In this collection, I will be using initials to record a conversation between the interviewer (JC) and interviewee (RP)

JC: Has anything strange ever happened to you?

RP: Strange in what sense? Like strange or… weird?

JC: Uhh strange in the sense that you couldn’t explain it when it happened, and maybe you still can’t explain it now.

RP: Umm… in reference to something I can’t explain, or I don’t know, maybe something paranormal, this happened when I was a kid. We recently just moved into my home and my home was 80 years old, one of the oldest houses in the neighborhood, so it had very creaky floorboards and all that stuff. I’ve never believed in ghosts or anything paranormal like that, but I was alone in my house, my parents were out and my brother was at school and I was brushing my teeth and the toothpaste bottle just… it was just sitting on the counter and as I looked away, I turned back and watched it fly across the room and was immediately scared out of my mind and ran from the bathroom immediately. I don’t know if my house was haunted, nothing else happened while I lived there that I can remember; I tried not to think about that anymore

JC: Looking back at it now, do you think you know how it happened?

RP: My rational sense wants me to say that the counter was wet and that maybe I hit the thing when I was turning but… I don’t know… I really can’t explain it

There are several common motifs from ghost stories that we can see in this, the first of which is the setting. While the house itself isn’t actually very old, it was still one of the oldest in the neighbourhood, thus in a sense making it a separated area of the neighbourhood and a prime place for paranormal activity to occur. Moreover, the interviewee was a child who was home alone at the time of occurrence, which links to the common trend of paranormal activity happening when one is alone at an old house.

The interviewee mentioned that he never believed “in ghosts or anything paranormal like that”, but when asked to try and explain what happened, he was still unsure of what really happened and did not really believe what his rational sense was trying to tell him, which hints at an underlying belief that it may have been ghostly activity, or at least something out of the ordinary that happened