Tag Archives: ghost story

Arkansas Legend Quest

Text:

“There’s this light, it’s in this town like thirty minutes north of us, it’s in the middle of nowhere on a field. The story is that there was a conductor on a train and this railroad goes along the side of this road, and apparently a conductor fell off and his head got cut off and he looks for his head every night, and that’s why you see a light on the railroad. If you drive out there you’ll see a light floating above the road, and apparently if it touches your car then your car will turn off. So all of our parents have stories about it, like how they’ve gone and seen the light. I don’t know if they’re actually true. But my friends went one time, I didn’t go cause it was during Covid, but they went and I was on facetime with them when it happened. And my friend N, they were on the road and she just started crying like sobbing, and she like never cries. Cause she swore that she saw it, and then they all started screaming because apparently it was coming towards the car, and that’s when they pulled out and left. I’ve been before and nothing happened.” 

Context:

GR is a 19-year-old college student from a small town in northern Arkansas. He was in high school when this story was told, and he’d been hearing the stories about the railroad since he was a little kid. His parents and adults in his town would tell him their experiences of seeing the light, and he doesn’t know if they were making it up to scare him or not. Research shows that this legend is a popular one that can be found online, called the Gurdon Lights in Gurdon Arkansas. He says that his town and a lot of northern Akansas have a lot of hauntings and ghost stories, supposedly because the granite rocks in the ground are a conductor for spirits according to legend. 

Analysis: 

This story is an example of legend questing, where a group of people go out to look for a legend and try to insert themselves into it. It’s also an example of a memorate, where someone’s existing experience fits into the pre established legend. Legend questing is especially popular amongst young people. There might be a multitude of reasons for that. Young people are still figuring themselves out, figuring out what the story of their life is going to be, so it can be compelling to insert themselves into a legendary story that already exists. Since they’re young, they’re supposedly further away from death, so seeking out ghosts and graphic stories about death can both be them putting to use the immortality they feel they have, and also interacting with the concept of death that is both scary and unfamiliar. In certain cultures and in older people, ghost stories are often comforting and warm, such as a visit from a family member. The ghost stories young people tell though, at least in America, are often graphic and tragic and scary, because that’s how they view death to be. They’re both interested in this concept that is so far away, and terrified of this concept that is actually so near, and this fear and interest manifests into young people seeking out ghosts. I also believe that young people seek out legend quests more often because children are raised on fairy tales and magical figures like the Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, Santa. They are raised being told that magic is, in some ways, real. As teenagers and young adults they’re expected to separate themselves from the childish idea that magic is real, but there’s a small part of everyone that still wishes that the mystical might be real. 

I also think that Arkansas might be a large hub for supernatural stories because it’s still quite a rural area, there aren’t as many large and prominent cities as there are in other states. While Christianity began spreading around cities, rural areas continued worshiping their own pagan gods. Christianity then decided to paint rural areas as places where the Devil lives, and declare the people who live there as Devil worshipers. This idea has made us see nature and the wild as areas prone to the influence of the devil, so these wide spans of nature secluded from everyone else are seen to be areas more likely to have hauntings and ghosts. Rural town populations in Arkansas have a largely Christian population now, so they might be more inclined to look at the isolated, wild areas near them (such as abandoned train tracks) as scary places of the Devil.

Family Haunted House

Text:

“Gee [grandma]’s house is lowkey haunted, it’s messed up. The man who Gee got the deed to their land from, we call him Old Man Hattfield. When my mom and my aunt were growing up they would come home from basketball games really late at night, and one night they came from the back door. They came around the corner and my mom swears that she saw a man at the top of the stairs, and then by the time that my aunt and Gee got over there the man was gone, they didn’t see him. Obviously my mom was freaking out, she was scared to death. So they all went upstairs, there was nobody up there, the windows weren’t open, there was no way anyone could’ve gotten there. They think it was Old Man Hattfield, my friends still refuse to go upstairs at Gee’s house because they think it’s haunted by Old Man Hattfield. . That’s one story. Gee has another story about this dress. So when they bought the land it was from debt, so I think with the deed to the land came other things like this pocket watch and this wedding dress. It’s this white wedding dress, and I don’t know who’s it was, but Gee had this dress up until maybe 10 years ago until she finally got rid of it. She’d wake up in the middle of the night and swear she saw a woman wearing this dress at the foot of her bed. So eventually she was like, “I’m tired of this, I’m gonna burn this dress.” So she sets it out in the burn pile. But then she’s going through their stuff at least five years later, and the dreams had not stopped. So she didn’t know what happened, she thought the dress had been burned. Then she found the dress inside the house in a drawer, and she’s like “what is this? How is this dress here?” And she asked Papa and he said “Yeah I saw you put it in the burn pile but I put it back in the house.” They burned it after that and the dreams stopped. 

Context:

GR is a 19-year-old college student from a small town in Arkansas. His grandma, Gee, has told him this story, and many members of the family believe that Gee’s house is haunted. 

Analysis: 

The figure of a ghost woman in a wedding dress is a pretty common one. She’s seen in La Llorona, a ghost women who walks around in a white dress, and there are many other versions of the “White Lady,” female ghosts in white dresses. The white dress is commonly associated with wedding dresses, and in this story the ghost is in a wedding dress. The wedding is a huge important ritual for a community, and it’s a large moment of shifting identity for women. They go from being part of one family to another, from being in the pre-reproduction phase of their life to being ready for reproduction. From a maiden to a wife, soon to be a mother. Weddings are a moment of liminality, where magic often happens. Ghosts are another figure of liminality, where they’re not quite alive and not quite dead. They’re not in this world, but they’re not in the next. The ghost bride can represent anxieties of when the marriage ritual goes wrong, just like how the ghost comes about from the death rituals going wrong. The wedding ritual is very important to a community, because it brings about new members of the community, but it’s also very anxiety inducing for the bride, because a lot can go wrong in this new identity and in the moment between the two identities. It’s also frightening for people to see these ghost brides because weddings are often supposed to be a large celebration of happiness, and people don’t like to acknowledge when they are not. However, oftentimes throughout different cultures weddings are not a moment of happiness for the bride. They could be just an economic situation, they could’ve been forced into the marriage, they could be a child, the marriage could tie them potentially forever to a bad person. There are a lot of negative things that can be associated with marriages, but people like to turn away from those. That’s why the ghost bride comes out, as a representation of all the anxieties that moment of liminality can bring. Studying a specific ghost bride figure can also tell you a lot about women’s place in that specific culture. 

Ghost Uncle Visit

Performance Date: March 12, 2023
Primary Language: Japanese
Language: English

Text:

Late one night in 1966 in Santa Ana, California, my grandma heard a knock at the front door. She opened the door and saw her Uncle Udono, who lived in Japan at the time and felt shocked to see him in the United States. Behind her, my grandpa asked, ”What are you doing at the door?” She turned around to respond that it was her uncle, and when she faced back towards her uncle, he was gone. The next day she found out he had passed away in Japan.

Context:

This is my grandma’s personal experience. After she saw her uncle show up at her house and then disappear, she thought she was hallucinating since she was tired when the experience took place. Later the next day, after hearing about her uncle’s passing, she felt startled but also oddly at peace. Her Uncle had no children and in a way saw my grandma as his child. She interpreted her uncle’s ghostly visit as her Uncle saying goodbye to his favorite niece one last time.

Analysis:

I think her one memorate strengthened her belief in the supernatural because after she described her experience she briefly described another personal paranormal story. Her experience was her smelling an awful stench in her home that only she could smell. About 2 weeks later she found out her brother had died and was rotting for a month in his apartment. She interpreted this as a sign from her deceased brother that he was dead and wanted her to know. I think if she didn’t have her uncle’s ghost experience she may not have correlated the two occasions (the sudden odor and her brother’s death) together.

The Parkside Ghost

Informant is LO, a USC freshman from New York City, New York.

Text:

“The Parkside Ghost has never been taken seriously. It’s common knowledge but no one truly believes in it. Sometimes all the lights will go dark and you’re in the hallway, and the lights on the other side of the hallway will start flickering which is just scary especially when it’s late at night. Then you have other instances where the elevator doors open randomly, like when the elevator is there but no one ever walks in. There’s also The Stench. It kind of smells like sulfur, rotten eggs, and you smell it and then it goes away. It usually stays for five minutes and we’re all like ‘Oh, it’s the parkside ghost.’ There’s also no hot water, although recently there has been. All of those have happened to me, so there definitely could be a ghost, but I think they’re all circumstantial. I think it makes it more fun, personally I don’t believe it. Also because Parkside is pretty old, so there’s that idea.”

Context:

The University of Southern California was founded in 1880, and the Parkside residential buildings which informant LO references were built over the course of multiple years in the 2000s, making them at least 10 years old. The Parkside residential buildings include Parkside Arts and Humanities Residential College — a special living community for freshmen interested in the arts and humanities — Parkside International Residence College — a special living community targeted at first year students seeking an international experience — and Parkside Apartments — a living space designated primarily for juniors and seniors.

Analysis:

As USC is an institution with a nearly 150-year tradition, there are bound to be certain legends and folk narratives that form. This memorize reflects one consequence of an old school, which is the presence of old buildings. However, unlike other ghost stories — such as those from Estonia which tell of demons which steal property from Ülo Valk’s “Ghostly Possession and Real Estate: The Dead in Contemporary Estonian Folklore” — this ghost story lacks any reference to “unfinished business,” whether from a failed ritual or disappointed ancestors. Rather, as LO states, the goal is simply to make fun of the poor quality of an old building, and perhaps give some explanation to the unexplainable, as some ghost stories do.

Ghost Story

Nationality: American
Age: 55
Occupation: Self Employed
Residence: Santa Clarita, California
Performance Date: 04/04/23
Primary Language: English

Context:

My informant is my father, he is 55 years old and he is born and raised in California. He has traveled a lot in his life as he was in the navy for some time and comes from a long line of people who are from Texas and other places. He decided to tell me about a ghost story that he experienced as a kid while he was visiting his grandmother and this is what he said:

Text:

Dad: “When I was about 10 years old, I used to take a trip to Texas every summer. I would fly to Dallas to visit my grandmother, and eventually make my way to Marshall, where my cousins lived. One year, while I was sitting on the couch in Marshall, the rotary dial phone started dialing by itself. It was like someone was using the phones without actually touching it. “

Me: “Was this the first time something like this has happened to you?”

Dad: “Another strange occurrence happened when my cousin and I overheard my aunt talking to someone in her room. But when we went to check, no one was there except for my aunt, who seemed startled to see us. We noticed that there was an indention in the mattress as if someone had been sitting there next to her, but it disappeared as soon as we entered the room. “

Me: “How did this make you feel?”

Dad: “These unexplained events left us puzzled and wondering what could have caused them”

Analysis:

In my analysis, the story that was told to me from an experience my dad had could be considered a memorate. By definition, a memorate is an oral narrative from memory relating a personal experience or a personal narrative involving an encounter with a supernatural being. Although this encounter was unexplained, many supernatural encounters can be unexplained. Additionally, because this happened in Texas, I believe Texas is filled with a lot history and it could be common to experience these types of things there. In terms of folklore, in an article from the Journal of Folklore Research by Ulo Valk, titled “Ghostly Possession and Real Estate: The Dead in Contemporary Estonian Folklore,” Valk elaborates on ghosts as a way to “provide meaning in a chaotic social environment”. Although this interpretation may not make complete sense, it creates an opening for further exploration on the subject of ghostly encounters like this one that happened to my father. As mentioned in this article, ghosts want to maintain traditions and culture, so maybe this space was special in some way.