Collection: oven ghost – Legend (ghost)

A: “Have you had anything weird happen to you in your house?”

B: “Well, the oven in my old house could or could not have been haunted. So, my old house…at random times, the oven would make a beeping sound like “beep beep beep” when you would press the buttons. And throughout the night, my mom would hear these beeping noises as if someone was using the oven, but nobody was. And this would happen almost every night, and it would wake her up. Also, the weird thing is that I lived down the street from a cemetery. So that can be a preface for whatever you want to believe. So eventually, my dad opened the face of the oven to see all of the wires, and he physically took out the wire and device that made the sound. But the beeping would still happen. Like my mom would wake up and stand near the oven, and it would be beeping, but if it she touched it, it wouldn’t work. But nothing really came of it. We just got another oven.”

Context/Interpretation: The informant described his home as being located near a cemetery. This background information adds to the narrative’s performance aspect, and the family’s involvement adds a sense of vernacular authority. Further, the cemetery’s proximity to his home provides preface to possible legend quests. Also, the investigation of the oven could be interpreted as a legend quest.