Category Archives: Narrative

Boston Tour Ghost

Age: 49

In the spring of the year 2000, I was on tour with my band Del Rey, alongside our friends’ band, Planes Mistaken for Stars, all up and down the east coast for a few weeks. And on this tour, we had a show one night at this place called the Middle East in Boston. We do the usual, we both play our sets, great show, hang out afterwards. The night gets, you know, a little bit later, and it’s time to head out and find a place to crash. We usually all get hotel rooms together, or, you know, crash in somebody’s house on couches and sleeping bags or wherever we can. This particular night, me and one of the guys from the other band, Jamie, uh, were also friends with another guy who was an old roommate of ours back in Chicago, who now lived in Boston and wanted he and I to come stay at his house and like hang and catch up or whatever in a non-punk rock show venue. So after the show, Jamie and I get in the car with our old friend, his name’s Jody, and go to stay at the apartment that he’s now living in in a neighborhood in Boston. As we get to his apartment, this is late at night. Uh, it’s a really old neighborhood in Boston, and the apartment buildings that are on the street all look very, very old, probably like they were originally built in sometime in the late 1700s. So we go up to this, uh, upstairs apartment in this old building, and we’re getting ready to just hang and chat a little bit before we crash. We’re all kind of hanging out in his room, listening to music, talking, smoking cigarettes. And he tells us about all the weird things that have been happening in his apartment. He’s telling us about a picture in the hallway that consistently falls off the wall and onto the floor, in the middle of the night. He’s telling us how this happens on a regular basis. It’s every other night this happens and only at night. And how every time he puts it back on there, he checks the nail, he checks the picture, it’s not too heavy, it’s sturdy, it’s solid. There’s nothing about this picture that should be falling off the wall. Yet it continues to happen. He goes on to explain that other weird things have been happening in this apartment. Things are left in one place but then found randomly in another spot that he knows he didn’t move them to. Things go missing. He hears weird noises, he hears weird voices. Uh, daytime, nighttime, uh, doors open and shut. He kind of continues just telling us about, you know, this list of weird sort of odd happenings in this apartment that he notices are just really regular and starting to creep him out. About two to three minutes after he finishes telling us about these things that are going on in the apartment, something happens. So, we’re sitting in his room, where he’s telling us these stories about the things happening in his apartment. We’re listening to music on a stereo. The door is completely shut, and it shut all the way to where it’s latched inside the strike plate inside of the doorway, whatever you call it. So, it’s caught, so you can’t just push the door open. So, as we’re sitting there, a couple minutes after he finishes telling us this, the doorknob turns, unlatches, opens the door slowly as we all watch it. The three of us each saw that doorknob turn, unlatch and open inward. About the exact same time as that’s happening, the stereo receiver dial, the volume dial, turns itself down all the way to off, which we all also saw in unison. So, these two events happened right before our eyes, and right after he had just finished explaining, all of the weird, creepy, ghostly things that have been happening in this apartment. So we flipped like every light on, run out into the main living room area, kind of just look at each other in shock and disbelief, and awe, and, you know, made sure we all we saw what we saw there, right? So, after a little while, we had to kind of calm down, sort of try to laugh it off or whatever. We had to get some sleep because we had to get up and get off to the next city the next morning. But that’s one, uh that I’ll never forget and it’s uh, I guess a story that all three of us will remember for the rest of our lives.

Context: When is this story told? To whom? Where does it take place? 

The story is told on Tuesday, April 28, 2026 to me by Michael. The story actually takes place in Boston, Massachusetts in the spring of 2000.

Their thoughts: What does the teller think of the story?

Michael mentions that this story still sticks with him to this day and I think he likes re-telling the story because it seems to have really had an impact on him. He also mentions that he has had conversations with the same people who had this experience with him multiple times over the years. As someone who has previously said has a good number of ghostly or creepy stories, he chose this particular one based on his feeling that it was one of the more memorable as well as creepy experiences in his life. 

Your thoughts: what do you think of the story?

I think this story is interesting because it seems to be related to this old late 1700s apartment building in Boston, and hints at something ghostly that could possibly have been happening for over 200 years in this place. I also like that there were three people all experiencing the same odd events simultaneously. I think that might make it more compelling, and even creepier. I also found it interesting that the two ghostly experiences that happened, the door opening and the stereo volume being turned down, both happened after his friend just finished telling them about all the other haunted and ghostly types of things happening in the apartment.

THE HAUNTED TAHOE CASINO

Age: 50

In this story, I interviewed my mother’s friend about an experience she had at this haunted hotel/casino in Tahoe. The following is her story told in first-person.

Interviewee: “Several years ago, 2018, I saw something on Facebook that they were going to have a paranormal investigation at the Biltmore Hotel in Lake Tahoe. [My husband] and I have gone on lots of haunted tours and stuff while we’re on vacation, (the Jack the Ripper tour, London, things like that.) So I’m like, that might be kind of fun for his birthday because it’s right around the fall time and it might be an interesting adventure. So we’ve never done anything like that before. I had no idea what to expect.

If you would have asked me, if I thought ghosts were real, I’d tell you no. I’d never experienced anything unusual; nothing major. So, we secured our spots and got a room there. It’s one of the older hotels, the interesting feature of this hotel is that it’s right across the street from another old casino, (Hotel Calnivas) which has since been demolished. There’s a tunnel underneath that connected the two casinos because they’re across the street from each other and the tunnel wasn’t for public use – It was for the mob, and for the people running the casinos and for the criminal elements to go back and forth between the two. 

We headed up [to the hotel] and they were like, okay, everything fires off at 8:00 PM. So we got there and checked in and they were kind of having like a vendor fair and some seminars. Our group/investigation started at 8 p.m, and there’s about 120 people because we had 12 people in our group and there were 10 different groups because they didn’t want everybody walking around in a big blob. There were different parts of the hotel that were said to be haunted, so because there had been a lot of bad activity there (murders and things of that,) they made sure you stick with the mob. 

We started off the evening, and to me it was very amusing. We had a psychic medium in our group, and we had a professional Paranormal investigator in the group, and he had all the equipment (like light boxes that react to the energy, the little metal rods that moved when you asked the ghost questions,) he had all that stuff. So this all was really entertaining to me, and I’m a very social person. So I was asking him a million questions and I became his little sidekick. So really fast, it became that I was running the equipment. I’m walking around with the light box, and they’re like, okay this ghost haunts these stairways, this is what happened to her, there’s a child ghost that walks around the hallways, etc. So we’re going from station to station and the little light boxes are responding. 

When we got to the hallway, I was given the metal rods and the child ghost kind of started being playful with me and the rod started moving. I’m like, how are these things moving, because my hands aren’t moving? We go to the downstairs part of the hotel and there is the casino, the lobby, a restaurant, and then a wedding chapel and the service area which is where the tunnel goes underneath the street. We go into the chapel and we’re told about the ghost that lives there, and she was a lady who had died on her wedding day, and so she haunted the chapel.

We were in there and my eyes just kept going to one corner of a room where there was a closet with supplies. The door was shut. There wasn’t anything like moving over there, but I just kept looking at it. It just was a little odd, but still nothing major. Our guide was like, okay we’re going to go into the service area. We went down into the service area and this is where the evening got crazy. We’re walking into the tunnel that goes underneath the street and the man leading the paranormal investigation is talking about how that was where they took people to murder them, so it was very haunted. If you cross the mob, that’s where you took your final walk.

We’re walking down the corridor and.. I am not an emotional person, but my throat closes up and I cannot breathe. Tears start pouring down my face, and I’m like, oh my God. It was such a weird physical reaction as he’s telling the story of our group, and it happened to myself and one other woman in the group out of 12. I pat [my husband] on the arm and say I got to go back up. The other woman and I backed up out of the corridor and back into the service area where the hotel staff would be making food and things like that. I instantly feel better. My throat opens up and I can breathe all the way and I’m not crying anymore. 

When they all come out, the investigator that’s leading our group walks by me and my throat closes up again. I can’t breathe and tears start running down my face again. I looked at him and yelled you need to get away from me right now. We’ve been buddies all night – laughing together, having a great time. There was nothing about him that upset me and I’m like, get away from me. You need to go, get away from me right now. He’s just looking at me and [my husband is] like, what are you doing? 

So we go out. Everybody’s a little rattled. We walk down the hall, and go back into the chapel. Everybody’s kind of calming down because the energy was a lot. The other woman that was with me also had a very adverse reaction to him. We’re in the chapel and I keep looking at that corner in the room, and Mike [my husband] is sitting next to me. 

We’re sitting on these chairs that outline the chapel and [my husband] says this isn’t right. I’m like, what do you mean? He says we need to get out of here. The person leading the investigation is like where are you going? We don’t want you walking around by yourself. [My husband’s] like, no there’s something bad in here. He’s like, what are you talking about? I said I feel it too. Something’s not right, there’s something over in that corner and whatever is in that corner, I feel scared. We didn’t feel that way here before. 

The guy leading our group leaves for a second and he goes and he gets the person who’s in charge of the whole event. She comes in and she’s like what’s going on in here? She goes, this feels bad in here and again I yell, he needs to get away from me right now. I don’t want him anywhere near me. She’s like, You all need to come with me. So, we had to go have a spiritual cleansing, because whatever evil entity that was down in the service area corridor, latched onto him and came out with him.

So after answering some questions and having a conversation, we had to go outside. We had to be grounded. There was sage going on. After all of that, I was fine with him. He didn’t bother me at all. As a matter of fact, I apologized, but when we were going into areas, they weren’t really telling us the story of the ghosts and they were waiting to see what we felt and what we experienced. 

The ghost in the chapel who was a woman and had died on her wedding day was a very well known and friendly spirit. What followed her, and what followed us out of the service area was one of the hitmen for the mob who took his last walk down there too. He was the guy who murdered most of the prostitutes and the gamblers who got in trouble and then they had him murdered. What followed us pitched onto the investigator in our group, who was the furthest down the corridor and talking about things. I guess they labeled me an empath that spirits seek me out for comfort, and so the reason why my throat closed up was because most of the prostitutes were strangled when they took them down there. 

It was all a very unnerving experience. I walked away from there fully believing. We spent the night in the cabin, which I then dubbed the murder cabins because we did not get any sleep. We were awake all night. Our investigation wrapped up around midnight and then [my husband] and I literally laid awake in bed until the sun came up at 6 and we left exactly at 6 to get out of there. I have never been so uncomfortable in my life. It was wild. 

[My husband], because the first part of the evening was a lot of fun and the light boxes and I was so involved in it, took a ton of videos, lots and lots of videos on his cell phone. None of them turned out. Every single one of them was scrambled, And no other videos on his phone were scrambled before or after. There was never any glitch in his cell phone being able to record before, and he had that cell phone for several years after and video worked fine, but none of the videos of that night worked.

I found out later that apparently there’s a spirit that kind of roams the grounds out there that’s like screaming in the middle of the night that people will hear screams. We didn’t hear screaming, but I read up on it afterwards and I was like, oh my God. We would have driven away at 2 AM if I had heard screaming. We would have left right then. Goodbye! I’m going right back [home], I don’t care that we paid for this room, we are not sleeping. That didn’t happen, thankfully. I don’t think I could have handled it. 

Then, a couple years later they were going to demolish it and they were kind of wondering what was going to happen to the energy there, you know, the spirits, because they got to go somewhere, right? They’re just there. So a few years ago we were at [my friend’s] cabin on a girls’ trip and I had told them all that story. They wanted to go to the Biltmore because it was still open.  

They weren’t having people stay there at the hotel, but the casino was still going and there were like a little bit of things in the gift shop, but not a lot of stuff and they had areas of the hotel roped off, like you couldn’t go upstairs. So [my friends] were like, hey, can we go to some of the spots that you saw on the ghost tour? And I’m like, well we’ll see what we can get into. There are places I will not go. We were able to sneak back behind the tape that they had DO NOT ENTER written on, and of course we went around it, and we entered anyway. 

We went to the chapel and I was talking about the ghost in that chapel, and my eye was not drawn to the service closet at that time. It wasn’t bothering me in there, but I was talking to [my friend T] and [P] about that. We were the only people there, and there’s no other entrances or exits out of the chapel because it’s really small – like the size of a master bedroom. It’s not a big area. 

We’re sitting in the same chair [my husband] and I sat in, and we’re talking a little bit about the experience, and [my friend] was like, I want to see if I can sneak down into that service area. I’m like, no, and she goes, well, it’s just right around the corner and [she wanted] to just poke [her] head in. I’m like, you do you, but I’m not walking in there. Whatever is down there knows me, I’ve had a bad experience there and you cannot give me enough money to walk into that service area again. We don’t have anybody to help us too, so I’m not going. 

We were kind of going back and forth about that. [My other friend] was like, well let’s just go back and find the other girls in the casino, and I’m like, great. We get up and [my friend] still kind of talking about going to peek her head in. [My other friend] and I are walking side by side, and [the first friend] elsewhere in the room not near us, and your mom gets shoved on the shoulder on the side I’m not on as we’re walking out. She jumps. 

She’s like, what? What was that? I’m like, what do you mean? She goes, something just shoved my shoulder. I’m like, no way. That’s a warning. We are not to go down that service corridor. I’m like, you’re not going down there. And so we didn’t.”

My thoughts: This story was extremely interesting for me as a listener, because of all of the factors that make up this story. This experience has motifs such as an unwanted spirit that has potential unfinished business with whom had killed them in the mafia tunnels. Additionally, there’s a spirit possession that happens to our narrator, and physical elements like her friend being pushed by a spirit allegedly. I think its funny that she willingly went back to the place that traumatized her after only a few years and even brought her friends, but it’s good that they all god warnings and left before they experienced anything worse possibly.

GRANDPA’S FIRST EXORCISM

Age: 19

For this story, I spoke to my friend. He told me this story that he got from his grandfather. The following is told from his first person perspective about his grandfather.

INTERVIEWEE: “When my grandpa was 25 years old he was a deacon at a church in Riverside, California. During his time, he had some house calls regularly. He was a deacon until he was around 40 so he saw a lot of different stuff at peoples’ houses. They would typically send him to houses to pray over new houses, old people, deceased, etc. However, one time he was asked to come to a home to perform a literal exorcism which was very out of the ordinary for him.

He thought this was unusual because he had never done anything like this before. One day, the church sent him to this house to perform the exorcism on this teenage girl who was spasming out, blaspheming, and acting really funky in general. The parents had no idea what to do so they called up my grandpa who and some other people with then church. My grandpa showed up with a few other priests. The other priests must have brought a bible, a cross, and some holy water.

They went into the house and the parents directed them into the room where the teenage girl was. She couldn’t sit still. They did something and they got the demon out of her; repeating a prayer or splashing holy water on her. She tried to jump away from it, but eventually she hit the ground and started shaking and screaming for a couple minutes. During this, the priests recited the prayer again and again. Then she passes out.

The girl didn’t wake up until the following morning super exhausted. She ended up being totally fine afterwards, with no signs of possession or evil spirits holding inside her anymore yet having no idea what had happened. This actually was the last and only exorcism my grandpa had to perform during his time being a deacon; this being a very different experience for him.”

My thoughts: I find it super interesting that his grandfather never did another exorcism after this, nor having done one prior. Around this time, which was maybe the 1970’s, the first Exorcist film came out, which made exorcisms more believed in during this time perchance, which may be why he got this house call in particular. With this, the details such as the girl forgetting everything that had happened, as well as the possession itself, it makes this story very unique; especially in the perspective of someone who has never experienced something like this.

The Ball that Came Back

“When I was growing up with my sister, we had shared a bedroom, and this was in Thousand Oaks, California.

And her bed was on one side of the room and my bedroom was on.

My bed was on the other side of the room. We were. One night, we were both in our beds, and we were tossing a ball back and forth to each other.

Right. You know, she missed when she went to throw the ball to me, she had, like.

Didn’t throw enough power, so went underneath my bed.

So it took about, like, you know, 10 seconds. I went, oh, faster. God, I gotta go under here. When I tried to reach underneath there, the ball went flying right to her.

Which scared her and I to, you know, to pieces. This is so needless to say. So that evening we went to bed, and in the middle of the night, I was woken up by my mom saying, are you okay?

Are you okay? And I didn’t know what was going on. I somehow had my tongue underneath. My tongue was severed.

Yeah, so I don’t know how. There’s no way you can bite. You can’t, like, you know, bite your tongue. That’s impossible. It was clean. Like, just a clean cut, too. Just, you know, the thing that attaches your tongue to the bottom of your jaw.

So that was completely cut. So, like, the. We were. I was raised Mormon growing up. I. I’m no longer Mormon. I actually believe in more spiritual, like, Native American Indian spiritual, that type of belief.

Anyway, she. So. So they. The priest came and took me. They didn’t take me to the hospital. I don’t know why. They. I went to church. The church had stitched it up. They did, like. Like, a cleansing blessing, which I thought was interesting in hindsight. This house. This house had. Was. There’s six siblings in my family. We always consider, like, there was just a weird, creepy thing.

This isn’t like that. This is the. The Terrence. It’s like, always weird creepy things that would happen.

Like my younger brother. We had a babysitter. My mom was actually kind of whatever. She went to babies. And my younger brother was somehow pushed out of the second story window.

And, yeah, he. So somehow he ended up being. He doesn’t remember because he was like, four or five.

He got up to the second story window and was thrown out, and he broke his.

Shattered his pelvis and stuff like that. No, he was younger because he was like three. He couldn’t even crawl yet. So he had to be really young. Anyway, this is the same house where this weird shenanigans would happen.

You know, you’d hear, like, you know, knocking, which we thought it was always the, you’re my brother, or, you know, because there’s six of us. You always thought it was like, oh, is one of the siblings kind of messing with you?

Right, right. Well, you know, after that experience of having that ball and, you know, being thrown, you know, you know, across the way and then having my tongue severed, you know, even more strange things started to happen.

That’s just kind of like where it kind of all started, you know, realizing, well, there’s probably more to this.”

Context

  • The informer has been my next-door neighbor for the last 17 years. She talked to me in a Zoom interview.
  • The story takes place in her childhood home
  • She told me this story because I asked if she had any ghost stories to share with me, now that I study this in college, and collecting field stories is one of our class activities.

Her thoughts

She believes this was the beginning of realizing that something paranormal was present in that house, with ongoing, unexplained forces at work. She supported that by adding several other incidents that no one could explain that followed that moment. She also said that this was the moment she started to be more aware and feel things. 

My thoughts

I thought this story is especially compelling because it starts as a game with a playful and innocent object – a ball – in the girls’ bedroom. But then, when the ball is under her bed and not near her sister, it suddenly seems to gain its own energy. She doesn’t throw it back – it “flies” on its own, or by some other force, which shifts the moment from something ordinary into something unsettling.

Later that same night, on that same side of the room, another unexplained event happens, and her tongue gets a clean cut and starts bleeding. The fact that both events are tied to the same space makes it feel less random and more connected, almost like that area of the room holds a kind of presence or energy. It creates a sense of the uncanny, where something familiar – a bedroom, a childhood game – starts to feel unfamiliar and unsafe.

What also stood out to me is that her parents did not take her to a doctor, but instead brought her to the church for treatment and a blessing. I’m not sure exactly why, but it seems like this response reflects their belief system and how they interpreted what happened. Rather than seeing it as a purely medical issue, they may have understood it as something spiritual that required a religious response. That decision adds another layer to the story, because it shows how belief shapes action, especially in moments that are hard to explain.

She also describes this as the moment when she begins to realize that other strange things are happening around her. To me, this feels like a turning point, not just in the story, but in how she understands her environment. It reads almost like a liminal moment, where she moves from childhood innocence into a more aware stage, where everyday spaces no longer feel fully stable or predictable.

What makes the story especially strong is that it combines an unexplained physical event with a lasting injury, which gives it a real sense of stakes. It shows how something small and ordinary (the ball) can become physically disturbing, and how a personal space like a bedroom can take on an uncanny quality, with a lingering sense of “energy” that is hard to explain but clearly felt.

Her Thoughts

She believes this was the beginning of realizing that something paranormal was present in that house, with ongoing, unexplained forces at work. She supported that by adding several other incidents that no one could explain that followed that moment. She also said that this was the moment she started to be more aware and feel things. 

My Thoughts

I thought this story is especially compelling because it starts as a game with a playful and innocent object – a ball – in the girls’ bedroom. But then, when the ball is under her bed and not near her sister, it suddenly seems to gain its own energy. She doesn’t throw it back – it “flies” on its own, or by some other force, which shifts the moment from something ordinary into something unsettling.

Later that same night, on that same side of the room, another unexplained event happens, and her tongue gets a clean cut and starts bleeding. The fact that both events are tied to the same space makes it feel less random and more connected, almost like that area of the room holds a kind of presence or energy. It creates a sense of the uncanny, where something familiar – a bedroom, a childhood game – starts to feel unfamiliar and unsafe.

What also stood out to me is that her parents did not take her to a doctor, but instead brought her to the church for treatment and a blessing. I’m not sure exactly why, but it seems like this response reflects their belief system and how they interpreted what happened. Rather than seeing it as a purely medical issue, they may have understood it as something spiritual that required a religious response. That decision adds another layer to the story, because it shows how belief shapes action, especially in moments that are hard to explain.

She also describes this as the moment when she begins to realize that other strange things are happening around her. To me, this feels like a turning point, not just in the story, but in how she understands her environment. It reads almost like a liminal moment, where she moves from childhood innocence into a more aware stage, where everyday spaces no longer feel fully stable or predictable.

What makes the story especially strong is that it combines an unexplained physical event with a lasting injury, which gives it a real sense of stakes. It shows how something small and ordinary (the ball) can become physically disturbing, and how a personal space like a bedroom can take on an uncanny quality, with a lingering sense of “energy” that is hard to explain but clearly felt.

The Dream After Death

“My brother was killed by me almost 20 years ago. And five days before he passed away, I had just moved back from Aruba and he had called me up and he’s like, hey, what are you doing?

It’s my birthday. And I’m like, I’m just. I don’t know, it’s my birthday, let’s hang out. So we hung out and we had a great time. And five days later I was sleeping and all of a sudden I woke up and I was like I couldn’t figure out why I, like, woke up, like in, you know, like, why am I awake? And about 30 minutes later, I get a phone call, 4:00 in the morning, 4:30 in the morning.

And it was my brother calling me, saying that, you know, my brother was found dead and, and I was saying “no way” because I had just talked to him that night.

I was supposed to go down there for Thanksgiving to hang out with him, and I was moving that same weekend. So I was like, you know what? I really shouldn’t do that. I should just stick to packing my bags and, you know, stay focused and so let’s go out next weekend.

And we hung up. It’s 11:30 at night. And then of course, my brother calls me the next morning saying he passed and I was saying “no”, I just spoke to him, you know, I’m like, “no”.

I kept saying “no”. He’s like, yes. He’s kind of like, well, how. Anyways, he, you know. By the way, the cause of death is basically unknown. Okay. I believe his wife killed him, in my opinion.

Just from what I have gathered, he was trying to leave her, and she didn’t want to grant the divorce for almost a year.

Trying to leave her. Anyway, there was a lot of turmoil that went online.

So I was sleeping and I was trying to figure out, like, how can I honor my brother, right?

And. And I was very upset. And he came to visit me in this dream and he said, “you’re not gonna know what happened to me”.

And I was like, what? Why? He’s like, “they don’t have testing for it”. I’m like, okay. He’s like, “but I’m okay. And, you know, you need to basically let go so I can move on”.

I was like, oh, gosh, okay. And I woke up from that dream, and I was like, I felt better because I’m like, at least he came to visit me, you know.”

Their thoughts

The teller believes this was genuine communication from her brother after death, reinforced by the psychic’s confirmation later. She thinks her brother showed up so they can both move on to the next part of their journey; she felt like she did not need to think about how to honor him, and he could move on to the other side and rest in peace.

My thoughts

I found this story interesting because it blends her grief over her brother with her belief in the afterlife.  This story showed how ghost stories can offer comfort and a sense of closure. I was also moved by the fact that after this experience, she chose to meet with a psychic, and that the psychic was able to share details about her brother that felt very specific and personal. That seemed to reinforce her belief that the person she saw in her dream was actually her brother, beyond any doubt she might have had before.

At the same time, I found myself having questions that I didn’t ask during the interview. For example, I was wondering about the timing – was the dream before or after the funeral, and how soon after his death did it happen? I also wondered whether her brother appeared to other family members, especially since she mentioned that her mother and her sons have similar abilities.

I was also fascinated by the uncertainty around his cause of death. The idea that there was “no testing” for it, and that this detail was repeated both in the dream and by the psychic, adds another layer to the story. It creates a sense that some things remain unknowable through conventional means, which may be why the dream and the psychic experience carry so much meaning for her.