Dead Man’s Cats

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: 11/3/21
Primary Language: English

AO: So um, my parents told me about when they first bought the house I was raised in, this old man used to live there. Had a ton of cats. And he passed away in the house. Most of the cats escaped, but some just stayed in the house cuz they were raised domestic or whatever. As the old man decayed for like a month, the whole house reeked of cat piss and shit, they weren’t being taken care of. Obviously his cadaver was removed– but when it was, they found that his corpse was like, completely unrecognizable. We assumed the cats ate the remnants of the corpse because it was so decayed. It was a lot of cleaning to do, cuz there was a lot of damage around the house. And a couple nights after it was being refurbished and totally cleaned out, my mom would walk into the kitchen and see a pair of glowing eyes in pitch darkness. Or she’d see blinds move, hear scratching of fabric or sofas. There was scratching at the doors too. And it went away for a while, but when we first got my dog, he always avoided a spot in the back yard. And my mom realized it was one of the ways the cats would get into the house from the streets and stuff. In fact, it got to the point where we wouldn’t see a single cat on the street for a couple years, and my dog would still go crazy at that spot near the house.

Context: collected during an in-person conversation.

Thoughts: This story felt especially morbid to me– especially with the gnarly cat-corpse ordeal. It’s such a disgusting and disturbing visual. Upsetting too. I think it’s interesting that this deals with the presence of animal ghosts, but not at all with the ghost of the old man.

“The Haunted Lesbian Dwelling”

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: 11/2/21
Primary Language: English

JF: So I lived in this house, um, in the suburbs of Georgia. It was built in the 50s or 60s, and it was a modern house at the time. And it looks really interesting now because it’s like an outdated style of house, but looks modern.

Me: Right.

JF: It’s just a weird house. I called it the “Haunted Lesbian Dwelling”. Um, so essentially when I was in this house, I had extremely bad depression. I wasn’t eating some days, sleeping all the time. I’d like, go to middle school.

JF: *laughs*

JF: It was terrible, I was so sad there. So anyway, the people who lived there before were two lesbians who currently owned the house cuz they don’t like the city. And two people had died in the house, of natural causes–

Me: The lesbians?

JF: No, not the lesbians. they were still alive. They just didn’t like living in the city and were renting out the house. But there were two families who’d lived there prior to the lesbians, we were told they died of natural causes. Well, we were told that, at least.

Me: What was it like there? What made it haunted?

JF: It was a very creaky house, we thought it was just old at first. But then things started to move on their own. And my mom just thought we were fucking with her. There was a wing of the house where things would just move, my mom would come back in the house and see things just moved, but my brother and I weren’t even home, so we couldn’t have moved it. Lights started to flicker– and these were just things that happened maybe because it was an old house. But, it happened in such a pattern that my parents were convinced it was haunted.

Me: Besides the things moving, lights– was there anything else that convinced your parents of this?

JF: Well, that and my dad said he heard voices of children in the walls when we weren’t home. My mom too. And I didn’t notice any of this shit the whole time, cause I was just in bed for most of this.

Me: Was there any reason you called it the “haunted lesbian dwelling” besides the fact lesbians owned the house?

JF: Nope, just thought it had a ring to it. And it was haunted. It was an accurate descriptor, so sue me!

Context: Collected during an in-person conversation.

Thoughts: I feel like this type of ghost story is classic to America. Older but not too old house has people die in it (whether of natural causes or not), and subsequent things such as lights flickering or objects moving occur. Minor, not too insane occurrences, but eerie enough to feel like a haunting.

Lights in the Wood

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Home Depot Associate
Residence: Enumclaw, Washington
Performance Date: 11/3/2021
Primary Language: English

Background: It was me and my friends enjoying one last night with the homies. Around 2 AM in the morning, very muddy and rainy. CK was talking with his friends.

Me: When and where were you informed about this incident that occurred?

CK: I was in the woods with my friends when I noticed two eye like lights looking at our directions. I get rid of the fire as soon as possible, but when I turn back around the lights weren’t there but got closer. Remember it was raining a lot and the ground was muddy. The object bolted off to the creek which was right next to my camping spot and heard a huge splashing noise. So I wake up the next morning and go back to the place where I saw the eye like lights, but there weren’t any tracks or footprints. I was sooooo scared and terrified. I went to the creek and saw a very big boulder in it. A normal person or animal wouldn’t be able to move that size of a rock. I asked one of my friends of this incident and they told me it could have been a skin walker.

Me: Why do you remember it?

CK: I remember this because it was traumatizing. We threw rocks and stuff at it but it did not move. It made me not want to be here anymore. It was a first time experience in the woods and I was playing horror video games the week before the campout.

Me: Was it more believable at night?

CK: I believe the late night definitely gave a spooky vibe. It was a very dark night where we were staying up very late.

Context of performance: Discord call

Thoughts: The informant considers this ghost story to be widely experienced especially in his small city. The story the informant told was nothing too out of left field, but still instilled that emotion of fear and shock into me (the audience). I, too, have experienced a similar incident during my boy scout campout in the woods when I was younger. I guess when you are in the woods or forests late in the night, there tends to be weird, spooky activity that may be happening.

Ghost in photography

Nationality: Chinese
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: Oct 29th
Primary Language: Chinese
Language: English

Me: Have you ever heard some ghost stories from your parents or grandparents?

S: Yes. I once heard a scary story from my parents.

Me: Why did they tell you this story?

S:You know, adults like to make fun of kids by telling them ghost stories and see how they are terrified.

Me: What is the story then?

S: It happened in a ‘Village-In-The-City’. A boy died of traffic accident and a funeral was held for him. Several girls passed by and one of them picked a flower from the wreath for the boy. She was going to a photo studio, hence she put the flower on her hair and took the photo. When the photographer developed the film, he barely saw a boy’s face behind the girl. He waited for the girl to come back and take the photo, but the girl never returned. He managed to get in contact with the friends of the girl, only to be told that the girl had died due to another traffic accident.

Context: The information was collected in a informal private conversation.

Interpretation: Both photos and ‘Village-In-The-City’ are related to ghost in Chinese cultural background. When photography was first introduced to China, people were terrified because they thought that the soul of human would be captured by the photos. So, when the girl picked the flower from wreath, an action that was considered to be irreverent, the soul of the dead boy might just followed her and was captured by the photo. ‘Village-In-The-City’ may be a special phenomenon in China when the city area expanded so fast that the original village is unable to move away. It is kind of a liminal space where the urban area overlaps with rural area, providing a good background for ghost stories.

Taxi Ghost

Nationality: Chinese
Age: 17
Occupation: student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: Oct 30th
Primary Language: Chinese
Language: English

Me: Could you tell me a ghost story that you heard before?

Z: Sure. I can even create a new story for you.

Me: Really? How is it like?

Z: Listen here. There was a taxi driver who often work during nights. When day, a woman in red took his car, telling him to go to a house in a small village. On the way, the woman was talking with someone through mobile phone. The driver heard from the conversation that the woman’s family was preparing a big meal and was waiting for her. When he finally arrived at the destination, he found that the woman was gone. He then came to knock the door of the house and ask the people inside about the woman. They told him that the woman died last year and they were preparing a meal to commemorate her since it was her anniversary.

context: the story was told in an informal private conversation.

interpretation: Taxi is a kind of common motif in ghost stories. There are also some stories in Japanese culture that are similar to this story, where a ghost, usually a woman, takes the taxi and then disappear when they arrive at the destination, which is usually his/her home. This may be because of the shared tradition of East Asia traditions to commemorate the death at a particular time point when the dead is considered to come back home. These related rituals and motifs are so common in East Asia sense of ghost story telling that they appeared in this improvised story by my friend when trying to create a ‘typical’ ghost story.