Category Archives: Childhood

Ed the Friendly Ghost

Age: 19
Performance Date: 10/23/2025

EH: “My mom and my dog, like, left the house, and they went to the park, which is not at all close to my house. And then there was, like, tacking on my window, and I heard my mom’s voice yelling at the dog. And it was like the same yelling that she had done the night before so the dog would come inside. 
And I was like, that’s weird because they’re not here right now. And so I asked my mom later. She’s like, oh, that was probably just Ed. I was like, who the **** is Ed? 
And she was like, he’s our house ghost. Don’t worry, he’s not like malevolent or anything. I was like, I hope you would have told me that sooner if he was, but also, we have a house ghost? 
And she was like, yeah, he’s like, he’s older, he died of old age in the house. It’s fine. He’s nice. 
He just likes to tap on the windows and mimic people. And I was like, okay, that’s crazy. But, like, apparently I had him around your whole childhood? 
During my childhood, I thought I had an over of active imagination, ’cause I would, like, I had a bunch of, like, figures and stuffed animals, and so I would, like, make these complex plots, and, like, I thought I was just, like, making voices, but, like, I realized now it wasn’t me making voices, it was Ed.”

Interviewer:  “But, like, other people hear him?”

EH: “Yeah, like, my parents heard him. He liked my room the most. 
I think that might have been where he died now that I think about it. Oh my god. Because my parents lived, their bedroom was originally in my current bedroom, and they would hear him in there the most. 
And then they moved bedrooms and they were like, let’s stick our daughter with that. Naturally. And so I heard him all through my childhood because I had, you know, like those weird horror movies where like the kid has like a playmate and then like they show a picture of it, like a drawing or something and then it’s like this horrific creature. 
That was me, but I never drew Ed and I didn’t think Ed was like a real person. I thought it was just violently hallucinating. But Ed is like a real person. 
He’s a real guy. I found him on ancestry.com. My parents looked him up. 
My dad had that **** bookmarked. Yeah, that’s crazy. I’m gonna ask them for his last name so I can, like, show you guys.”

Interviewer: “So all of a sudden finding this out, how did it impact you? 
Like, what do you take out of your experience?” 

EH: “Well, 1st of all, I lived with a ghost, so, like, there’s that. He was, yeah, he was a friendly guy. 
Friendly old guy. Like it wasn’t weird. He was just like, he played with me, you know? 
Apparently. Now that I think back, I was like, I wasn’t making all the voices, okay? Oh my God. 
But yeah, so I’m like…”

Interviewer: “And is he still there?”

EH: “I haven’t heard from him in a while. 
Mostly because I’ve been here, but when I’ve been back in my house, there hasn’t been much. I think there’s been tapping, but he hasn’t done a lot of voices recently. Let me text my mom.”

Context: This story was told to the informant by her freshman dorm roommate in late October, while the two were in their dorm with another student, and they were discussing classes together. When the topic of ghosts came up (as a topic of a GE Seminar), EH immediately mentioned her complete belief in ghosts because she had had a recurring experience with one. Piquing the interest of her peers, she immediately jumped into this story. 


Analysis: This tale illustrates a ghostly take on the classic ‘imaginary friend’ situation often portrayed in popular culture. Prior to this conversation, EH had not mentioned this aspect of her childhood, assuming it was not out of the ordinary to have had such a normalized relationship with the uncanny. The informant has true belief that throughout her childhood she continually interacted with this household ghost, and that ‘Ed’ continues to occupy (EH avoids the term haunt) her house to this day. Her encounters with the spirit are unique in the sense that Ed never fully presented himself to her, but just existed as a voice or tapping noise. The tapping noise associated with the company of the household spirit is a common motif across ghost stories, being seen, often ominously, as a ghost’s way to make their presence known. However, the subject makes it clear that in no way is the ghost unwanted or invoking fear. Rather, the ghost is treated as a member of the household, acting as a playmate and lighthearted imitator.

The Girl with the Red Thread

Age: 18

Context:

One evening, while walking on campus with my friend, we began sharing spooky stories. She suddenly recalled something that had haunted her for years — a strange experience she had as a child, which had blurred the lines between dream, memory, and legend. This is the story she told me.

The Story:

When she was around 7 or 8 years old, she lived in a home with a study room that had a bed but was rarely used. One night, after waking from a nightmare, she found herself in that very study — a place she never usually slept in. She remembered lying beside her mom, both of them facing the wall, and gently shaking her awake out of fear.

She asked her mom to tell her a story because she couldn’t sleep. Strangely, her mom — who was known to strictly avoid ghost stories or anything scary — agreed. What happened next would stay with her for life.

Still facing the wall, her mom began to tell a ghost story. In the story, a nurse was working the night shift at a hospital. One evening, while heading out from the first floor, she took the elevator — but somehow, the elevator inexplicably descended to the 4th basement level instead, a floor used as a morgue.

This floor had no button, no lights, and no one should have been able to access it. But the elevator stopped there, the doors opened, and the nurse saw a little girl standing silently in the dark. The girl got into the elevator with her.

As the nurse glanced over, she noticed a red thread tied around the girl’s wrist. In Chinese superstition, red thread on the wrist is sometimes associated with the dead. The nurse was so frightened she reportedly died on the spot.

What terrified my friend wasn’t just the story itself — it was the realization much later in life that this was a widely circulated urban legend. Many people she later met had heard it before. And yet, she had never heard it before that night, and neither had her mother — who later insisted, repeatedly and sincerely, that she had no memory of telling the story, or even of waking up that night.

My friend later searched the story online and found that it had indeed been turned into a movie, or at least referenced in popular media. This deepened the mystery: how could a widely known ghost story have been told to her by someone who had never heard it — someone who vehemently denied ever telling it?

To this day, my friend remains disturbed by this experience. She remembers it vividly. Her mother, however, insists it never happened.

The Informant’s Thoughts:

She finds this story creepy, not because of the ghost itself, but because of the contradiction between her clear memory and her mother’s absolute denial. She believes the most chilling part of the experience isn’t the plot, but the uncertainty of how she ever came to hear it.

Years later, when telling others the story of the girl with the red thread, people would say, “Oh, I’ve heard that one!” But she hadn’t. Not before that night. Not ever.

My Thoughts:

What makes this story so compelling is not just the content of the ghost story, but how it plays with memory, belief, and reality. The idea that a story could be “implanted” through a moment that no one else remembers adds an eerie, almost psychological horror element to the tale.

It made me question how many of our memories are truly our own — and how stories that seem personal might actually belong to something much larger, floating around in the cultural subconscious, waiting to find a host.

The repetition — her telling the story to others, retelling it to her mother, and hearing denials each time — builds a quiet but powerful kind of fear. Over time, the story’s scariness comes not from the ghost, but from the accumulated sense of being haunted by a memory no one else shares.

As a piece of folklore, it’s fascinating because it shows how legends can find their way into our lives, not just through media or hearsay, but through deeply personal and unexplainable experiences.

The Shadow Behind the Curtain

Age: 18

Context:

This story was told to me by a Chinese international student at USC, whom I’ll refer to as SG. We were sitting together in one of the quiet study lounges at Parkside after midnight, discussing the kinds of ghost stories we’d heard growing up in China. That’s when she told me something she had never written down or shared publicly—something that happened to her in her childhood that she still remembers with frightening clarity.

The Story:

When SG was 10 years old, she lived with her grandparents in Harbin, a city known for its long, dark winters. Her grandfather had a habit of rising very early, often before sunrise, to boil water and do light chores. Their apartment had large, thick curtains that covered the floor-to-ceiling windows in the living room.

One early winter morning, just before 6 a.m., SG woke up suddenly. She had heard soft footsteps and assumed her grandfather was up again. Curious and still sleepy, she wandered out to the living room—only to find it completely dark, with no lights on. She paused at the doorway.

That’s when she saw it: a silhouette of a person standing perfectly still behind the curtain, as if staring out the window. The form was unmistakably human—tall, slightly hunched, and entirely motionless.

Thinking it was her grandfather, she called out to him.

No answer.

She approached slowly, heart pounding. The air felt wrong—too still, too cold, as if the temperature had dropped. When she finally touched the curtain and pulled it aside—

There was no one there.

No one in the room. No sound of footsteps. No open windows. Just the snow falling silently outside.

Terrified, she ran back to her room and hid under her blanket. She didn’t tell anyone for weeks.

Informant’s Thoughts (SG):

SG says what disturbed her most wasn’t the sight of the shadow, but the fact that she saw it so clearly, and yet her grandfather had still been asleep in his room the whole time. Years later, she still isn’t sure if it was a dream, a hallucination, or something else.

What unsettles her most is that she continues to experience the exact same dream every few years: waking up in a different place, walking into a dark living room, and seeing a shadow behind a curtain.

Each time, she says, she wakes up before pulling the curtain open.

My Thoughts:

To me, what makes SG’s story haunting isn’t just the visual horror of the silhouette—it’s the way it has embedded itself into her memory and dreams, repeating like a ritual.

I’m struck by how familiar this setting feels: cold northern apartment, heavy winter curtains, the eeriness of early morning silence. Even though nothing explicitly supernatural happens, the ambiguity makes it even scarier.

It also makes me think about how many ghost stories we hear as children in China are tied to domestic spaces—kitchens, hallways, staircases—not abandoned mansions or graveyards. They are ordinary spaces made terrifying by something just a little out of place.

This story lingered with me long after she told it—not because of a ghost, but because of the uncertainty that still follows her.

Skulls, Watermelons, and the White figures

Age: 18

Informant: So the story goes like this: One time in my dream I was near a Watermelon field. It was a dark night, and I was walking inside the field. As I was walking, I had an odd sensation that the watermelon beneath me are not watermelons, but rather human head. With that realization I think I saw a human head cracked open, and watermelons near it also cracked. Then, A white, shadowy figure appeared next to that watermelon. It’s appeared so suddenly, and quickly disappeared. I was shocked by what I was seeing as I woken up from my dreams. Then I saw a white figure flying out of my room’s door in great speed, but I was so tired out that night that I fall asleep again after that encounter.

Informant’s thought: The informant take this as a possibly a hallucination out of tiredness he felt during that distant night. This event happened in his early Childhood, supposedly back in his hometown.

My Analysis: While I suspect this can be serve as an account for ghost, I do think this story featured many motifs in ghost stories such as the midnight time, and seems to imply that those watermelons could be a product of spirit possession: Hence the cracking watermelon seems to “release” the spirit within.

The Boy Who Returned

Age: 78

Text: TT told me a family story involving the death of two boys and the belief that the same soul returned decades later through another person.

When TT was younger, she was very close to her teenage cousin P, who treated her like his elder sister. When they used to play together as kids, TT always remembers how P was loving and protective of her. When P was 16 years old, he was diagnosed with a very aggressive type of bone cancer. They had to amputate his leg at the femur where the cancer was, but it spread quickly to the rest of his body and he died on December 18th at 5:30 ​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍‌P.M.

The following year, TT had her first child named S who was a baby boy. A few days after birth, doctors discovered a fracture in S’s left femur. It was broken in the exact location where P’s leg had been amputated. The family found this strange but was too overwhelmed with medical concerns to interpret it at the time.

S recovered from the fracture and was a normal, active infant until he fell suddenly ill around six months old. Despite TT taking him repeatedly to the doctor, his condition worsened, fever, diarrhea, dehydration, and he died in the hospital on December 18th, at 5:30 PM, the exact date and time of P’s death, one year later.

Because of the mirrored injuries and the identical death date and time, TT came to believe that S was P returned to her. The boy who once loved her as a sister in life came back to her as a son, if only briefly, completing some unfinished time he felt he still needed with TT.

Decades later, another figure entered TT’s life: a young man, called R (who was the same age that S would have been at the time), who helped care for her very sick husband during his declining years. R handled every detail of caregiving with deep loyalty, devotion, and emotional steadiness. TT often said that even a biological son might not have shown such unwavering dedication.

Over time, she began to feel that R carried the same soul as S and P. She described his presence as a spiritual continuation of the boy she lost and as someone who had returned yet again, this time in adulthood, to help her husband through illness and to make sure she was not alone.

TT also believed that R’s actions reflected the qualities of Lord Ram, the Hindu figure symbolizing duty, righteousness, and service. She often said R was “like an incarnation of Ram”. He not a literal divine rebirth, but a way of saying that he embodied the compassion, loyalty, and spiritual purpose associated with Ram in Hindu tradition.

Following her husband’s death and R’s eventual departure, TT remarked that it was as if she were losing a son all over again. The sorrow she experienced at that time was similar to the pain of her children leaving home for the first time and even the grief she had carried since losing S many years ago. To TT, R was more than just a caretaker, he was the living continuation of a soul she believed had returned to her twice before. Letting him go was painful, as though she were watching that same soul walk away yet again.

However, their relationship was not affected by this separation. TT and R are still very close. He calls her before making major decisions, visits when he can, and treats her with the same reverence and affection that a son would show his mother.

Context:​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍‌ TT shared this story with me when we were having a private conversation for a folklore assignment. While she was speaking from her apartment in India, I was listening from Los Angeles. 

This is a story that is hardly ever shared and only with very close family. It is brought up when one thinks or talks about fate, reincarnation, and the secret ways in which the people we love might come back to us. 

In a South Asian setting, the interpretation of such occurrences is highly influenced by the concepts of reincarnation, destiny, karmic ties, and spiritual return. For instance, if somebody is said to be “like an incarnation of Lord Ram,” it is a way of acknowledging that person’s admirable traits and not as the actual god reborn, but as a recognition of the person having high moral or spiritual qualities. 

The Narrator’s Perspective: TT does not talk dramatically when she tells this story. She talks softly, but at the same time, with complete belief that it is not a matter of chance that the coincidences are very exact. 

She believes that P came back to her in the form of S, maybe only for a short time and one of the signs of a spiritual unity were the same death dates and both having broken legs. She also believes that after a long time, it is through R, whose love for the family was way beyond the ordinary, that the same spirit comes back to us. 

The traits of R, the goodness, the quietness, the indestructible faith, was that of Lord Ram, thus, to her, the return of this spirit was to give her family security and protection. To her, it is not a scary story but rather a reassuring one. It revolves around the idea that love never dies. 

My Thoughts (Analysis): From a folkloric perspective, this is a classic reincarnation memorate (classic in Hindu/Indian culture), where lived experience is interpreted through cultural beliefs about soul continuity.

The story contains several motifs common in South Asian reincarnation narratives:

Firstly, mirrored injuries as a reincarnation marker (fractured thigh matching an amputated leg). Also, identical death dates and times signaling a cyclical spiritual pattern. Finally, the soul returning through multiple forms across a single lifetime.

What makes the story striking is not only the coincidences, but how the family uses them to create meaning from profound loss. Instead of viewing these tragedies as disconnected events, TT interprets them as part of a spiritual continuity that kept her connected to someone she loved deeply. Personally, I find the story powerful because it shows how families turn grief into meaning, transforming randomness into relationship.