Tag Archives: childhood memory

The Girl with the Red Thread

Age: 18

Context:

One evening, while walking on campus with my friend, we began sharing spooky stories. She suddenly recalled something that had haunted her for years — a strange experience she had as a child, which had blurred the lines between dream, memory, and legend. This is the story she told me.

The Story:

When she was around 7 or 8 years old, she lived in a home with a study room that had a bed but was rarely used. One night, after waking from a nightmare, she found herself in that very study — a place she never usually slept in. She remembered lying beside her mom, both of them facing the wall, and gently shaking her awake out of fear.

She asked her mom to tell her a story because she couldn’t sleep. Strangely, her mom — who was known to strictly avoid ghost stories or anything scary — agreed. What happened next would stay with her for life.

Still facing the wall, her mom began to tell a ghost story. In the story, a nurse was working the night shift at a hospital. One evening, while heading out from the first floor, she took the elevator — but somehow, the elevator inexplicably descended to the 4th basement level instead, a floor used as a morgue.

This floor had no button, no lights, and no one should have been able to access it. But the elevator stopped there, the doors opened, and the nurse saw a little girl standing silently in the dark. The girl got into the elevator with her.

As the nurse glanced over, she noticed a red thread tied around the girl’s wrist. In Chinese superstition, red thread on the wrist is sometimes associated with the dead. The nurse was so frightened she reportedly died on the spot.

What terrified my friend wasn’t just the story itself — it was the realization much later in life that this was a widely circulated urban legend. Many people she later met had heard it before. And yet, she had never heard it before that night, and neither had her mother — who later insisted, repeatedly and sincerely, that she had no memory of telling the story, or even of waking up that night.

My friend later searched the story online and found that it had indeed been turned into a movie, or at least referenced in popular media. This deepened the mystery: how could a widely known ghost story have been told to her by someone who had never heard it — someone who vehemently denied ever telling it?

To this day, my friend remains disturbed by this experience. She remembers it vividly. Her mother, however, insists it never happened.

The Informant’s Thoughts:

She finds this story creepy, not because of the ghost itself, but because of the contradiction between her clear memory and her mother’s absolute denial. She believes the most chilling part of the experience isn’t the plot, but the uncertainty of how she ever came to hear it.

Years later, when telling others the story of the girl with the red thread, people would say, “Oh, I’ve heard that one!” But she hadn’t. Not before that night. Not ever.

My Thoughts:

What makes this story so compelling is not just the content of the ghost story, but how it plays with memory, belief, and reality. The idea that a story could be “implanted” through a moment that no one else remembers adds an eerie, almost psychological horror element to the tale.

It made me question how many of our memories are truly our own — and how stories that seem personal might actually belong to something much larger, floating around in the cultural subconscious, waiting to find a host.

The repetition — her telling the story to others, retelling it to her mother, and hearing denials each time — builds a quiet but powerful kind of fear. Over time, the story’s scariness comes not from the ghost, but from the accumulated sense of being haunted by a memory no one else shares.

As a piece of folklore, it’s fascinating because it shows how legends can find their way into our lives, not just through media or hearsay, but through deeply personal and unexplainable experiences.

The Shadow Behind the Curtain

Age: 18

Context:

This story was told to me by a Chinese international student at USC, whom I’ll refer to as SG. We were sitting together in one of the quiet study lounges at Parkside after midnight, discussing the kinds of ghost stories we’d heard growing up in China. That’s when she told me something she had never written down or shared publicly—something that happened to her in her childhood that she still remembers with frightening clarity.

The Story:

When SG was 10 years old, she lived with her grandparents in Harbin, a city known for its long, dark winters. Her grandfather had a habit of rising very early, often before sunrise, to boil water and do light chores. Their apartment had large, thick curtains that covered the floor-to-ceiling windows in the living room.

One early winter morning, just before 6 a.m., SG woke up suddenly. She had heard soft footsteps and assumed her grandfather was up again. Curious and still sleepy, she wandered out to the living room—only to find it completely dark, with no lights on. She paused at the doorway.

That’s when she saw it: a silhouette of a person standing perfectly still behind the curtain, as if staring out the window. The form was unmistakably human—tall, slightly hunched, and entirely motionless.

Thinking it was her grandfather, she called out to him.

No answer.

She approached slowly, heart pounding. The air felt wrong—too still, too cold, as if the temperature had dropped. When she finally touched the curtain and pulled it aside—

There was no one there.

No one in the room. No sound of footsteps. No open windows. Just the snow falling silently outside.

Terrified, she ran back to her room and hid under her blanket. She didn’t tell anyone for weeks.

Informant’s Thoughts (SG):

SG says what disturbed her most wasn’t the sight of the shadow, but the fact that she saw it so clearly, and yet her grandfather had still been asleep in his room the whole time. Years later, she still isn’t sure if it was a dream, a hallucination, or something else.

What unsettles her most is that she continues to experience the exact same dream every few years: waking up in a different place, walking into a dark living room, and seeing a shadow behind a curtain.

Each time, she says, she wakes up before pulling the curtain open.

My Thoughts:

To me, what makes SG’s story haunting isn’t just the visual horror of the silhouette—it’s the way it has embedded itself into her memory and dreams, repeating like a ritual.

I’m struck by how familiar this setting feels: cold northern apartment, heavy winter curtains, the eeriness of early morning silence. Even though nothing explicitly supernatural happens, the ambiguity makes it even scarier.

It also makes me think about how many ghost stories we hear as children in China are tied to domestic spaces—kitchens, hallways, staircases—not abandoned mansions or graveyards. They are ordinary spaces made terrifying by something just a little out of place.

This story lingered with me long after she told it—not because of a ghost, but because of the uncertainty that still follows her.

The Ghost of Avalon

Text: “In the summer of 1987, right after I graduated from high school, my family rented an old beach house on the 200s block Claressa Street in Avalon on Catalina Island. For those who know Avalon, it was founded in the late 1800s and became an upscale vacation destination in the early 1900s. My great-grandparents had a long-sold off house there and once the iconic Art Deco casino was built in the 1920s, the big bands would come and host their national radio programs from there while dressed-up couples danced the night away overlooking the bay. 

The old beach houses (and Casino) are known for being haunted with spirits from vacations past, but there wasn’t any reason for me to believe it since I’d never seen anything myself in all the years my family had vacationed there. That changed that summer of 1987. 

The original Avalon beach houses all had a similar design with the bedrooms often opening up from each other rather than a hall. In other words you had to walk through one bedroom to get to another, train car style. I was in the bedroom that you could only reach from the one my parents were in, and I had to walk through their room to get to the bathroom.

We would spend the days on the beach and in the sun, and go to bed fairly early since almost all activity takes place there around the ocean. Not much happens at night in Avalon. So after dinner we’d play board games or cards, then go to bed so we could get up early for another day of surf and sun. 

I had gone to sleep that night as always and was awakened by a man standing at the end of the bed looking at me. He was dressed in a dated-style suit with a freshly starched dress shirt with crisp collar points that came up higher on his neck than was the style during the Reagan administration. He was wearing a tie and had a brown hat, rounded bowler style, on his head. He just stood at the foot of the bed looking at me. 

At first I thought I was still asleep, dreaming, or in the confused state between wakefulness and deep sleep. But once I sat up and knew I was 1000% awake and was scared even though he was just standing there looking at me with a benign expression on his face. 

I screamed thinking someone had broken into my bedroom and my mom came running out of her bedroom. She also saw him but knew immediately he wasn’t ‘real’, or flesh and blood like we were. 

She explained to him that he didn’t belong there, that we were in the house now for a visit and that he needed to move along. Just a few seconds later he disappeared into the air. No walking through walls or talking, just dissolved into the air at the foot of my bed. 

I was rattled the whole rest of our vacation but he didn’t appear again. The house is still standing as it was 40 years ago. I’ve walked by it on subsequent trips and thought of the tall, thin man in the suit that visited me.”

Context: This story was shared by the informant, who was a young child at the time of the experience. The event marked a significant moment in the informant’s life, as it was the catalyst for their belief in the supernatural. Prior to this encounter, the informant had not paid much attention to stories of ghosts or spirits, but the vivid and unsettling experience that summer changed their perspective. The informant interprets this as the beginning of their belief in such phenomena, as it was the first time they had directly encountered something they couldn’t explain through logic or reason.

Since then, the informant has experienced several other supernatural encounters, reinforcing their belief in the paranormal. The informant’s perspective is further shaped by the fact that their mother had similar beliefs and, before she passed, shared other stories of her own supernatural experiences. This shared experience between the informant and their mother helped to strengthen their connection to the supernatural world and solidified the informant’s conviction that these types of encounters are real.

Analysis: The figure in the story—a man dressed in an old-fashioned suit—seems to reflect a historical presence tied to the location, adding to the eerie atmosphere of the old beach house. The figure’s benign, non-threatening demeanor contrasts with the fear that the informant felt, suggesting that the supernatural can be perceived as both unsettling and intriguing, rather than immediately harmful.

The way the informant handled the experience—by accepting the figure’s presence and interpreting it as part of a larger, supernatural world—illustrates how personal beliefs can be shaped by direct experiences. This encounter became a touchstone for the informant’s worldview, influencing how they view similar occurrences in the years that followed.

This story also underscores the broader cultural theme of haunted locations, especially in areas with long histories like Avalon. The idea of spirits lingering in places with significant pasts is a common motif in folklore. The informant’s ongoing belief in the supernatural and the continuation of similar experiences suggest that such encounters are seen not as anomalies but as part of a larger, unexplainable reality that transcends time and space.

Informant Info

Race/Ethnicity: White

Age: 55

Occupation: Mother

Residence: Westlake Village, CA

Date of Performance: April 3, 2025

Primary Language: English

Other Language(s): N/A

Relationship: Parent

A Social Curse – “The Cheese Touch”

Taken from audio recording:

“Informant:
Yeah, that makes sense. I know you mentioned this earlier, but the “cheese touch” was a huge thing at my school because Diary of a Wimpy Kid was filmed at my middle school.

Pearson:
No way.

Informant:
Yeah! So in middle school, the “cheese touch” was a real thing. It wasn’t even actual cheese, but more like the cooties thing—someone would “have” the cheese touch, and everyone would avoid them. The kid who played Greg Heffley, I think he actually went to my middle school, and his dad worked in the school system. So it was an even bigger deal for us.”

Analysis:

I experienced the “cheese touch” as “cooties” when I was in elementary school and some of middle school. I think it’s super interesting how this movie Diary of a Wimpy Kid had such a big impact on so many schools, especially the one my informant went to because the movie was filmed at their middle school. I’m sure it felt way more real for them. I think the idea is really interesting. Honestly, I don’t really understand it and didn’t really back then either. I guess “cooties” and the “cheese touch” are a little different. “cooties” was more of a gender vs. gender thing at my school versus the “cheese touch” being more about socially isolating someone for whatever reason. The “cool kids” in school wouldn’t be the ones getting the “cheese touch” while “cooties” in my school didn’t have that kind of social hierarchy restriction. I feel like the “cheese touch” is used more as a way to even further alienate kids that aren’t very popular and that’s a horrible thing. It, to me, is like another form of bullying and that’s really sad.

Age: 20

Date of performance: Told to me on February 13, 2025. Popularized after the 2007 “Diary of a Wimpy Kid”

Language: English

Nationality: American

Occupation: Student at USC

Primary Language: English

Residence: From California, lives somewhere in the Los Angeles area