Camp Basement

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 2nd, 2017
Primary Language: English
Language: French

K is a freshman majoring in psychology who attended the same camp almost every summer before college. The campers were told this story in the basement where the events occurred at nighttime to explain why one wall is newer than the rest.

“The camp used to be a homestead, around 1812, and the family who lived there was part of the underground railroad. The escaped slaves were hidden in the basement of the house, and one night confederate soldiers showed up to confiscate the slaves and punish the family for helping. As soon as the father opened the door, he was shot in the face, and the soldiers continued to kill everyone else in the family. When they reached the basement, they decided not to kill the escaped slaves – a mother and child – but rather make them suffer. They barricaded the two in the basement behind a new wall. It’s said that at nighttime you can still hear the child scratching the wall.”

K’s story encompasses many ghost story motifs, such as the wrongful deaths of those involved and the liminal space of the basement. It is also a lesson to young campers, both not to go out at night and not to go in the basement, and helps them to feel more connected to camp through the knowledge of it’s history.

Haunted Air BnB

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 1st, 2017
Primary Language: English

EC is a freshman majoring in International Relations and minoring in Marine Biology. This story takes place approximately six years ago.

“While my Dad was waiting for his new house to be built we stayed at Airbnb’s for a few months, usually one per week. I got a really bad vibes when I walked into one of them, and could tell something bad was there. When I went to bed the first night I jolted up from a dream and so did my dog after hearing a loud sound. I fell back asleep and woke up again, but I couldn’t move, and there was a silhouette of a person next to the bed. The next day when my brother and I left for school, we locked the house, but when we came home the door was unlocked and wide open, but my dad was away on a business trip.”

EC’s ghost story has many common ghost elements, including the dog’s reaction to the sound and the brother acting as a witness to the strange events. The story also takes place in a liminal space – the Airbnb is not home but it is not a hotel either.

The Transparent Woman

Nationality: American
Age: 60
Residence: Maine
Performance Date: March 15 2017
Primary Language: English

*The informant has had multiple ghost encounters and has heard many stories regarding spirits. She says that she had recently moved into this house as it was her her step-father’s house. She currently lives in the same house and has not experienced anything within the house since this story.

Informant: This happened when I was probably 15 years old. I was studying one evening in my bedroom and I had the door shut and then all of a sudden there was a knock on my door so I said “Come in,” and they didn’t come in. After 3 more knocks and no response I sort of got aggravated, so I opened up the door and here is this figure of a woman in the hall outside my door looking at me and I can see right through her. All of a sudden she turns around and walks down the hall a little bit and turned into the bathroom. And so my curiosity got the best of me so I walked down the hall to the bathroom, and no-one was in there– the bathroom was empty. I thought “Oh my god who was that woman?”, and she appeared to be in her late 50s or so I’d say. My stepdad had been married before, and so had my mother- my father died of leukemia, and my stepfather’s previous wife had died of cancer. I had never seen a picture of her, so I asked to see one and it was the lady I saw in the hall!

Collector: And she had lived in that house before with your stepfather?

Informant: Yeah! Then I was worried so I read up on it and I read that if you take a bundle of sage, either leaves or branches, and you make a smudge out of it and light it and go to the lowest part of your house and go the whole perimeter of your house with that sage smoke, and then you come up to the next floor higher and in every room you go the perimeter of the room with that sage smoke., and that is supposed to calm the spirits or make them go away. There were never any telltale signs of ghosts after that… it’s funny because she obviously looked at me. I’ve read about time being a tricky thing and so maybe there’s a parallel dimension where it’s a different time in that dimension, so she’s living in this house at a different time frame in this other dimension. So maybe we just kinda crossed. Or she came back in spirit as a ghost and wanted to see what happened to her house.

 

Collector’s Thoughts: This informant gave me many stories about ghostly encounters she has had and many spiritual stories she has heard. This informant has been surrounded by death, her father dying when she was a child and her mother and step father dying when she was an adult, and her open-mindedness to spirits may be why she has encountered so much and has heard many stories. The home was older and the fact that her step-father’s previous wifehood lived there and died may be why she saw her- like she said, maybe she was checking up on the house. It was very interesting listening to her and her stories and many ghostly motifs were involved in the story.

 

Negative Energy

Nationality: Colombian
Age: 18
Occupation: SMC Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: March 19, 2017
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: English

Informant: Isabella Milkes was born in Colombia and moved to the U.S. before 6th grade. Her immediate family does not follow a religion but they do believe in spirits; however, her mother’s side is very devoted Christians. Her aunts on her mother’s side live in Colombian and are leaders of their Church. Her ghostly experience takes place in her own home, where she later found out that before her family had moved in, there were already negative energy inside the house.

IM: “So what happened was that before New Years my mom likes to clean the apartment like really well to like start the year “fresh and new”, and so my mom was doing that and then she read something that if you want to clean all the negative energy in your home, you should clean everything with saltwater. So my mom did that and every since that happened, like weird things were happening to our apartment. For example, my brother would wake up around like 3am and open his eyes, but his body wouldn’t be able to move, and he would see a black shadowy figure with the outline of a human, or sometimes his bed would shake randomly during the middle of the night. Another thing strange that happened was that there were burnt cigarette spots on our carpet and it was freaky ‘cause NONE of us smoke and the burnt spots smelled like flavored cigarette. I also had an experience, where I woke up in the middle of the night and saw like a shadowy hand coming near me. Also my mom started getting really sick. So over summer, my mom went back to Colombia to visit her family and in Colombia, she and her family went to a one of those spiritual mediums who can contact the ghostly world. She told her that there was a stable bad energy in our apartment before our family moved in, and once my mom did the cleaning with salt water, it kind of awakened that energy and that negative energy needed to be released. She did some rituals and prayers during the religious cleanse in order to safely release the energy. And when that was over, and my mom came back to America, all the haunted things that were happening went away. My mom told us that apparently when you do those sort of cleanses, you have to shield yourself with something, like a prayer, before you do the cleanse, so that the bad energy doesn’t affect the person who is performing the cleanse.”

How did this experience impact you?

“Well, it didn’t really impact me in anyway. I mean me and my family don’t believe in ghosts, because we think of these things as negative energy. We also don’t believe in Western medicine. So, for example, when I’m sick, I don’t eat Tylenol or Advil, instead I drink homemade remedies my mom makes. If something is bothering us, such as something worrying us, or we’re not happy or stressed, then we do medication or therapy through a holistic credited psychologist, because we need to release the energy that’s making our body energy unbalanced.”

My thoughts:

This story scared me on multiple levels. Firstly, it makes me wonder what’s the difference between cleaning the house with bleach and salt water? Another thing I found scary about this story was the intensity of the presence of the ghost. The ghost affected her brother, mother’s health, her house, and herself. The ghost reminds me of the Japanese Gaki that are hurtful to or are seeking revenge on the living. Another aspect I found interesting was that usually one would see, hear, of feel ghosts, but in her story, the ghost gave off a smell from the cigarette spots. I also found it pretty amazing in that the rituals they performed in Colombia affected their home in America.

Ghost Girl

Nationality: Japanese
Age: 21
Occupation: UCSB Student
Residence: Santa Barbara, CA
Performance Date: March 17, 2017
Primary Language: Japanese
Language: English

Informant: K S is a junior at UCSB who is majoring in Political Science. He was born and raised in Japan, and has recently moved to the U.S. in 2016. Him and his family do believe in ghosts. His story takes place near his apartment complex in Japan. His apartment complex is also situated near a temple.

KS: “Well when I used to live in Japan, like before coming here for college, I lived with my family in a complex with three other families. I lived with my mom, dad, and little sister. The three other families were an elderly couple, a young single man, and another married couple with no kids. So one day I was walking back home from school and I saw a little girl standing in front of my house and waving at me. I thought it was my sister so I waved back. I was going to catch up with the girl but she walked inside the complex before I could say another word. When I got into the house looking for whom I’d thought to be my sister, I couldn’t find her. I asked my mom, who was cooking, where my sister was and she said that she hasn’t come home yet. So the girl just came into my house and disappeared, because when I asked the other people who lived in the same complex, they said they had never seen or heard a girl walk in. I have no idea who the girl was, or where she went, or why she was there. ”

Impact on KS:

“I don’t know, I mean it was pretty whatever. I’d just assumed the ghost girl used to live in my complex before she died. Although this is my only ghostly experience, I didn’t find it scary or shocking or anything. I told my family about it and everyone was like really casual about it. It’s actually really interesting how my friends here think seeing a ghost is scary, I mean not all ghosts are harmful or scary ya know.”

My thoughts:

His story reminds me of the stories discussed in class about the ghostly visitations seen by middle-aged New England women, because his encounter was harmless. Also when he was telling the story, he told it very casually as if seeing ghosts wasn’t something that occurred once of twice. What I found interesting was that, as discussed in class, cultural backgrounds could impact one’s ghost belief. KS and his family members are examples of how Eastern cultures have a higher belief in ghosts than Western cultures. In relation to his story, I think that maybe the ghost girl had something to do with the temple because the temple represents a spiritual place where people would pray to their dead ancestors.