Tag Archives: family

The Basement Ghost of the Chicago Fire

Nationality: American 

Age: 54, 60

Occupation: Producer, Producer/Writer 

Residence: Silverlake, CA, Sherman Oaks, CA 

Performance Date: November 28, 2024

Primary Language: English

CONTEXT:

This story was told by two sisters who were born and raised in a nice metropolitan neighborhood in Chicago in the 1970s.

STORY:

L: Alright so we lived in a building that was built over a graveyard. After the Chicago fire, that whole area was a graveyard, and they dug up all the graves and put the buildings over that area. Why they had the graves in what was potentially some of the best area, I have no idea.

So our house was built over a graveyard; this was not known to me.

We lived in, we had the basement, and we had a bedroom down in the basement–a couple bedrooms and a bathroom. And this was after Roberta had lived down there. I lived down there. And I went to the bathroom, and it was late at night, and as I was–I think I was peeing, I don’t know–the shower, uh, handle– so you have a handle where you turn the water on and off–the shower handle, the backing for it flew off the wall on its own. And so I opened up the thing cause I thought maybe something had fallen, I wasn’t quite sure, and when I opened up the thing, water came out of the shower head. And I freaked out.

And now, you have to understand, I believed in ghosts anyway, because when you live in Chicago you have ghosty experiences.

I freaked out and I ran upstairs to my mother’s room and I said “there are ghosts in that bathroom!”

And she said “what are you talking about? Go away. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She was asleep.

And I went back downstairs and I said okay cool. I’m never gonna shower in that bathroom again, that’s fine. And I went about my business.

Days later, she said “I talked to your sister, Roberta,” who also lived down there “and she said that she agreed with you; there are ghosts down in the basement.”

Roberta, what did you experience?

R: The shower would just turn on. The shower, you’d walk in and the shower would just turn on. 

L: Like it did for me.

R: You’d walk down the hall and suddenly the shower is on, or the sink has been turned on. And there’s no one there. And yeah it’s over a graveyard. It like, they are still finding bones and other body parts when they’re excavating those houses. So… 

L: So I would go into the bathroom, and I would talk to the ghost. I never showered in there again, by the way. I think you did, I never did.

R: I showered in my shoes.

L: I would go in the bathroom, I would pee, I would wash my hands in the sink, and I would talk to the ghost sometimes. I would just chit chat. No one talked to me–I never saw a physical ghost–no one had words back for me or anything like that. But we came to an agreement that I would not use the shower and it would not, I don’t know, kill me.

ANALYSIS:

This story very evidently displays some unexplained instances that occurred in this house, and is a prime example of one element commonly found in ghost stories: improper burial. Because the house in this story is still standing to this day and has not been excavated, it is not known whether or not there were remains under this specific house. But it was made clear that the area was once a graveyard for the victims of the Chicago fire, and the neighboring houses–when excavated–had bones and other remains in their foundations and the soil beneath. So it could very well be possible that the souls of individuals who were given an improper burial still lurk within the basements and abandoned rooms of these homes.

The Nova Scotia Spirit

Nationality: American 

Age: 60 

Occupation: Writer 

Residence: Sherman Oaks, CA 

Performance Date: November 28, 2024

Primary Language: English

STORY: “I was in Nova Scotia staying at my parents’ house on a cove on the water, and my grandmother was very sick, and she was dying nearby at the hospital. And I’d been like two or three times, and it’s grueling. Everytime you leave it’s like you’re saying goodbye to someone for the last time; it’s hard. And she was very very sick. And so, I believe my mother was at the hospital, and I was standing on the dock, overlooking the cove, watching, like, dolphins and whales swim by, and I saw coming down from the sky, this…entity, like, almost like, with like…gossamer, flowing fabric behind it. Came tight down right in front of me, down into the water, up, around me, and then went away. And I was like ‘what the actual?’ And then my mother called and said that her mother just died. So I’m guessing maybe she was…saying goodbye.”

ANALYSIS: Seeing as this happened before the individual knew of her grandmother’s passing, it is less likely that the entity she witnessed was merely a manifestation of her grief, or a way to cope with her grandmother passing away. While it could’ve been subconscious, it is still unlikely. It is interesting, however, that the spirit described in this story with “gossamer, flowing fabric” that came from the sky, is eerily similar to a lot of modern Western visual interpretations of ghosts. It was not a corporal entity, nor one that resembled an animal, but a very traditional “ghost” of sorts. Nonetheless, it could be plausible that it was the ghost or the spirit or the soul of the individual’s grandmother saying goodbye one last time.

Family Comfort

Collector’s Name: Aarushi Kumar

Nationality: Indian

Relationship: Mother 

Occupation: Employed

Performance Date: November 30, 2024

Age: 53

Primary Language: Hindi

Context: When talking about ghost stories with another subject, K willingly chimed in with her story. To maintain confidentiality, names and adjectives suggesting relations to the interviewer have been removed. This recollection has been transcribed from the interviewee’s native language, Hindi, to English. 

A.K is the interviewer, K is the interviewee

Transcription: 

[A.K] Do you see any of your loved ones who have passed away in your dreams?

[K] I have very vivid dreams, yes. I see “Daadi” (the subject’s mother-in-law) more than [her husband] does– he never sees her, but I do. 

[A.K] And what is she doing?

[K] Oh, she’s always doing what she did before she died. Cooking food, sitting at the dining table, chatting on the phone. It’s like she never left.

[K] I often see my mom in my dreams. She appears usually, uh, after big events, like when I got into the car crash– the one by the stop sign– and she’s always there to give me advice. She never speaks- she normally gives me, like, a nod or a smile from the corner [of the room], but that- that is her way of saying what she needs to say. Like when I got married– I did not want to get married at all. I really didn’t! I argued so much with [her father]. But, the night before the wedding, I saw my mother in my dreams with a reassuring smile. That’s how I knew I would be okay, and only then did I feel ready to marry. 

The Subject’s Thoughts: 

[A.K] Why do you think you see her so vividly and only in crucial moments of your life?

[K] She is watching over me. I think she is resting peacefully, but she died so young. She didn’t get to raise her children properly, and I think that is what makes her reappear in my dreams. She wants to raise me, so she.. I think she does it in the afterlife by showing up in my dreams.

My Thoughts: 

K’s story demonstrates a very heartwarming instance of an ancestral ghost story. 

It’s common for people to see their loved ones in their dreams, and, like in K’s story, they often are there to provide some sort of reassurance. For K, her mother appears to her in very anxious moments of her life, and K always feels calmer and more in charge after her appearance. Often, as an adult, there are fewer sources of comfort for people to turn to because you are usually emotionally and physically farther away from your birth family, and this is the case for K as well. Having her mother make appearances, therefore, is very important to K because it’s one of the only times when she can feel not alone. This is especially important to note for K’s instance because K immigrated to the United States and away from her family 3 decades ago. She has been very isolated from her birth family due to this, so these appearances by her deceased mother help bridge the distance between her childhood and her adulthood. 

It is also important to note the cultural background of this story. K had an arranged marriage, a custom that was very standard at the time in India, and her reluctance to get married makes more sense in this context. She would have rather stayed in India with her birth family, but the marriage opened the door to a new family and, soon after, a new home across the globe. Although she is very happy with her life now, K describes how she always misses home. Seeing her mother in her dreams is a way to go back home without physically going back, adding to why it is so comforting for K.

The Ghost of Bob

Recently, my good friend M.M. was hospitalized with severe pneumonia. When I traveled home for Fall Break, I visited him in the hospital, where his mom, J.M., was also keeping him company. With not much else to do, we spent a lot of time talking, and at one point, I asked if they had any ghost stories. It turned out that J.M. had quite a few, and one of them stood out in particular.

“Well I’m not sure if M.M. told you this, but our old house, back in Illinois, was haunted! The previous owners wife had died of cancer and the husband ended up committing suicide because of that. He actually hung himself in one of the doorways. Creepy right? But we didn’t think too much of it. It was a good house for the price. Anyways, soon after we moved in we’d begin to see a man through the windows. He always wore a blue polo shirt, a Titleist hat, a big gold watch, and he had golden arm hair. At first, I thought he was a neighbor just wandering too close to the property or something, but by the time I got outside to see what was going on, he’d be gone. It was really weird so one day I asked one of our neighbors, “Hey, have you seen a guy in a blue polo and a Titleist hat around here?” And she got this weird look on her face and said, “Oh, that’s Bob!” Turns out Bob was the husband that had killed himself! Evidently he always wore polos, a Titleist hat, and a gold watch. It gave me chills, honestly. I mean, how do you explain that? And it wasn’t just the sightings, things around the house would always move. Stuff I knew l’d left in one spot would end up across the room. Papers from the desk would be scattered all over the floor, or things would show up on a high shelf that I could barely reach. It was like Bob was always playing pranks on us. It wasn’t scary, just… annoying. We thought it might have been the cat at first, but it just kept happening and it was so strange. But we got used to it l guess. It just became a part of living there. Every now and then, I’d see Bob through the window or feel his eerie presence in the room with me. I still don’t know what to make of it. I don’t even know if I believe in ghosts, but how do you explain that, you know? But once we moved to Michigan, no more Bob, no more annoying pranks. Sometimes I wonder if the new owners have seen Bob, or if he finally found some peace.” 

I find this story fascinating and was not expecting such a chilling response from my friend’s mom. It is both eerie and intriguing, filled with classic ghost story motifs like a haunted house, mysterious sightings, and a restless spirit tied to tragedy and loss. The fact that Bob’s presence was more mischievous than malevolent makes it even more interesting. It makes me wonder how many other untold memorates like this are hidden in everyday conversations, waiting to be discovered.

Haunted Valley in Los Angeles

AGE: 18
Date_of_performance: November 18,2024
Informant Name: Henry Dearborn
Language: English
Collector’s name: Sunghun Park
Nationality: American
Occupation: Student
Primary Language: English
Residence: USC

Main description:

HD: So my parents like to tell me that our house is haunted. um I grew up in a house built in the 1940s in the foothills of Los Angeles and it’s funny because they’ll bring it up at random times. You know, we’ll just be at dinner and they’ll be like, oh yeah, and the ghost at our house and I’m like, what? But one of the stories they’d told was um about how they would be getting ready for bed and uh they’d go to sleep, you know, on any given weekday, you know, and in the middle of the night, they’d hear a knocking. It’s loud as could be from the front door, and they’d get up, they’d be startled, they get up, they go check the door, they open it. Nothing, no one there. And they said this happens to them like every week. And I’m like, what? Because I didn’t I had never experienced anything like that. I mean, there was always the odd, you know, hairs on the back of my neck when I was alone in the room sort of thing. And my door slammed shut randomly, which is really freaky. But, you know, that that sounded very serious. And so they were like, let’s get a ring doorbell camera. And I was like, oh, okay, yeah, that’ll that’ll solve it. And we got a ring doorbell camera and we put it because they were they thought it was something somebody real. And the ring doorbell that we set it up and one night, the knocking came and it went, and in the morning they checked the ring door bell, and the tape froze. at like one in the morning, just before the knocking. Like it wouldn’t play anything past that. So that was freaky. um I should ask them if if they still hear the knocking, because that’s really creepy. And yeah, I don’t know. That’s my ghost story.

INFORMANT’S OPINION:

MP: So do you think the knocking sound and the camera stopping are due to something supernatural or just a coincidence?

HD: Honestly, I still have no idea what it was. I mean it still gives me goosebumps, especially when I think about it freezing. It could be a technical glitch or a real ghost. My parents always bring it up at family gatherings. However, given that nothing much has happened since then, I think it is a little far from a supernatural phenomenon. 

PERSONAL INTERPRETATION: 

I think HD’s story is more of a paranormal thing than a coincidence, as physical things like door slams and sudden doorbell camera freeze happening together. A weekly knock suggests a pattern, especially when you might see the doorbell camera frozen because ghosts might’ve been interrupting something. This fits the common ghost theme of the soul interacting with its surroundings. HD seems skeptical, but I think the recurring pattern of events really shows that it may be related to home and other paranormal beings.