”

Background

Informant SF is a current student at USC pursuing a degree in Cinema and Media Studies. They grew up in San Jose, CA, and are very close with their parents, sisters, and grandparents. SF is white and Latine.

The Chief and the Singer

Main Piece

“It must’ve been before I was in 5th grade — over the course of a few nights, my dad told a story to me, my brother, and my sister. In hindsight, it was very obviously something completely made up on the spot, but I think we were too young to realize.

Back home — ‘home’ referencing Nigeria, where my dad is from — there was an evil village chief. He was a vicious conqueror that took people’s lands, stole from the poor, and amassed a massive amount of wealth. Accordingly, his house was gigantic, and sat on a huge plot of land. One day, the chief captured a princess.”

(Informant MN then noted that he forgot if there was a reason the chief captured the princess, and assumes the story had minimal exposition).

“The chief held the princess in another building on his property. He planned to have her killed the next day. That night, the king was in his bed when he heard the sound of someone singing. He was confused, unsure of where the sound could be coming from, but soon realized the sound was coming from the princess’ cell. While he usually would have put a stop to it, the king instead decided to listen to the song. In fact, he was so taken aback by her voice that when the next day came, he decided to delay the execution until the next morning.

Night falls, and the voice returns. The king, again, is obsessed with her voice–rizz god!–and the next day, delays the execution even further.

This goes on for a while, and to be honest, the details fall away past that point. I think the king ends up marrying the woman, and there’s a sort of ‘happily-ever-after’ ending.”

Interpretation

Informant Interpretation: MN notes that “Nigerian parents do this thing where they tell you nothing about their childhood” and have “no photos of their upbringing,” especially as it pertains to things that happened while they lived in Nigeria. Thus, “you end up forming this fantasy-like [imagination] of what home was like for them,” and stories like this “feed into the fantastical imagery I have of that time and place. As roughly patched-together and made up as that story is, it’s as real as most of the made-up details about my dad’s confusing ass life that I call true.”

Personal Interpretation: I drew connections between this story and “One Thousand and One Nights”–an anthology frame tale that I don’t know well, but I recall contains a similar story about a brutal king and a storyteller woman, who he permits to live night by night as she tells him stories. To me, MN’s story read as an oicotypical variation of this concept, underscored by the fact that he changed between referring to one of the primary figures as “chief” and “king,” and the other as “princess,” “singer,” and sometimes just “woman” (though some of these changes may be attributable to memory). I also think MN’s personal connection to the story, belief that it was entirely made up by his father, and its role in shaping his childhood understanding of Nigeria makes the story feel like more than a tale to me–not a myth as it’s not something he claimed to believe in, but something that shapes his beliefs about a place in the real world. In that sense, it felt somewhere in the gray area between tale and legend.

Background

Informant MN is a current student at USC studying Aerospace Engineering. He grew up in Redmond, Washington and lives at home with his siblings and Mom. He notes that this story was told to him a long time ago, and he has some “amount of amnesia about the particular details of [his] childhood.”

MN is Nigerian and male-presenting.

The Woman In The Corner – Ghost Story

Main Piece

Informant KO recalled a memorate from when she was in middle school after moving with her family to a new home. While renovations were being performed on the home, she and her family found a number of strange things: “a child’s train tracks, a weird oil permit…a picture of this woman in the wall.”

KO and her family started asking and telling each other stories about who this woman in the portrait might be: “What if she was someone’s mistress? What if she was murdered? [My family and I] went to all the dark stuff first.”

One night, while asleep in her bedroom, KO randomly woke up in the middle of the night – unusual for her – and recalls that it was either exactly 3 or 3:30am. She looked towards the corner of her room and saw the woman standing there “in a long white dress, with long black hair.”

She recalls that she was very tired and more nervous than afraid at the time, and “hoped she’d go away if [she] just hid,” so she pulled the covers over her head and tried to go back to sleep. When she woke up in the morning, the woman in the corner was gone.

KO told her parents and a few friends about the experience. When told, her Mom said that she’d been “hearing footsteps down the hallway” but didn’t want to say anything and scare KO’s little sister.

KO and her family have been living in the house ever since, but KO has never seen the woman again. She questions whether the experience was just a dream.

Interpretation

Informant’s Interpretation: KO, as stated, questions whether the whole affair was just a dream and thinks her “brain was primed to see a ghost” because of what had been found in the house and her mom’s observations. She finds it to be a classic example of thinking you may have seen a ghost, and key to her uncertainty about ghosts’ existence.

Personal Interpretation: I see this story and experience as reactive to and inclusive of the environment it takes place in, similar to many ghost stories. The context of moving, renovation (altering the old), and being confronted with unknown pieces of physical history set the stage to wonder and consider who lived in this house beforehand, and speaks to a human curiosity towards trying to understand the unknown. I also feel that this experience seems like it sticks out in KO’s memory so prominently because of the age she was when it took place–at a time when kids are starting to process their own place in the world and sort out what is real from what is, an personal experience with one of these unknowns holds a great impact. The actual appearance in the corner being a woman wearing a long white dress evoked wedding-esque symbolism to me, and I can recall many ghost stories focused on brides / the marriage status of a woman, particularly in relation to death and household spirits.

Background

Informant KO is a current student at USC pursuing a degree in Narrative Studies from Seattle, Washington. Her family (mom, dad, younger sister) still lives in the house noted in the story. KO remains unsure whether she believes in ghosts, but thinks of this as a key part of her belief that they “maybe” exist.

KO is white and of Canadian and Swedish descent, and is female-presenting.

Kitchen Ghost

Nationality: American

Age: 59

Primary Language: English

Residence: San Antonio, Texas

Text

“Here’s my ghost story. It’s really nothing earth shattering and it’s quite short. But a few years ago when Mom was away and all three of you were with her… I can’t remember where y’all were, but you were out of town and I was home by myself for about three days. Maybe you guys were at the cabin, and I think I had to come back for some work stuff. Anyway, I was living life as normal and one night when I was sitting in the big leather chair by the windows in our living room with the TV on, just vegging and looking at my phone – I think I was looking at Facebook posts – I was deep in thought reading posts and looking at my phone and someone walked out of our master bedroom. It was a woman. She said ‘hey’ as she walked to the kitchen. I replied ‘hey’ and kept looking at my phone. I think subconsciously I was just in the mode of being at home when everyone is at home, and I think subconsciously I just assumed it was your mom. Anyway, I just kept looking at my phone for a couple minutes and then the same person walked back into the master bedroom and said ‘hey’… I replied ‘hey’. That’s when I broke out of my Facebook trance and thought to myself, Uhhh, wait… what?! I realized there was nobody home, yet I just replied to someone twice. So I got up and very cautiously went into the bedroom and then into the master bathroom, and there was no one there. Very freaky. I’ve often wondered if I just imagined the entire thing, but it seemed so real. Real enough that I vocally did say the word ‘hey’ twice. That’s it! That’s the whole story.”

Context

This informant is my father, and his ghost story takes place in my childhood home.

Analysis

In class (and readings), we’ve discussed ghosts as representations of family and ownership, and I believe this is one of those instances. My family and I are all very close, and we’ve lived in my childhood home for 15 years now. My father is so used to seeing me, my mom, my brother, and my sister around the house, he didn’t think twice when he heard someone say “hey”, even when none of us were in the house with him. Regardless of whether or not the ghost actually existed, I believe my father’s perception of this “kitchen ghost” was an outward expression of his comfortability with the establishment of our house and household. In the absence of me and the rest of my family, his perception of the ghost “filled in the gaps”.