The Secret Girlfriend Dream

Age: 20

Informant: “The craziest paranormal thing that’s ever happened to me is my sister predicting that I have a girlfriend in Qatar. Like months before I told any of my family. She dreamt that I had a secret girlfriend in Qatar in like September”

Interviewer: What happened in the dream?

Informant: “The ghost of my dead grandfather told her. It was strange since he died a long time ago. 

Interviewer: How did you find out about this dream?

Informant: “It’s crazy. She knows everything. Really this last time was the craziest by far. She’s predicted other things, but I don’t remember exactly what. 4 months after her dream I came home to tell my family that I had a girlfriend in Qatar. They were shocked too. They were like ‘your sister had that dream months ago, and we didn’t really care because it was a dream.’ I wonder what other things she knows about me.”


Context: The informant has a girlfriend who currently studies in Qatar that he had held off sharing with his family until this point. This story was told to the interviewer because the informant was truly shocked by the events. 

Their Thoughts: The informant reflects a partial belief, as the experience challenges his sense of control over personal information. This story is a memorate, since it’s a firsthand account of lived experience. 
My Thoughts: This narrative fits within similar narratives of dream revelation and communication with the dead. The informant’s sister’s dream functions as a form of supernatural knowledge acquisition, where hidden or private information is revealed without normal means. The appearance of the deceased grandfather aligns with a belief in spirits acting as intermediaries. Instead of predicting a future event through precognition, the dream reveals an already existing but concealed reality. The sister is framed as having a special intuitive ability, even without consistent evidence. This is often shown throughout ghost stories as a clairvoyant. The specificity of the detail makes this a strong ghost story, as the perceived legitimacy of the supernatural explanation is strengthened.

The Long Shadow

Age: 18

Informant: “I became very paranoid when it first started happening. My parents were on a work trip in another country for a month. This wasn’t the first time they did this, so I wasn’t worried about being home alone. It randomly happened one night when I was sitting on my bed in the dark. I felt something feel my back.”

Interviewer: Was this a one time occurrence?

Informant: “Every day for the rest of my time home alone, I felt the sensation again. Eventually, I started using my sunset lamp since I was afraid to be in the dark. With the sunset lamp, I realized that there was an unforeseen issue. I could see shadows. The first night I used it, I started to see a long figure, kinda like slenderman, and afterwards felt it again.” 

Interviewer: How did you react to this, it sounds scary.

Informant: “I tried to check the shadow, but it was only ever in the corner of my eye. When I tried to directly look at it, it disappeared, but it never really went away. Once my parents came back, I never felt the sensation again, but my paranoia has spiked to a maximum. They’ve gone on more trips, but my anxiety is at an all time high every time I’m home alone. I can’t help but think it’s going to happen again.”

Context: The informant lives in a suburban neighborhood, and has not previously experienced paranormal activity. The house that the informant resides in was built within the past 20 years. She has only told the interviewer this story.

My Thoughts: This is a supernatural memorate. The reference to slenderman shows that internet folklore shapes the way that people interpret unexplained experiences. The fact that the experiences stopped when her parents returned suggests a link between isolation and vulnerability. This theme is commonly seen where being alone creates conditions for encounters. Folklore can produce long term psychological effects, even after the events cease, as seen in this case. 

Their Thoughts: The informant believes that this was a supernatural experience, and it has taken a toll on her sense of security at home. However, she considers scientific explanations, such as light and shadow distortion or a psychological reason for feeling tactile sensations.

The Jinn among the Trees

Age: 17

Q: Before we begin, who and where did you first hear about this story and the general context?

A: It happened in Bangladesh and I learned it from my brother. 


Story: This happened in Bangladesh and I was told it from my brother but basically they were staying right next to this deep forest. And if you go there, a lot of kids love to play around and hangout, and it’s like a bunch of trees in the surrounding area. The thing is though, most people don’t really like to go there because they believe there’s Jinns. So for this specific story it was maybe around, like, 7:30-ish at night, and some of the kids were playing out there and just messing around. And because it was getting late, they thought they saw, like, this tall figure. So then they decided to, like, leave, because they were getting spooked down. Like, everyone knew there were Jinns already there, but they realized too late. And one of the kids apparently ended up getting the jinn stuck to him. So then that kid became possessed and took him and immediately the kids screamed and ran to the parents. But as they did so, the possessed kid started to act super weird talking about having a past life and how he was a soldier and some other nonsense. When the parents found out they immediately went to find an exorcist, but I don’t know what happened after. 

Q: And what do you think about this story?

A: Well I think that if I was in that little kid’s position I’d definitely be scared y’know? 

Interviewer’s thoughts on the story: I think this is a very interesting story. Especially because looking at the conversation, Jinns which are heavily present in islamic stories is the first thing to be thought of as the causation for the behavior and also as a cautionary for the unknown. As jinns have a will similar to humans, they can be both ‘evil’ or ‘good’ natured allowing them to freely express themselves. Yet as a result, most Bengali people tend to focus inherently on the idea that they can be ill-natured and cause possession, enforcing this idea to avoid the unknown much like in the forest. 

Forbidden Forest

Age: 18

Q: Before we begin, who and where did you first hear about this story?

A: I saw it in this old tv show I can’t remember the name of years ago and I was watching at night. 

Story: There’s two really poor people in this village that faces a gloomy forest. They are a mother and son and this forest was believed to be cursed, holding spirits that would cause the death of anyone who goes inside. Despite this, the mother and son decided to go into the forest out of desperation for a source of food as they had been starving. When they went in, the had unexpectedly found tons of food and told all the villagers, but the villagers were skeptical but the mother and son ignored it. Instead they ate the food and went home, but that night the villagers claimed they saw a green haze wandering into their home that night. The next day, the villagers found the mother dead and the son barely surviving looking so pale it was like he had no blood left in him. The son’s last words were to never go into the forest again, reiterating what the villagers had said to them before that it was both evil and cursed. 

Q: And what do you think about this story?

A: I think it was a very common ghost story I’ve heard throughout the years. It was from a tv show so I don’t think it’s really a true one, but I’d say it could be scary. 

Interviewer’s thoughts on the story: This story, much like the teller said, is a very classic cautionary tale about ignoring warnings and desperation.  I think it does a good job showing how the mother and son were pushed into a dangerous decision because of their situation, which makes what happens to them more tragic than just a simple “they should have known better.” The mysterious green haze adds a creepy, supernatural element that reinforces the idea that the forest is truly cursed, not just a rumor and overall I would say would be classified as a ghost story. 

Catholic Ghosts, or demons?

Age: 51

BN: [When I] came across listening to Cha Hong, who was one of the very well-known priests in the Vietnamese community church. He has lots of different videos on YouTube people recorded and they put it up there. 

BN: So one time [when I] came across Cha Hong, sort of share that when he was in Vietnam, he witnessed himself, a person that is very, very young. Maybe a teenager, boy or something. That is acting like the grandparent like his own grandparent. 

Me: Wow. 

BN: So meaning…if [you], imagine if [you are] someone that knows the grandparent right? [You] ask this little boy [what year you were] born, everything they knew the answer. And this boy would even know something very, very special between the grandparent, and whoever that is in the room. So let’s say [you are] the grandfather’s son, right? 

BN: And then [when you were] very young, maybe he spanked the heck out of a [you] or something like that. Then this boy would even know that. So in short, Cha Hong also believes that there are spirits that could be…

Me: Haunting him?

BN: Yeah, will go into the person’s body and make the person act as that person. 

Me: Interesting. [Do you] believe that’s true?

BN: [I] also believe some of it, and then, in another time that [I] witnessed myself was in a marriage enrichment course. So every year there is an enrichment course…that we invite the couple, the husband and wife to go on a 3 day retreat, right? And then in [those] 3 days we do different things, we learn different things and [I] saw it twice. This couple. 

Me: The same couple twice?

BN: Yeah, the same couple twice. This couple, the wife when she is blending in with other people, she’s very normal. But during one time, in the course this is where, like, [you] suppose to look back and reflect upon you, your relationship with your spouse in relationship to God. Right, so it’s extremely extremely personal. And extremely spiritual. 

BN: And this time she would then [start] screaming gibberish words very scary things like nobody can understand what she was saying. But she was extremely loud, and [would] shake her body. 

BN: Like non-stop, and then somehow unbrokenly, she was able to say “Help me help me save [me], pray a Hail Mary, pray for me, Our Father pray for me. 50 of them,” like in broken spacing, out between the gibberish stuff, the scary stuff she was able to say that stuff 

Me: Sounds scary. 

BN: Yeah, it is then to the point where, after [I saw] like maybe 30 seconds to a minute of that, it was very exhaustive, so she kind of collapsed, she didn’t pass out. But she would collapse like on the floor. 

BN: Then, the priest in between there. Because we always have a priest in the room. So the priest was trying to do, like, you know, my Father and Son in the Holy Spirit and was doing some, maybe things that try to get the bad spirit out of her soul, whatever that is and would take a little bit, then she’ll snap back to normal. 

BN: But that only happens during the peak of the, you know, whatever we learned in class, not like normal conversation. So that’s why we believe that there’s some kind of bad spirit that goes and quáy phá, yeah. Anyway, that’s what [I] experienced. 

Me: [Do you] think, it’s the same spirit in both stories?

BN: Same mechanisms, same idea, but just depending on the circumstances. And the relative, or the person that’s affected by it. It’s different people, different means like on the little kid, it could be that the grandfather had to reappear to want to do something. But then in the case of that couple, the why, what the why went through is because the quáy phá, you know..what is it in English? 

Me: It’s like, causing disturbance. 

BN: Yeah, disturbing when she’s trying to get closer to God and trying to reconnect herself through realization and things like that. That’s when the bad stuff comes right during that time. 

Me: I see. 

BN: So, it’s different things with [the] same mechanism. 

More Details:

  • Context: This story was told March 18 2026, around bedtime by my mom. She was aware of USC Folklore archives collecting this story and told it freely.
  • Their thoughts: My mom thinks it’s a “religious” ghost or a demon causing these things. She largely leaves it unexplained, and isn’t 100% sure.
  • My thoughts: I agree, maybe the devil is up to weird things with some people. I do agree with the religious point of view for the second one, although the first it’s hard to tell.