Cyber Ghost: Queen Mary Ghost Detector

Nationality: Filipino
Age: 18
Occupation: Cal Poly SLO Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: March 12, 2017
Primary Language: English

Informant: During Brittany Pedrosa’s senior year of high school, she was ASB president and had to pick a location for her school’s prom night. One of her choses was the Queen Mary ship, and in order to get a better look at the layout, her and her fellow student representatives went on a tour with a tour guide on the Queen Mary. Before going to the ship, she and her friends had heard that the ship was haunted and decided to download a ghost-hunting app on their iPhones. She does not remember the exact name of the app because she deleted it right after the tour.

BP “It’s not that scary, but it scared me. I went with my friends to check out the Queen Mary for our possible prom night location, and before I went I downloaded this thing called Ghost Tracker. It would show dots if there was an entity and words would also pop up. The words would be related to the ghost, like if someone drowned, it would say something like “pool” or “cold” or “breathe”. We went with a tour guide around the Queen Mary and I just kept my phone tracker on, not really looking at it. But when we went up to one of the rooms, my phone turned super bright and I could see it illuminating from my pocket. So I picked up my phone and saw that it had a dot and said “fire” and “smoke”. When the tour guide came up to that room, he told us that sometimes people would smell smoke because there was a guy who died in there from a fire, and he used to smoke a lot. That scared me because the app was accurate in detecting the ghost and some things about it.”

Impact on BP: “Honestly, this experience freaked me out ‘cause, it’s like even if there aren’t any actual solid evidence that ghosts exist, there certainly are signs that indicate there is some kind of invisible ghostly energy still lingering in this world. Like for me now, I just kinda avoid topics related ghosts and the supernatural, because I don’t really want to know if they exists or not, so I would say I don’t believe in ghosts, but I also believe that there are things out there that are supernatural.”

My thoughts: I found it interesting in that BP’s ghostly experience actually made her not want to believe in ghosts; whereas, I would usually guess seeing or getting signs of ghosts would make one believe in ghosts more. BP’s belief in ghosts reminds me of the discussions in class about what is means to believe in a “ghost”, because the definition varies among people. For example, some people would consider unsettling ghostly energy or an unsettling feeling as signifying the presence of a ghost; however, BP would not say that there is a ghost, just some supernatural energy that is undefined and unexplainable. BP’s story also makes me wonder how the app, or any ghost hunting apps/electronics, actually measure and detect ghost presence.

Hospital Visitation

Nationality: Caucasian
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Fluor Tower
Performance Date: March 26, 2017
Primary Language: English

For this collection, I will be using initials to denote the conversation between the interviewer and the interviewee.

AJ -> Interviewer

LA -> Interviewee

——-

AJ: Have you, or has anyone close to you, ever experienced something strange or unexplainable?

 

LA: Like spirits sorta-stuff?

 

AJ: Yes! Can you tell me about an experience?

 

LA: So one time, it was Christmas day, and “santa” (my parents) bought me and my sister a go-kart as our present. It didn’t have any roll bars and was pretty dangerous. At the time, my sister was 11 and went to ride it after me. She came flying around a curb way too fast and crashed. The go-kart did multiple barrel rolls,  flips, skidded across the road on its side, and then landed on the wheels again. My sister was very, very close to crushing her skull on the asphalt. Meanwhile, my grandfather was in the hospital, and had been in a coma 6 days. Later that afternoon, my mother went to visit him and he awoke for the first time. The first thing he said to her was “How is [the sister]? I heard she was hurt. My wife visited me and told me about the crash.” But, the thing is, our grandmother had pass away, so essentially he said an angel visited him.

 

AJ: How would you explain this? Would you say it was a ghostly visitation or luck, or do you think someone visited him before your mother and told him the story, or something else?

 

LA: Well, I don’t believe in ghosts, but I do think there are spirits. I’m not sure how I might classify them differently. Maybe like an energy that flows around us constantly, and it can carry thoughts or ideas that the human mind can pick up on beyond our cognitive recognition.

———-

After thoughts:

This story has a lot of the classic motifs. For one, it takes place on Christmas day, which is a liminal period. In addition, similarities can be drawn to Gillian Bennett’s “Alas, Poor Ghost!” where many of the interviewees don’t believe in ghosts, but they believe in alternative definitions, such as “spirits,” “energy,” “angels,” and “visitations.” LA exhibits these same notions, further proving that lexicon choice is important when asking about experiences.

The Orbs

Nationality: African American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Fluor Tower
Performance Date: March 23, 2017
Primary Language: English

For this collection, I will be using initials to denote the conversation between the interviewer and the interviewee.

AJ -> Interviewer

NH -> Interviewee

———

AJ: Have you, or has anyone close to you, ever experienced something strange or unexplainable, like ghostly encounters or anything of the sort?

NH: There was a time that I was in the sixth grade and had a weird morning. It was early in the morning, in like homeroom period after I had just gotten to school. I went to my assigned group section to sit until the first bell and I sat down. I put my head down for a second and spaced out because my friends weren’t there yet. I closed my eyes, and when I opened my eyes, it was as if the whole world was tinted blue, sort of like the blue fire that you see in cartoons or anime that represent your soul. In addition to the tint, there was a blue orb near the bodies of the people that were present. I was very confused and questioned what was going on. I tried to look closer at the orbs, but when I closed my eyes, everything was normal again. I just shook it off and continued about my day after that

(Brief pause)

NH: Oh and, there was also another instance too! One night I was sitting watching tv in the living room with my family, when all of a sudden our dog and two cats all looked up towards the corner of the room near the stairwell. The fur on the back of their necks began to stand up, and nothing could break their attention away from the corner. Out of curiosity, my brother began to snap a continuous line of pictures of the corner. When going through them later, all of the pictures were the same except for two; there were two pictures that had a weird white orb in the corner. Never could explain that one.

 

AJ: Do you think these events are connected in any sort of way? Is there a bigger picture, or general explanation you might be able to give?

 

NH: I honestly don’t think anything of it. For the school incident I think I was just way too tired. And for the orb in the pictures I think it was probably just like a flash from the tv or something. I don’t know. Maybe it was a ghost or a spiritual visitation, but I can’t be sure, and I’m leaning more towards my mind just playing games.

———-

After thoughts:
This is an interesting set of stories, because in both stories, he describes his strange sights as “orbs.” He also draws connections to the representation of the soul. In addition, these collections show the classic motif of traditions of disbelief; NH plays off the stories by blaming himself for being tired or by blaming the TV for adjusting the light, even though he mentioned to me later on that he does in fact believe in ghosts.

 

A Ghostly Shove

Nationality: Indian
Age: 18
Residence: Texas
Performance Date: March 15, 2017
Primary Language: Gujarathi
Language: English

“My dad, when he was younger, around the same age as us [18] was in his house, and it was an old house that they had. He was on the [third floor] terrace, just sitting or whatever, just looking over the top, just standing there. No one was up there; it wasn’t windy, nothing. Literally, he felt someone push him, like an actual shove, as he was looking over. All there is is just like a little border and then you fall. And so he felt someone push him. He fell over the thing, fell down, and like broke his arm. No one was upstairs, everyone was downstairs. And it was just him and his mom, like his brothers were gone. It was just him upstairs. So yeah, he broke his wrist or whatever. And so, like he, I mean, everyone thinks it was a ghost. I’m pretty sure, like…what else would it be? He didn’t just like, he didn’t trip, he was just standing there and he felt someone push him, and the next thing you know, he’s falling off of the third floor. So yeah, no one really went up there after that.”

 

A lot of the elements in this ghost story are common to many ghost narratives. For one, this occurrence happened during adolescence, which is a common time for ghostly activity to happen in one’s life. Additionally, the story is set in an “old house,” which is also common in ghost stories, a building with a long history. In this story, the ghost seems to be corporal, though the father does not see or hear the ghost; even still, he undeniably feels it. This story is interesting to me because the father doesn’t just claim he felt a soft touch or a poke; he experiences a hard push that results in him tumbling down three stories and breaking his wrist. It is difficult to imagine why, if his story is false, he would tumble over the edge of the terrace, especially in the absence of wind or other people to accidentally (or purposely) bump him. As my informant asked, “what else would it be?”

Bhutan Folktale.

Nationality: American/Arab
Age: 37
Occupation: Unemployed.
Residence: New York, New York.
Performance Date: 04/24/16
Primary Language: English

Informant:

Bandar is an American who was traveling in Bhutan when he heard this folktale. He is an abid traveler and student with a masters in International Relations.

 

Original script:

Two friends, monkey and hen live together. Monkey is always sent to work everyday hen stays at home and cooks for the monkey. The hen of course lays egg.

One day the monkey is working hard, right? In the field he works, while the hen gets to stay home, you know? So the monkey says, “ Now I’m going to cook for you, YOU go in the field and work”

Before, he watches the hen how hen does cooking and cleans everything up. What monkey sees is hen laying an egg over the pan. Monkey send hen to the field, she cleans everything up. She starts to cook and like the hen she sits over the oven and squeezes. No egg come out but of course other things come out, the poops come out, and it splashes the oil and burns off all his fur. So then we say its not always good to copy”

 

Background Information about the Piece by the informant: Bandar was traveling in Bhutan when the guide he was traveling with told him this folktale and recorded it for me.

 

Context of performance:

Told to my informant on a long car ride up in Bhutan.

 

Thoughts on this piece:

The story like most tales reflects belief system in the Bhutanese culture and provides a moral story on common sense. It is interesting that the narrator switches the sex of the Monkey and Hen. Does this mean that gender roles are not as important in Bhutan?