Tag Archives: ghost story

Woburn Abbey Ghost Story

Nationality: American
Age: 50
Occupation: Homemaker
Residence: Beverly Hills, CA
Performance Date: 4/23/16
Primary Language: English

TK: Did you ever see a ghost?

LK: No but they moved all the bathroom doors and wardrobes open and everything.

TK: Wait explain.

LK: I went to see my friend he lives in Woburn Abbey in England (was a house to priests or monks or something) for the weekend. I left after one day, I couldn’t do it, it freaked me out. (stuttering) It’s a house a family owned, it was an abbey, now it’s a public inn; not sure what it is to see all the stuff. It is known to be haunted. My mom’s friend grew up there and always saw ghosts growing up as a child. Mind you, he only told my mom this much later.

TK: Who’s they?

LK: Robin, aka Lord Russell. We went for dinner and spent the night. Robin was in his room, I was in my room and who else went with us? I don’t know, a couple other friends? Robin told us stories about when he was a kid when he grew up it was haunted.

TK: What was?

LK: The house. It freaked me out and I couldn’t believe we were out there stuck, two hours away from everything, couldn’t get back, and had to spent the night there. It was a residence on the top floor. They gave me a room that had three wardrobes, one on this side, one on that side and one with the TV. The bathroom door was over here (gesturing). I left the bathroom door open and all the wardrobes were shut

TK: Were you in the room alone?

LK: Yeah, everyone was ALL THE WAY DOWN THE HALL. So I was watching television and the TV kept popping in and out like a switch (acting it out) Meanwhile his mom came in to give me a pill to calm me down because I couldn’t handle it. I guess I finally fell asleep with the TV on and woke up to find every single wardrobe door open and the bathroom door was shut and the door to the bedroom was locked.

TK: Then what?

LK: I freaked out a little bit. I got up, I closed the wardrobe drawers, went to the bathroom and unlocked the bedroom door (laughing, thinking, nodding head) um…all the stuff in the bathroom and the toiletries were on the floor, toothbrush, toothpaste, everything that I had used to shower and everything.

TK: So then what?

LK: Picked everything up. I would say that was about three in the morning-ish. I opened the bedroom door to see the hallway, you know, I was freaked out.

TK: How did you go back to sleep after that?

LK: I sort of laid there. I thought Robin was playing  a trick on me, you know, so I actually walked down the hall, now that I think about it and walked all the way down the hall to see if they were up and didn’t really know which room they were in for sure and decided not to go all the way (shaking head) I didn’t want to see anything I was petrified. So I went back to my room put the TV on and I guess eventually fell asleep again and that was it. I woke up in the morning.

TK: What happened in the morning?

LK: I asked them if they had played a joke on me and they said no, oh come on, laughing, they go not at all. It was freaky. We were having breakfast and I said that’s it we’re not staying here anymore and his parents were laughing.

TK: Who were you with?

LK: His parents live at the house and his younger brother and I went there with Robin. And that was it.

THE INFORMANT: The informant was my mom. She was family friends with the Russells who were occupying the estate, and this occurred in the late 80s. This was the only time she experienced a ghostly visitation and the way she describes it makes it clear that she was disturbed by the incident although the family did not take it very seriously, possibly because they had dealt with the ghost before.


ANALYSIS: Woburn Abbey has long been known as a place haunted by ghosts and spirits, much like other English estates with a long history and many previous occupants. According to the website Ghostly Rooms, which catalogues ghost sightings in homes, “It is also said…there is a spirit that haunts the private chambers of Woburn Abbey. This spirit manifests itself by walking through the lounge, without being seen. The door will open on one side and the sound of footsteps move across the floor as the spirit passes through. Once on the other side the other door would open and then slams shut as the spirit leaves. In the 1960s this ghostly activity became so frequent that the Ducal family had to move their television to another room so the could watch the television without the chance of being disturbed.” This seems eerily similar to the experience my mother had, in which she was in one of the private chambers and noticed doors opening without explanation as well as a disturbance of her possessions.

Maniac

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Primary Language: English

Informant: This one legitimately scared me because I always associate it too heavily with, also, also the other thing that’s scary is that you have to tell it from the second person perspective. So…

Collector: Wait, what?

ML: You have to tell it from the “you” perspective. So, in this case, you are in your house where you see that a maniac has escaped, and you obviously find this alarming, but it’s from pretty far away, so you fall asleep. You always fall asleep to your dog licking your hand. So that night you go to sleep and your dog comes to sit next to you, and your dog starts licking your hand, and you fall asleep. Part way through the night you wake up, and your dog is still licking your hand. And then he stops. You think you see something, so you get up and you go towards the kitchen where you see your roommate’s head in the refrigerator. Because it just escalates like that. Anyway, obviously you’re freaked out, but you see a trail of blood leading to the other room, and because you’re an idiot in a horror story, you follow it, and you see a ceiling fan, and from the ceiling fan is a rope with your dog’s head tied around it. And it just say on the wall in blood, “Maniacs can lick hands, too.”

 

Informant is a freshman at the University of Southern California. She is studying animation in the film school here. She is from New Orleans, Louisiana. I spoke to her while we were eating breakfast in EVK one morning. We were sitting together with her two other friends, Ashley and Madeleine. Much of what she told me was learned from her sister or her own experiences.

 

This is an interesting ghost story because I have heard the exact same one before. I think this can’t have much variation because it’s so straightforward and short. The variation I could guess would be within the animal and how you find the head. I do recall perhaps the story ending with “you” only finding the head of the dog, and having to figure out that it was the maniac that was licking your hand. There wasn’t any blood on the wall. Many ghost stories like this seem to be short and not very in depth because they’re made for little kids. It also seems that these are passed through either friends or older siblings.

Johnny

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Primary Language: English
Language: Some french

Collector: Ghost stories?

Informant: I have so many fricking scary stories. Um, let’s see… There’s one, where, I don’t want to go into super detail because it’s really annoying when it’s told that way, and it involves singing.

MR: No, do that.

ML: I fucking hate you. Okay, fine, fine, fine. So, um, there’s a little boy and one day his mother gives him some money and says, “Go buy some liver from the market.” And he takes the money and says okay and goes off to the market. When he gets to the market, he realizes that he doesn’t really want liver. He wants this toy water gun from the store. So he uses the money to buy the toy water gun from the store, and then he realizes he can’t go home empty handed, so for reasons unknown to me, I mean, known but disgusting reasons, he decides to find this liver by digging up a human corpse and taking his liver. Any way, he gets home; he takes the liver and gives it to his mother, who for some reason doesn’t notice any difference between human liver and, you know, like, the liver of an animal, and they cook it and they eat it. And that night, they, uh, this little boy is in his bed, and he hears a voice that says, I think the kid’s like, Johnny, [singing] “Johnny, I’m outside your house.” And then he’s like okay this is weird, but I’m just like hallucinating because he’s trying to sleep. And he hears again, “Johnny I’m inside your house.” And again, “Johnny, I’m inside your room.” And then, “Johnny, I’m in your bed.” And then lastly all he hears is, “Johnny, I want my liver back.” That’s it. That was told to me by my sister because she’s a jerk.

 

Informant is a freshman at the University of Southern California. She is studying animation in the film school here. She is from New Orleans, Louisiana. I spoke to her while we were eating breakfast in EVK one morning. We were sitting together with her two other friends, Ashley and Madeleine. Much of what she told me was learned from her sister or her own experiences.

 

It’s very interesting to see how many ghost stories people know and can recall from their childhood. Some might originate from books and some people made up to scare their younger siblings. This is interesting because it involves singing the voice as if you were the ghost, and involves quite a bit of suspension of disbelief. We can see that ghost stories often just boil everything down to this character did something just because we needed a reason for the story to continue. Often characters make dumb decisions we all know we wouldn’t make for the sake of the story continuing.

Balete Drive (Ghost Story/Legend from the Philippines)

Nationality: Filipino - (Chinese)
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: Friday April 22nd, 2016
Primary Language: English
Language: Mandarin, Tagalog, Hokkien

S is a 21-year-old Filipino woman. She is currently majoring in Business Administration at the University of Southern California. She grew up in the Philippines and therefore identifies as Filipino, however, she also identifies as Chinese. S speaks English, Mandarin, Tagalog and Hokkien, the last being two of many languages specific to the Philippines.

S: There’s a lot of ghost stories from like the Philippines. Like there’s this one street in the Philippines, it’s called Balete Drive.

Me: Can you spell that?

S: B-a-l-e-t-e. Balete. It’s in Manila and ’cause I guess it got it’s name from like all the, ’cause it a kind of tree, so then there’s like a whole bunch of like tree in like that specific street, and no one ever wants to pass through there ’cause it’s just so fricken scary. And they say like in those trees, each specific tree, like there’s like this thing that lives up there and like it smokes and like…

Me: Is there like an actual story that goes with it, or is it just kind of a…

S: I can’t, I’m not exactly sure like what’s the origin, but I just know that there’s just a weird scary creature up there. Yeah, I don’t know, I mean, it’s pretty popular though.

Me: So you just don’t pass on that street?

S: Yeah, we just don’t go though that street. Because it’s too scary. I don’t know. But see that’s the thing, like we have so many ghost stories and just like ghost, like yeah, there’s like too many. There are many different kinds. But like I don’t think you should share that, or like search that, it might freak you out. Like once you start googling and see pictures of it, I don’t think that’s a good idea. Yeah, so maybe not.

S describes a street, Balete Drive, in Manila that is said to be haunted. She says that there are things that live in the Balete trees that are so prominent on the street and that they haunt Balete Drive and they smoke and are generally just scary to think about. It is obvious that she is still scared of this road and that she, even as an adult, will not go walk on that street for fear of the creatures of legend that are said to haunt it. She warns not to go on that street as well as not to even look it up because it would be scary. Even talking about it made her a bit uncomfortable, even though she does not know the origin and the story behind the legend, it still scares her and has a lot of influence on her.

Haunted House in New Orleans

Nationality: Jamaican
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/27
Primary Language: English

My sister’s friend, she’s in her late thirties, and we call her Sam. She’s from Jamaica too but she lives in LA. She and her best friend, once a year travel to somewhere cool together. And at the end of last year, around November, they travelled to New Orleans together. And there’s this street that’s a well known street in New Orleans, I forget the name of it but I could ask my sister, where really pretty houses are that have been there for a super long time, it’s just one street with really old houses. And so they were just looking around touring the area, it’s near Bourbon Street. And they drove upon one really pretty house, it stood out from the rest of them because it just looked so well kept, well taken care of, it looked like somebody lived there.

 

Do people live in the houses?

 

Some of them. This one there was no car in the driveway, none of the windows were open. And the door was like a wooden double door, and the top of the door had like glass, about three quarters of the door was glass, so you could kinda see through the house, and it was all empty. And so they drove upon the house, and then all of a sudden, both of them started saying they don’t have a good feeling, like the house is beautiful but they just don’t feel like they should be here, like they’re infringing on somebody’s personal life and personal property. And okay, Sam is the most non-believer of all the non-believers. You know, she’s like the atheist of believing in ghosts. And she just kept complaining that she felt down in her emotions, she just felt weird, and she got super antsy and like, I don’t want to be here because I don’t want to get them mad, I don’t want to get them mad. And her friend was like, who are you going to get mad? Like what are you talking about the house is empty, it’s clear that nobody lives there. And Sam was like somebody’s there and I know. Like with conviction she was just like we are not supposed to be here. Somebody’s not happy with us being here. And her friend was like what are you frickin talking about, this isn’t like you to say any of this…and then her friend started being like you know I think you’re right, like I think we shouldn’t be here. And this is while they’re talking in the car, and how my sister described it was like, this is where the car was, and this is where the front door was, so it wasn’t a long driveway. So they looked back, at the house, and they saw a little boy…I hate telling this, don’t you ever think that when you tell these stories it sounds just ridiculous? They saw like a little boy in an army uniform, like a khaki button up with badges and buttons. And they said it was evident it was a boy’s face because he had little blonde hair, he had baby blue eyes, his face was super young, but they both said they saw him perfectly, in the doorway. And they were like…he couldn’t be that tall for us to see him in the doorway, and both of them saw him.

 

So they saw him through the glass in the door?

 

Through the glass, and then they just started freaking out. They weren’t scared, they were just like holy shit, and both of them saw him. And they were like, it wasn’t only me, she’s my witness, it was there. And then they left, and they were like we’re researching this, find out the history of the house, the history of this street, everything. And it turns out that that house was a refugee house for people during World War II, and the little boy was one of the ones who lost his dad. His dad was a soldier. So they think the little boy was wearing his dad’s uniform. And they said that when they looked up the story and everything, multiple people had, when they see that house…like they weren’t the only ones who reported that story, like they read others, and the little boy is there to remind people to never forget them, that there’s a history here and don’t forget this history, it’s alive and well. Okay so the story has a twist, you’re gonna be like what the fuck. After they researched, it blew their mind, they wanted to go inside and look around. They came back and they couldn’t find the house. They could not find the house for the life of them, they drove up and down the street and they were like this is where the house was. The house wasn’t there. I swear to god. They couldn’t find the house. They were on the exact same street, and they couldn’t find it anywhere.

 

And after that, Sam was like I will never doubt anyone’s story ever again. She was like I feel like a dumbass telling this story.

 

ANALYSIS:

This is a third hand account of someone’s personal experience. Clearly the ghost story was compelling enough for the informant’s sister to tell her, and for the subject to tell her friend. An additional aspect that enhances the belief in this legend is because both the friend and the sister know the subject’s reputation as a general non-believer of all things spiritual or having to do with legends. We might also infer that the subject is a good story-teller, or purveyor of folklore, because it seems as though the account is very detailed, specific, and compelling. It could also be the case that all three of the people in the line who have told this story are good storytellers, if indeed the story and its details have remained intact. There is also the possibility that either the second hand account or third hand account was embellished or changed, depending on their memory of the account they heard, how they interpretted the story, and the nature of how they tell stories. The account is also reinforced by similar stories on an internet database, where other people have had similar experiences. Adding to this the fact that the subjects didn’t know this history or the legends surrounding this house until after having had their own experience, so they had nothing to influence or bias their experience, and you get a pretty compelling and chilling account.