Tag Archives: ghost story

The Ghost of Her Grandmother at Death

Nationality: USA
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Seattle
Performance Date: October 26, 2020
Primary Language: English

Main Transcription:

Collector: Hello JS, so I know that you have mentioned before that there are ghost stories and interactions in your family. I would really appreciate it if maybe you could share some of your experiences.

Informant: Okay so when I was little my family had like a lot of encounters with ghosts and spirits; it’s happened for me a lot. I will share a story that happened with my mom and myself. I think it’s like the craziest experience. So when I was little I was looking out our window just like looking outside like anyone would do, I was maybe 10 and I saw this person walking down the street and we lived in a pretty small neighborhood so everybody pretty much knew everyone.  I saw this person walking down the street and I’d never seen them before, so I called to my mom who was in the kitchen and said, “Mom, who’s the pretty girl walking down the street?” My mom was doing something and could not see out the window, so I yelled to her explaining what she looks like. I said “she’s in this red dress with flowers on it, she had long brown hair and she’s really pretty.” At that moment my mom walked over and looked out the window and was like “Oh my God that’s exactly what my mom, your grandma, wore when she died”.  I supposedly had seen my grandma that I’ve never met before in the clothes that she died in.  I find this really creepy and my mom tells that story all the time that it looked like real life and we thought it’s a real life person that we could touch, but no one else in our family had had any other encounters with our grandmother.

Collector: Do you think are any reasons in particular why your Grandmother showed herself to you and your mother?

Informant: Well I think that my mom and my Grandma are really similar and my mom talks about my Grandma as like she is her Guardian Angel. My mom attributes small occurrences to her mom.  Little super random stuff like if something like drops in our house or sometimes like come up in her dream. My mom can connect those things, but my mom also sees auras around people.  The auras are the colors that you associate with people and it allows my mom the extraordinary power to know how someone is feeling or if something’s wrong.

Collector: Does she think this ability comes from her grandma? 

Informant: No, I think she thinks that she has like this connection with her, but I don’t think she got it from her.

Collector: Have there been other times where you have experienced other sorts of supernatural events?

Yeah, my sister and I often have the same dream and wake up seeing figures of old people standing in the corner. This makes me sound actually insane, but more often than not, my sister sees the person and I could like feel the spirit. I think it’s crazy and not a coincidence that both encounter similar things at the same time. Okay, that sums up most of it.

Collector: Would you be willing to share any more of your experiences?

Informant: Ummm, for the most part I have told you the interesting parts.

Collector: Well, thank you so much more sharing and I really appreciate you taking the time to tell your story.

Context and Relation:

JS grew up in a small town outside of Chicago. She later moved to Seattle for high school. There are pieces of her story that are from her time in Seattle, but the first encounter about seeing her grandmother took place in a small suburb outside of Chicago. She remembers this story because of the abnormality of the situation. It was extremely strange for JS to see an accurate image of someone that she had never met before. JS is a caucasian teenage girl who is attending an American university.

Personal Reflection:

Personally, I have never had an experience quite like JS’s with seeing a dead grandparent or parent or experiencing a spirit. I found it interesting in JS’s story that her Grandmother was wearing the clothes that she died in and that the grandmother took the body of a younger girl, similar to her age. I don’t know exactly what this detail means, but it is definitely worth mentioning. I agree with JS that these events are scary, but I find it really interesting how nobody else in her family has connected with her Grandmother except JS and her mother. Personally, it would make sense to me if other family members came in contact with the Grandmother ghost being from the same family, especially if her sister has had visions of figures from dreams. In conclusion, JS had an amazing encounter with a ghost of her grandmother that she will never forget. 

Andy and the Ghost

Nationality: American
Age: 83
Occupation: Retired Professor
Residence: Louisiana
Performance Date: October 24, 2020
Primary Language: English

The Story (Over Zoom):
This story is about a little boy named Andy. And Andy was not very cooperative with his mother. He lived alone with his mother, and his mother became ill. She asked Andy to go to the well and get her a cool drink of water. And it was getting night time and Andy says “Nah, I’m scared to go to the well, there’s a ghost that lives in the well”. And his mom says “No, there’s no ghost that lives in the well”. But he wouldn’t go get her a cold drink of water. So that night when they went to bed, he was juuuuust about to sleep, when he heard this sound saying: “AAAAAAANDY I’m on my first step… AAAAAAAAAANDY I’m on my second step… AAAAAAAANDY I’m on your porch… AAAAANDY I’m in your house… AAAAAANDY I’m by your bed… AAAAAANDY I GOT YOU”. *lunges forward as if to grab me*

Context (as given by the informant):
The first time I remember that being played on me was when some of my cousins were visiting and they were three or four years older than what I was, and we were sitting on the front steps of the house where I grew up, and that was one of my early encounters with a ghost story.
It was told as a way to scare younger children.

Analysis:
This story serves two purposes, both as a joke to play on someone unaware, as the ending is a jump scare usually coupled with someone grabbing the listener, but also as a warning. The story tells us that because Andy didn’t listen to his mother and refused to get her water, he was haunted by a ghost. So there’s an element there about respecting one’s elders in addition to the comedic purpose of the tale.

The Ghost of Chloe

Nationality: American
Age: 57
Occupation: Professor (USC)
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: October 24, 2020
Primary Language: English

The Story (over Zoom):
There’s a plantation called Myrtle’s that was a South Louisiana plantation outside of New Orleans that General Bradford, who was a famous general, owned. He, like many plantation owners, was sexually assaulting a slave in the house and her name was Chloe. So he had a relationship with Chloe. And Chloe got caught eavesdropping on the family. She was outside a room listening in, and to punish her they cut off her ears. Or maybe an ear. And so to get revenge she slowly poisoned the wife and children of the guy by, in the kitchen, poisoning food. And when she was caught doing that, she was killed, she was hung. And so, Myrtle’s plantation is said to still be haunted by her, if you go to the plantation in South Louisiana and go on tours, they’ll tell you about sightings of Chloe… And she had worn a scarf around her head after her ears were cut off, so y’know, you couldn’t see, and people knew the ghost was Chloe because the ghost has that green scarf on her head.

Context (as given by the informant):
When I was in middle school we did a tour of South Louisiana, a history tour where we went to different places, and that was one of the stories that we heard, that people regularly saw her ghost. If you take a tour there today they’ll tell you the story of Chloe.
The story is a way white guilt about the history of slavery gets manifest. It gets manifest in a way that is indirect, and frames Chloe as at fault.

Analysis:
The story is definitely intertwined with histories of oppression, and it both reflects and documents some of the injustices that occurred in the plantation era south. The use of the story as a tourist attraction is also interesting, as Myrtle plantation (and by association, Chloe) has been commercialized.

Na Tuk Kong

Nationality: Malaysian
Age: 52
Occupation: Finance Manager
Residence: 60 TR 9/2, Tropicana Golf & Country Resort, Selangor, Malaysia
Performance Date: October 24, 2020
Primary Language: English
Language: Malay, Mandarin Chinese, Cantonese

Context:

My informant, YM, is a 52 year-old woman of ethnic Chinese background who grew up in a small town in Malaysia called Taiping in the 70s. This story was told as a re-telling of an experience her father had during a nightly excursion. Throughout the story, there will be references made in other languages, so a glossary will be provided for better understanding. The interview was done over the dinner table, as I asked my informant if they recalled any ghostly experiences.

Transcription:

Informant: Oh yeah, I remember last time gong gong saw before. You know, last time gong gong was a part of Rukun Tetangga right. So last time they will always gather around at night to patrol, and it’s always late at night. So they went on one of their patrols, they do that every night. At like 4am, he saw this one man, he was dressed in all white, just walking in the middle of the road in front of them. You remember the corner road there?

Me: Is it, like, the intersection?

Informant: Ah yes, so there’s this one man, very tall and thin, dressed in white, just walking in the middle there. Who would walk alone at that time right, in the middle of the night some more? So the group tried to follow him when he turned the corner. You would think that if he was a real person then they will still see him walking ahead of them right? But when they turned the corner, the man disappeared. He wasn’t there anymore. How can?

Me: So it was a ghost?

Informant: I think it was Na Tuk Kong. I don’t know whether that’s a ghost lah.

Me: What’s Na Tuk Kong?

Informant: It’s some kind of god or spirit that is supposed to protect your land. Do you know those santoi that you see at those buildings? Around the corner there. That one is for Na Tuk Kong so that he will protect the land or the building. I don’t think he’s a Chinese god, I think we only have it in Malaysia. He’s supposed to be a Muslim man I think. Na Tuk is supposed to be datuk, that’s where it came from.

gong gong: grandfather (Mandarin)

Rukun Tetangga: a neighborhood initiative where men of the household would patrol the neighborhood during the nights

Na Tuk Kong: Malaysian local guardian spirit

santoi: altar

datuk: people of a high social standing; elder, usually a male (Malay)

Thoughts:

I think this is a classic story of a sighting of this particular spirit. There are also notions of the spirit to be considered: He is dressed in all white; in Chinese traditions, white is usually associated with death. He is seen at an intersection; an intersection is a liminal space. He is seen at 4am; a number that in Chinese culture is synonymous with death. It also contributes to the idea of a localized spirit. He is a guardian for the area, so he is only seen in that area. The spirit itself also shows that for this community of people, the peace and safety of their land is important, to an extent that a spirit is worshipped to serve that purpose.

Also, it is interesting to see that this lesser deity was a result of a syncretic culture. He is exclusively worshipped by the Malaysian Chinese community, but in folklore, he is a Muslim Malay man. This is a testament to its origins in Malaysia— a country that is multi-ethnic and multi-religious. In a way, it also speaks to the fact that spiritual identity and belief is not necessarily cemented in one religion, and can borrow elements from different religions and cultures.

Haunted Apartment in Worchester, Massachusetts

Performance Date: October 24, 2020
Primary Language: English
Language: Burmese, Mandarin, Cantonese

Background: My informant is my aunt, a woman in her late 50s who lives in Henderson, Nevada (L). L is Buddhist and of Chinese and Burmese descent.

Context: This conversation took place one night over Zoom. L’s experience took place in 2003, her second year in pharmacy school, in the apartment that she rented with her roommate in Worchester, Massachusetts. She occupied the master bedroom, where most of the haunting took place. I reached out to L because I knew she had been haunted by a ghost while in pharmacy school, but I had never heard the full story.

Main Piece

Me: Can you describe what happened to you?

L: That happened in 2003 in Worcester. I was in pharmacy school, my second year. Me and my friend, we rented a room, two bedrooms for $1200. The week before we moved out, the apartment manager called us. They had a furnace room at the 26th floor. Really big rooms, really good everything. They offered us $900. I did not have suspicions. We are students, we are cheap, we didn’t have beds. I looked at it: we’re lucky!

Me: How was your life there?

L: I lived in the master bedroom. The first couple of months were good. In the sixth month, whenever I opened the closet, I just felt like there is a kind of force. Something pushed me! It looked like a wind… I just said I am superstitious because it is snowing, and all windows are closed. Right around 9 months, I knew. My friend slept in a sleeping bag. She said, “L, last night someone pulled my sleeping bag.” I said, “No you studied so hard that you don’t sleep well.” She said “No, it pulled my sleeping bag down six inches.” I said, “put the night light on and sleep.” The second night she told me again. “I saw the guy! He is white, not too tall, 5”2, 5”3. He pulled my sleeping bag to the waist.” I said, “You need a good sleep.”

Me: Did anything happen to you then?

L: After two days to her, the third day happened to me. I finished studying. I did not sleep yet. I put my books on my bed at around 4:30. I pull my blanket to my chest. My blanket is a king size blanket, 7 or 8 pounds. I did not close my eyes. Then the blanket got pulled up.

Me: Like floating?

L: (Eyes wide) Yeah.

Me: What the—

L: The blanket get pulled up four feet high, and you know your aunty is not out of mind, him and me we were pulling and then the blanket was pulled towards the corner of the room. I pulled it back three or four times, and my feet kicked to that corner. And I said “Come! Show me who you are!” and when I kicked, the blanket fell down. I did not see any person walk out, but I was so angry. I just went all over the house. My mouth is yelling. I said, “Show me, show me! Come out!” After that, I came back to the bed. This guy is so crazy! My hands just pulled from me forcefully! I said, “Come out! You come out!” It looked like I saw somebody walk out into the closet. I cannot sleep anymore. From that day, whenever we got home, it looked like panic, you know? I cannot sleep. I’m too tired, but my eyes were wide open.

Me: Wow.

L: I went down to the apartment manager the next day and I said, give me the room story. She pretends to be innocent; you know because we’re Asian. I said, “me and my roommate, we got haunted. You need to disclose the history to me.” And that girl said, “A guy hanged and died inside the room.”

Me: Oh my god.

L: I straight said to her, “Is he hanged inside the master bedroom closet?” She said yes. That’s why I said, my bedroom, in the closet, I feel it. And I said, “is that the white guy approximately 5”2 or 5”3?” She said it’s that guy. Hanged in the closet and die.” I said, “I need the return. I can’t stay in that room.” And she said, “You signed the whole year contract. You cannot.” Our school is sponsor, so the case go back to the school. I insisted to get a refund. The dean called me. He told me I cannot break the contract. We just have to stay there for three more months.

Me: How’d you even survive for three more months?

L: That professor at my school helped us. He is Catholic. He said, “L, you just invite that guy to the church on Sunday. At church tell him to get peace. He is in limbo.” I called my cousin and he called the Burmese monk and sent me a cassette and the holy water. And the Buddhist monk just teach me “don’t fight with him. He is already in the bad stage.” We went to the Walmart and bought the recorder and we played the monks chanting the Dhama. When it stopped we had to flip the tape (laughs). Then we sprayed the room with holy water.

Me: Wow. You tried everything huh.

L: (laughs) Yeah. After that the ghost did not bother us anymore.

Me: What do you think about it now that you’re older?

L: I feel sorry for the ghost. It was in limbo. You know now I am praying more and more religious than back then. Now I pray for those type of people that are stuck in the limbo.

Interpretation:

I was surprised at how extensive and scary the haunting was. I have always known L to be a very confident and logical woman, so the fact that she was so terrified of this ghost scares me. While I do not doubt the authenticity of her experience, I wonder if stress played any role in heightening her fear. She was attending pharmacy school while working at a restaurant, only getting around 5 hours of sleep every night. I also wonder why she did not sue to get out of her contract. As we learned in class, failing to disclose a death on a property can get a realtor in legal trouble. Nevertheless, it was an interesting story from someone that I would have least expected this kind of story from.