The Box

Nationality: Philipino
Age: 18
Occupation: Student (University of Mississippi)
Residence: Cedar Park, Texas
Performance Date: 3/17/17
Primary Language: English

Ghost Story:

I was about 2 -years-old and we were living in Long Beach, California, in a little one-story story house. It had 3 bedrooms and was in kind of a sketchy neighborhood, it was a few streets over from the Compton area. We were having the house inspected and appraised because we were selling it to move. They put this huge device in the guest bedroom. It measured something in the house, I really wish I could remember what is was but I’m not sure. It was basically just a massive, heavy box. The people told us that it had to stay in the room untouched for the next 48-hours and not to touch it or go into the guest room. My mom told them that neither of them were strong enough to move it anyways. My dad was out of town, and it was just my mom and I. A few days later, they came back and asked if we had touched the box or done anything to it. My mom responded that they hadn’t disturbed the box or had anyone over that might have accidently gone into the room. The workers said that on record, the device showed that the box had been lifted up and flipped over 148 times. Like completely picked up and rotated 148 times. I’m not really sure what ended up happening, but I know that that room was known to be haunted. Alarms would go off, the lights would flicker at random hours of the night.

Did you know anything about previous residents of the house?

No I had no idea, I don’t remember much because I was also really young. I know that there was just a lot of crime in our area.

Did your mom ever feel scared in the house?

Yea, she just felt unsafe, mainly because of the neighborhood. She felt especially scared when my dad was gone.

 

Analysis

Sarah and I grew up in the same neighborhood in North Bend, Washington and continued to go to high school together. She has always been superstitious and easily frightened. When she was telling me her ghost story, she spoke of the events very nonchalantly, as though she had accepted what had happened despite having very few answers. The fact that she was so young when it happened could play a role, but she sounded like she was not affected by her experience at all. Although I know that she is very religious, I asked her how her experiences affected her religious beliefs and she couldn’t really explain it. It seemed as though she hadn’t even though that her belief in ghosts would influence her opinion of the afterlife. She seemed to not find a connection between the two at all. Once I asked her the question, she was very surprised and caught off guard that I would ask her a religious question, then she proceeded to brush it off. Sarah seemed to be scared when she said that her and her mom were alone in the house, and she made it very evident that her mom felt scared when her dad was out of town or at work. The fact that the box was placed in the ‘haunted’ guest room but her a lot on edge as well. Perhaps the fact that the room was for guests and did not really belong to anyone made it a prime location for a ghost to appear.

Ghost in the Hallway

Nationality: Irish
Age: 47
Occupation: Registered Nurse
Residence: Long Island, NY
Performance Date: 4/3/17
Primary Language: English

My informant is an American woman from a Long Island suburb who has two children and a husband.

“There was a deadly car crash that happened on our lawn one night where a college boy hit a tree.  One night about a month later, I was up very late typing on my laptop in bed a letter to the town to get more stop signs on our street so something like this wouldn’t happen again.  While typing the letter, I kept looking into the doorway in the hall because I swear I kept seeing this bright, mist… thing height of a man in the corner of my eye.  Then I would look over and rub my eyes and I would think it was gone and would continue typing, not thinking much of it.  But the next day, my son, who was only about eight at the time, came into my room and said ‘can I fall asleep in your bed tonight’ which I thought was strange but I said okay.  After a few minutes of watching tv with him he says ‘I saw something weird last night.’  So I asked him what he saw and he said ‘I think I saw a spirit in front of my doorway.’  To also put this in perspective, our doorways were across the hall from each other.  So then I asked him what the spirit looked like and he said ‘it was bright and misty and it turned, looked at me, and then walked down the hallway.’  I asked him what time he saw it and he said it was around 3:30am, the same time I thought I saw it.”

I find it very interesting the spirit seemed to appear through the doorway in both accounts of the sighting.  Not only did one person witness this, but another person was able to back up the sighting in an unrelated conversation.  When people have these thoughts late at night, many people forget about it and just think that they are seeing things because they are tired.  But to have two people witness the same thing on the same night could be a coincidence or a true sighting of a spirit.

Ghostly Mirror

Nationality: Irish
Age: 71
Residence: Long Island, NY
Performance Date: 4/4/17
Primary Language: English

My informant is a 71 year old woman who grew up in Brooklyn, New York but later moved to Long Island, NY to raise a family.

“We moved into our new house and three days after we moved in I went down into the basement where there were many old things from the last owners.  One thing I found down there was this old mirror and on the back were newspapers from a time that was before Lincoln was president; it talked about the Whig party but I don’t remember the exact dates.  So I thought it was a nice mirror and hung it up at the end of our hallway, right out side my bedroom door.  That night I fell asleep but in the middle of the night woke up, sat up, rubbed my eyes, and as clear as day there were three people dressed in.. I don’t really know how to say it because it wasn’t colonial dress but it was old dress from that time period.  It was a husband a wife and a child all standing there staring at me right outside my bedroom door in front of the mirror.”

I find this interesting as it connects two different liminal places, both a mirror and a doorway, places where many ghost sightings seem to take place.  It seems there was a direct connection between the newspapers in the mirror and the appearance of the ghosts in the doorway, as they seemed to come from the time period of the newspapers.

Ghosts of Paraguay

Nationality: Paraguayan
Age: 36
Occupation: House Cleaner
Residence: New Jersey
Performance Date: March 16, 2017
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: English

The following conversation is between myself (referred to as “N”) and a family friend (referred to as “L”).

 

N: Where exactly are you from again?

L: Paraguay.

N: Paraguay?

L: South America.

N: Are there like, kind of traditions, or ghost stories or anything?

L: Yes, we have two language, this is the first and then we have… we have two language. We speak Spanish and we speak Guarani; is like a native language. But in most of the other countries its like a… its a dialect, but in my country you studied in the school. You have to read all the same like another’s language, so most the people speak both. In the city, people speak Spanish and Guarani like ‘Spanglish’ they say here, but most in other areas of my country speak like 90% only Guarani. And this is the first tradition we have, like, and we have so many foods that is only you can find in Paraguay, like you know the soup? Here the soup is like you can eat with a spoon. In my country Paraguayan soup is like a cake. They have the history too. The first president invited another president for the South America, and the lady who is cooking is putting too much corn, um, flour and they makes too hard the soup so that way they call it Paraguayan soup, like that. But its different. You know, like when people go in my country and say, “you want a soup?” And they, “Yes!” and you waiting for something like, and they bring like a, its like a corn cake, you say like “this is a soup. Yes, this a Paraguayan soup”. So… and what else you want, like…

N: Um, I was wondering if you had any, like, when you grew up, were you told any like traditional ghost stories, um kind of like to teach little kids lessons or anything. Like, were there any just like traditional ghost stories?

L: Ghost, like, yeah, we have, like, yeah so many.

N: Really?

L: So many. When we are kids, like moms say to… in my country most the people sleeping like 1-3, like nap, and the parents so the kids won’t go outside, they say is like one… guy… but then people say, somebody people say they saw this already, some people say that its like a myth like it don’t seem so real. But if you google him and you found like a Paraguayan ghost you’re gunna see so many they have all Guarani names. One of them is Pombero. One another is like… its hard to say in English because its in Guarani, but Yasy Yataré is the name. So its like uh three or four of them. One is coming out in the night. One is coming out, its like in the afternoon.

N: During like the napping periods?

L: Yes! Napping periods is for the kids. That little guy is looking for kids, they say. The other one in the night, if you whistling, like they coming at you. You have to leave a cigarette outside, and then like cigarette and then like um liquor. And its funny, but if you live there, next day you don’t find anymore. Okay?

N: Oh okay.

L: So most the people, its not doing in the city, this is all like people have a farm around the city.

N: Okay, so its not in the city?

L: Its not in the, in the city most the people just doesn’t believe in that, you know its different. It’s the same, you go here in New Year and its like too crazy and around, in here, more quietly, so you can know so many different things. But when we go in Paraguay, this is one dog is in the night, its only, they say it’s a black dog, its like a wolf, eat people, you know, so many. But if you… I never, never see that, but I just realized one… my uncle leave the cigarette outside and the next day, it, the cigarette… I don’t know if my uncle taken it back in, but its now not there. And you can hear the whistle, that one is the most funny. You can hear like when, in the night… if the guy doesn’t like you, they bother you with a whistle.

N: So the guy is the one who whistles?

L: Mhm.

N: Oh okay.

L: And that is the most that people say. When you are in the night outside, like they say, don’t whistle! Don’t whistle! Because this is the form that you call him. And if you, your wife is pregnant, and he take her, your wife. Like if she walking outside by herself, he always sees, like, take her.

N: and that’s only at night?

L: Only at night. And if you don’t leave the liquor and the cigarette outside, he’s mad at you. Okay? So he destroys something of your house. He kill your animals. If you have chickens, cow outside, he do something with your animals. You know, he is doing something to let you know, like why you don’t leave him what always needed? And the kids one is like is a little guy… they show the picture of people being is like that, its ugly! Its like a little kids, its like blonde hair but she’s walking like this…

N: Like on all fours?

L: Yeah, so when the kids is going nap time outside they always looking for him because they’re alone. No parents, no nobody around them and supposed he take them with him and kill them, yeah? But we have so many mythological, like ideas, but if you google in and put in like a Paraguayan, you gunna see so many, and you gunna have the pictures there, but we have, yeah. We have.

N: Thank you so much!

L: No problem!

N: Thank you.

 

 

It was so interesting learning about the ghosts children in a different country were told about so that they wouldn’t go and do something they weren’t supposed to. For example, in America children grow up scared of the Boogie Monster with their parents saying, “you better not do that or else the Boogie Monster will come and find you.” Whereas in Paraguay, there is this man who resembles an animal by walking on all fours, and the children are scared he’ll take them if they go wandering outside late at night. I got chills listening to my family friend tell this story.

Sweet Hollow Road

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Long Island, NY
Performance Date: April 6, 2017
Primary Language: English

The following conversation is between myself (referred to as “N”) and my friend, Jenna (referred to as “J”). For reference, Jenna is from Long Island, and the bridge discussed below is the Northern State overpass located on Sweet Hollow Road in Melville in New York state.

 

N: Does the town that you’re from have any traditions or places that are supposedly haunted.

J: There’s this bridge, uh and the legend is, its that a school bus fell off and then like landed into the underpass. So what happens is that, there’s like a bunch of creepy things that have happened around this bridge. And I think that if you stop underneath it, a cop will come up to you and like knock on your window, but like its on a dirt road, like you literally like wouldn’t be able to… like it would make no sense why a cop would be there, so like the cop’s a ghost.

N: Oh my god.

L: I think the bus one’s creepier because the kids fell off, and like what happens is if you go there and you stop your car underneath the bridge, they’re supposed to push you forward. Cause they’re like trying to save you.

N: So a bus full of kids actually, like, fell off?

L: I mean, that’s like the urban legend of it.

N: Have you ever experienced that?

L: No. My friends went there and they said that like they just got spooked so quickly. And like something supernatural might have happened, or like it might have just been in their minds, but like, regardless it scared the s*** out of them and they haven’t gone back since. And they asked me to go and I was like, I would rather die than experience that first hand.

After some research, I found that Sweet Hollow Road is known for paranormal activity and ghost sightings. The stories Jenna mentioned are only two of the five stories associated with Sweet Hollow Road. The bus full of children is explained in good detail above, however the story about the ghost cop is that a police officer was shot and killed under the bridge. Supposedly, if you turn to watch the cop walk away, you’ll see him get shot in the back of the head and then disappear. Other stories include three boys who hung themselves with some drivers reporting having seen the bodies when they drive under the bridge, as well as a “white lady” named Mary who either jumped or was kicked out of her boyfriend’s car and was then hit by the car behind them on the Northern State overpass bridge. With regard to the legend about the bus, if you put your car in neutral, the kids from the bus will apparently push you forward to save you from harms way. What is even more interesting about this legend is that the underpass is inclined, so if anything the car would move backwards instead of forward.