Tag Archives: ghost story ghost stories

Churches and Ghosts

Nationality: Chinese/Vietnamese
Primary Language: English
Other language(s): Mandarin, Cheo Chow (Chinese Dialect)
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: LA, California
Performance Date: 3/16/2024

Context:

My informant, AC, is a friend of mine from my freshman year at USC from Los Angeles, California. I talked with her one day about crazy stories that any of us might have from our childhoods after talking about injuries and so on. After the injury stories I remembered a crazy ghost story of mine and told her about it. She then offered to reciprocate and told me about one of her ghost stories. It was pretty crazy and also interestingly not tied to her own culture, past, or beliefs. Here is what she said:

Text:

“So I had this catholic friend who believed in all kinds of spirits and stuff from his catholic school, and while with him and a few other friends, most of whom believed in ghosts and spiritual stuff except me and another friend, because we were skeptics, experience the craziest and scariest thing we’ve dealt with in our lives. I’m a skeptic yes but in my culture, we don’t really have spooky scary ghosts, we have native spirits and more conceptual stuff so I didn’t think any of my friend’s’ ghost ideals were actually real. But all that skepticism kinda went away when my catholic friend jokingly asked us if we wanted to explore the church basement of his catholic school as a way to make us believe ghosts were real, as he’d claimed before that he’s seen and experienced ghost activity around that building. All of us were bored, (we were children at this point, maybe around 12 or 13), so we said yes and we went up there midday to check out this basement and well, stuff went down. We all went in, the basement was extremely dark, not even a phone flashlight, which we were using, could shine far enough to see ahead of us, only slightly though, plus, the basement was huge, like a large cellar, a sort of maze. As soon as we got in, the door slammed behind us and one of my friends sprinted over to open it and it seemingly locked itself shut. We then started hearing footsteps in the distant darkness coming from far away but seemingly getting closer. We all start to freak out, huddling next to the door, most of us trying to open it as fast as we can to escape but to no avail. Then suddenly we hear whispering noises and faint wind blowing all around us which is strange because there was and was no breeze in or outside previously. As this is happening, one of my skeptical friends said they saw something, like a silhouette in the distance and it’s they said that it was just standing there in the darkness staring at us. At this point I was probably crying out of fear and everyone was freaking out equally, which just made everything worse, until finally the door cracked open, seemingly without any of us touching it, and we all sprinted and fell out of the basement and onto the grass outside. The moment we got outside, the door slammed shut once again and we all ran home and never really spoke of that moment again.”

Analysis:

Wow, I mean, personally I’ve experienced some interesting seemingly ghostly tales but this one is crazy to explore and hear. First off, the connection between catholic churches and ghost hauntings goes way back, I mean seriously. The beliefs and folklore surrounding ghost hauntings in Catholic churches can be traced back to centuries ago, with stories and legends often rooted in historical events and cultural traditions dating back to medieval times and earlier. In my own research of this ideal, apparently, the connection between Catholic churches and ghost hauntings is often rooted in cultural beliefs, historical significance, and popular folklore rather than official Catholic doctrine. Many Catholic churches have a long history and rich cultural heritage, making them popular settings for ghost stories and legends. The presence of burial grounds or crypts within or near some churches, along with the religious symbols and rituals associated with Catholicism, can contribute to perceptions of spiritual or supernatural activity. Cultural beliefs about spirits and ghosts, as well as popular media portrayals of haunted locations, further shape public perceptions of ghost hauntings in Catholic churches. However, it’s important to note that Catholic doctrine does not specifically address ghost hauntings, and individual interpretations of such phenomena are influenced by personal experiences and cultural influences rather than official teachings of the Church. Now that this info is out of the way, I personally found this story and the acute history of ghosts and catholic churches to be extremely fascinating. I mean who really knows if this is real, but AC hinting at the fact that she doesn’t believe in ghosts and experiencing what seems to be a ghost encounter in a culture and religion that she doesn’t even follow is what interests me so much. The idea that ghosts aren’t really tied to a specific culture, but all cultures, where each one has their own interpretation of ghosts, and even so, the idea of hauntings, skepticism about said hauntings, sightings, and even experiences, all still managing to have no ground or real meaning when faced with unexplainable phenomenon and encounters with something mind blowing or scary and spooky like with AC’s story, is so awesome. It seems that no matter your belief, ghosts will always find some way of haunting your mind.

The Lady in the White Dress

Nationality: American, English, Thai
Age: 16
Occupation: Student
Residence: Manhattan Beach, CA
Performance Date: April 24, 2016
Primary Language: English

Ok ready? Okay so one night when I was going to bed I had an uneasy feeling that something was watching me, you know… I normally felt this every night… I was never able to go to sleep and… wait can I start over? Ok, so I kept the light on, and that’s what I did very night because I would never be able to fall asleep. Eventually I fell asleep and … sorry… um and in the middle of the night I woke up again, and I was tired enough to know that if I turned the light off I would fall asleep without being scared. After a few hours I woke up again and I looked into my closet which was open and I saw a lady in a white dress standing there looking at me for … maybe… a millisecond, and I turned around to my left… didn’t look back my heart started pounding. I started to sweat, and I wasn’t able to go back to sleep the whole night. I couldn’t move. I was paralyzed… just paralyzed. In the morning I told my mom what had happened, and I looked into my closet and I had no white dresses that could have ever been seen from my bed, and my mom said don’t worry, its ok, just pray to God to protect you everything is gonna be fine. I told my dad and he thought it was bullshit. Then, I just kept the light on every night before going to bed, A few months later, I come home and James, my brother says that he saw a lady in a white dress standing in the living room. Then I looked at my mom, and we said “oh shit…” we then talk later and said we need to get this house … like this house needs to go under an exorcism like call the priest or whatever… but after awhile we just sort of forgot about it, but I was always still scared … couldn’t go downstairs by myself, and always thought someone was watching me from behind my back. Like six months later, I remember my sister telling me that our cleaning lady Martha saw a lady in white dress walk from my mom’s room into my room in broad daylight. And my mom and I freaked out… we… my mom called a clairvoyant and… who came to the house and said to my mom, “Oh, what does the lady look like? Is she tall? Does she have brown hair?” And my mom was like, yes, that’s the description…that’s what she looks like. Then the lady started to talk to the ghost lady and got information. She said the ghost lady accidentally died in our house from drug overdose, and basically…her unfinished business was that she didn’t want her family to think she had left them on purpose. The ghost lady was very protective of me and my mom. And she was supposed to have been a very successful doctor. We then talked to our neighbor across the street, who is an old lady, who remembered her – the lady across the street who we were talking to about the ghost lady … our neighbor said she was a very private person and didn’t know her that well, however she was very nice. Um…then the clairvoyant woman did something where she like led the ghost lady to the light or whatever. I’m not really sure what happened after that … the clairvoyant asked my mom, “Oh has anyone recently died in your family?” And my mom said, “Oh yes my dad died a few months ago,” and the clairvoyant said that “Oh he’s here now and he wants to let you know that he’s always here for you when you’re thinking of him and especially in a time of need and he … he has other lady figures here on Earth that he likes to visit as well, like Aunty Pas and Aunty Isabel.” And so when my mom was telling me all of this I realized that all these times as kid … ever since I knew what a ghost was, I was never able to fall asleep, and I always had to have the door open, the light on, or my parents snuggle with me because I always felt that there was someone watching me someone standing next to me and in all reality it actually was true.

 

Background: I have heard this story many times as the informant is my sister. However, hearing it again from her perspective is very interesting because she tells this story in a very different way from the way I tell it, probably because I heard it first from my mother, who may have had a different experience throughout all this than my sister did. Considering that my sister was the main person who had to go through all this, I am assuming this version of the story is more accurate than my version, but then again, that is the essence of folklore – the constant multiplicity and variation that comes with a story. Even my sister, as she was telling it to me this time, had made some small changes to her story that she was probably not aware of. I conducted this interview live at my house, so this story was given to me live. This story is particularly important to me, since I believe it occurred in my house and I feel bad that my sister had to suffer from so much anxiety as a child along with many of our family members refusing to believe her. This story is something I will never forget and something I’ll probably pass down to my children, which will probably get passed down to their children. It is very interesting for me to be present at the beginning point of a story that will probably become part of my family’s folklore later on.