Tag Archives: ghost story

Two Mirrors

Nationality: Croatian, Italian
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Palos Verdes, CA
Performance Date: April 13, 2016
Primary Language: English

The informant, NVS,is a junior at the University of Southern California majoring in social sciences and psychology. She is from Los Angeles, California, and is of Croatian and Italian descent. This is her memorate regarding a family ghost:

 

“So my family and I- I was raised as a Catholic and my entire family is Catholic. We are not super strict, but we do go to church and we do follow most beliefs within Catholicism. However, when we experienced- I guess you could call it a supernatural experience- within our house, it changed certain beliefs of ours. Of course we’re still Catholic today but we know have more of an open mind when it comes to certain things.

A little bit of background on our house: our house was the original house that my parents moved into before my siblings and I were born. There was a prior owner to the house. My parents kept the original format of the house until they remodeled it 8-10 years ago.

So one day, my mom was working around the house and she kept hearing these noises around the house. She didn’t think it was a big deal. She thought maybe that it was our dad doing things around the house but then she would realize “oh wait, I’m home alone!”

So she would hear footsteps and knocks, but she’s not the kind of person who gets scared easily. She didn’t think much of it until the situation started to…progress. Not in a bad way, it just became more intense. It wasn’t to the point where she couldn’t stand it, it was more like “okay, there’s something here but I can’t quite understand what it is.” She would always get the sense that someone was watching her, not in a negative way, just the feeling that something was with her and that she was not alone in the house. My mom would experience these things even when we were babies. I’d say it started when they first moved in- it started a long, long time ago. Once she had us it started to get more intense. When my parents remodeled the house, more stuff started happening even more frequently and I think it had to do with the renovation of the house because the original parts of the house were altered.

So one day…it’s kind of funny because my dad doesn’t believe in any kind of supernatural phenomena or ghosts or anything. He’s more science based, like “prove it to me scientifically, and then I’ll believe it”. He’s very close minded to THAT kind of stuff. My mom was not bothered by it, she accepted it. My sister and I-when we were little kids- we noticed things too, but my mother never talked to us about it. We approached her, actually, with the same things she experienced and that’s when she confirmed with us that she was hearing these things too. One of the big things was that we would always here, like, someone always calling our names? Ever so slightly. When I was little, I would always here my name being called out- it was actually my nickname that only my family uses! One day, it sounded like my dad calling me, but my dad wasn’t home. This actually happened many times, always when my dad was out of the house. So I think we established that it was this male energy in our house- not a bad energy, but we could sense that it was a male presence. You can just feel it.

My mom, my sister and I, the three of us- it’s kind of funny, just the girls in the family would experience these things. But my dad never experienced them, maybe because he was so close-minded or maybe even because he was male. Up until he finally saw it for himself.

I want to say this happened recently, a year or two ago. My dad was walking through the living room. The only original part of the house that we never changed was the living room. There were, at both ends of the room, two mirrors facing each other. We never thought too much of it until these things started to happen. It’s said that two mirrors facing each other is not the greatest idea…I’ve heard that it can open up a portal to somewhere else, some kind of dimension. I don’t know how I feel about that, but it’s something I’ve always heard. My dad was going about his business through the house that day when he saw, no joke, an apparition- not even an apparition, a full person! A solid person, literally to the point where he could describe to us later what he looked like. He had brown, curly hair, a green polo shirt, pants and everything- but the one thing he said that was odd was that this figure didn’t have feet! Whatever my dad saw, was clearly an apparition of some kind, not a real person.

But- no joke! He saw someone, or something. And my dad is not the type of person to make anything like this up. I have never seen him so scared and so in shock in my life- he didn’t talk to anyone for like a couple of days! That’s how shocked he was. And then he came to us saying, “This is what happened, this is what I saw.” And my mom just accepted it, like, “we know already!” It’s interesting how the women in the family experienced similar things and then my dad, who was completely closed off to belief in the supernatural, had the most extreme encounter out of all of us.

Small things continue to happen in our house. In terms of talking back to them, I never get a response. If I go throughout the house looking for the source of the voice, no one is ever there. We took one mirror down after what happened to my dad. This didn’t completely get rid of the sounds we hear around the house, but we definitely notice a difference in the level of how much it occurs- it’s not as intense.

Later we found out- and this is really interesting- that my dad’s description of the man fit the previous owner of the house’s appearance to a T. He died, I don’t know if it was in the house, but her died of natural causes…we asked our neighbors about the house. They have lived there forever, even before anyone else, and they knew more about our house’s history than we did. When my dad described what happened to him, they pulled out a picture of the man who had lived there before us and he was identical to my dad’s vision. We assume that what he saw was the ghost of the original owner of the house, and he was still attached to the house. The renovations we did seemed to spark something- I don’t think they made him angry. I think he just wanted to let us know that he was there with us, kind of watching out for us.

What does this story/experience mean to you?

This experience, for all four of us, made us more open-minded to encounters with the unknown or the unfamiliar. We now truly feel that there are things out there that we can’t fully understand that may be greater than us. They’re not necessarily bad things- they can also be there to protect us, or simply coexist alongside us. Knowing exactly who it is- the previous owner of the home- makes us more comfortable with the situation.

What kind of people have you shared this story with? Is it more of a private family story?

Honestly, I share it with both believers and non-believers. I’m open about it and willing to share it with everyone to see if they connect with it. I think it may be helpful for others who may be skeptical to get that perspective. It’s not something I hide, or that I’m scared of sharing.”

 

My thoughts: I think this legend is really fascinating because it engages directly with the idea of belief, including religious belief, belief in the supernatural, and skepticism. It illustrates how religious families can have specific beliefs that don’t necessarily exist within organized religion, or how skeptics may end up believing in legends after personal experiences. This memorate also illustrates how places with a lot of history- such as old homes- often have legends such as ghosts stories attached to them.

The Sorority Ghost

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: 4/17/16
Primary Language: English
  1. Original Text: “I’m pretty sure there’s a ghost, not pretty sure. We’ve mentioned her a few times on (sorority Facebook page). The door swings open and shut for no reason. It’ll open and close. There’s a Bluetooth speaker that you have to flip a switch on and it makes the noise, and sometimes it’ll make the noise even without it. So sometimes I turn on music for her because I think that she likes music. Like to make her happy. I had a dream that the lights went off and someone whispered “she never left”. She’s here, doesn’t bother anyone. Don’t think she died here, probably died tragically after college but (sorority) was her happiest days so she came back. And she doesn’t want to leave. Nobody else is convinced but I’m convinced. She’s very low maintenance. People have always been talking about it. Maybe talk to other people? Only people who have lived in this room actually believe in her. And people who were friends with people who lived here”
  • She knows it because she lives with this supposed ghost and has tried to interact with her.
  • She didn’t really learn it from anybody because, as she mentioned before, it’s something she’s personally experienced. However, upon further investigation by herself with girls who have also lived with this ghost she’s discovered that a lot of others believe in her as well (they all assume the ghost is a she).
  • Context of performance: we were on the topic of ghost stories one day when we were hanging out.
  • I find it really interesting how those who have had to live with said ghost work to make sure she’s happy and that they’re catering to her needs. It’s also difficult for me, however, to accept ghost stories as such because I personally don’t believe in ghosts and I have yet to experience this ghost’s abilities. At the same time though, I really respect the person from whom I got this piece, so I don’t doubt that she’s actually seen the aforementioned spooky, and the only way to really explain those happenings would be through the idea of a ghostly presence which can be confirmed by other girls in the sorority.

San Diego Hotel Presence

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

Okay so one time for a soccer tournament my mom and I were staying at a hotel in San Diego… we fell asleep easily one night, and then the next day after my soccer game, my mom wanted to go shopping but I was too tired, so I stayed in the hotel room. It was pretty dark out, like 7, 8 ish in the afternoon at night and …um… I kept feeling something around me, I couldn’t really explain what it was, but it was the same feeling I would get in my house with the lady, where I felt someone watching me constantly…so I went to the corner of the room and sat on the bed so I could see everything in front of me. As I was watching TV I kept thinking that I saw black shadows pop up in different places in the room, and I got sweaty, and my heart started racing, and I called my mom multiple times to ask when are you coming back and blah blah blah. Then my mom came back and I didn’t really tell her anything about it … I didn’t think it was a big deal so I didn’t really acknowledge it. Then, fifteen minutes after turning off the light to go to bed, um, I felt something hovering over my bed from the sides… it was as if someone was… like a witch was… sneering and um…crawling and pacing and creeping around, over and around me… going back and forth from the left side of my bed to the end and right and up. I quietly called for my mom because I obviously didn’t want to disturb this thing, but she didn’t wake up or answer so I snuggled deep into my bed put the covers over and fell asleep. I woke up in the middle of the night to light thinking, “Oh it must be time to get up and go.” I looked over at my mom and said, “Are we going?” She said, “No go back to sleep its only two in the morning.” And just throughout the night I kept waking up to the light that was on in the room. And eventually it was time to get up at 7. I asked my mom why the light was on the whole night and she said I felt something shove me on my leg. She said she started sweating, didn’t know what to do, so she had to turn on the light and stay awake. I was shocked, and I said to her, “Mom, oh my gosh…” and I told her the story from earlier the day before, from when she was shopping… we connected the dots and agreed to leave as fast as we could.

 

Background: I had heard this story a few times before here and there, but I had only retained a small amount of the story, so to hear it in depth and very detailed was very interesting for me. I conducted this interview live at my house with my sister, so the story was given to me in person. My sister really remembers this story because it was not just her who was affected – it was also my mother who had felt something weird happen that night, and I think it is all the scarier when someone else experiences the same thing because it makes it all the more realistic and the person knows they cannot be crazy when someone else is feeling the same things or feeling the same way. This is freaky for me, and I now understand why my mother and my sister both refuse to stay in hotel rooms alone…beforehand I was thinking it was nonsense that they couldn’t sleep by themselves in hotel rooms but now I am very aware of what they both went through. I think my mother and my sister will both remember this story for awhile because it is truly scary, especially for my mother, to have been physically shoved by a presence that was not visible. I truly believe them.

Ghost Viewing

Nationality: Thai, Filipino
Age: 48
Occupation: Hospital Lab
Residence: Glendale, CA
Performance Date: April 24, 2016
Primary Language: Thai (laotian)
Language: English

I’ve never thought I had seen spirits but here was one occasion that had me thinking maybe I actually have seen spirits. The story is of our security guard of many years, even your mom knows him. Very friendly, always greets you at the door of the hospital. One morning he was not in his usual spot. He was sitting at a different, unusual spot facing the wall this morning, which to me was very odd. I didn’t say hello because it seemed as if he was very deep in thought and not alert or communicative with anybody. I got up to the department and that is when I realized he had passed that very evening before. He had been struck by a car and was killed. Did you freak out? Yes, because I didn’t know anything, and did not know this had happened. I spoke to another person who said they had seen him the very same spot that I had seen him. He was unaware of the surroundings which is very unusual for him because he usually greets everyone. Learning that he had passed hours before this … I realized that he was no longer living and this was his spirit probably coming to say good bye to his last place, and maybe his spirit was not aware it was time to leave or event hat he died.

 

Our neighbor, she was an elderly lady very friendly keeps to herself. Jo. She was a cordial, friendly lady and when we would see each other, we would wave and say hello but that’s all. This one time I saw her as I was driving up to my driveway, and I saw her going from her front door to her garage. Which is unusual because it was a reversal, she usually always walked from her garage to her front door, and it was a bit strange, but it’s not…but I waved and honked and she did not acknowledge me. I didn’t think much of it. But a day later we learned that she had passed in the house. She had died in her sleep and the other neighbors were questioning her whereabouts because they hadn’t seen her in many days. The coroner came and estimated she had died three days before, before I saw her. Were you freaked out again? Yes, I was freaked out. Those were the two incidents that I recall seeing “spirits” because I did not know of their passing until afterwards.

 

Background: These two stories really freak me out. I think my aunt will always remember these pieces for the rest of her life because it happened to her. She thought everything was normal in seeing this man and then the woman until later on she was informed they were both not alive and had already passed. I think these are two particularly important stories to my aunt as well because she really enjoyed this man’s persona and and his aura as a very friendly person, and she had also appreciated the woman who had lived next door. To know he and she both had passed, perhaps my aunt was one of the last people with whom they both wanted to communicate or perhaps my aunt was one of the only people who was open enough to be able to see them. She believes, as stated above, that perhaps the security guard’s soul was lost and unsure of where to go or maybe he was saying goodbye to the last place he found himself, which is sad. I believe these stories, because I know my aunt is not a crazy person, and I really get creeped out by such things. It is very interesting for me to hear.

 

La Llorona

Nationality: Guatemalan, American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 27, 2016
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

There is a woman in a small town in Mexico and um she was very vain and prideful of her beauty and she would look at herself in the river in the town and she vowed she would only marry the most beautiful man in the world. And then she ended up marrying him and they had children but he left her and she drowned her children in the river and felt so bad about it and killed herself but the people in the town still see her crying and saying “mis niños” and “mis hijos” and they call her La Llorona because she cries all the time.

 

Background: I conducted this interview live, so this story was given to me in person. I had heard this legend before from another informant who had not been able to give me a report as detailed as this one. This is a story that the informant had been told many times since she was a young child. I thought this was interesting because it followed the lines of what we had learned in class or what we had read for the class, in the required readings. This was interesting to hear from someone who had not researched it but it was actually a part of the folklore passed around in her culture and from family members, something she had learned just through the environment she was in.