Tag Archives: ghost

Lavinia Fisher- Southern Legend

Nationality: American
Age: 23
Occupation: Production Assistant
Residence: Charleston, South Carolina
Performance Date: 4/1/20
Primary Language: English

Main Piece:

Subject: There was a traveller coming into downtown Charleston everyday to do business during the year… I’m gonna say 1850. He was coming from the North, from around Georgetown, and back in the olden’ days unless you wanted to add like, a couple days to your trip to go up the Cooper River and find a crossing, you’d have to stop… in somewhere that is now Mt. Pleasant and spend the night to cash a boat to get to Downtown Charleston the next day. So sure enough this is what he had to do. He stopped in an inn run by husband and wife John and Lavinia Fisher. And there were always rumors that circled around this couple, but it was mostly just gossip, not much of any real substance. They had a really crazy reputation… The wife- Lavinia- was supposedly one of the most beautiful women anyone had ever seen. Whereas John was this big, quiet, intimidating, imposing presence. No one paid him any attention when Lavinia was at his side. So… this traveller stops in this inn, hitches his horse, comes inside, and is greeted by Lavinia. She takes his coat, John takes his stuff up to his room…um… and the traveller is intrigued at first. He’s like “I’ve heard so many things about this couple, I’m just gonna observe and play along and see if I can tell any gossip to people I’m doing business with tomorrow in Charleston.”

Everything goes smoothly until they sit down for dinner with a few other boarders. And the traveller realizes John and Lavinia are angling their questions mostly at him. Um… and the questions are never innocent questions. They were like… “Do you have a family?” “What is your business in Charleston?” Things like “Is anyone expecting you home and how much money are you carrying?” He started to get weirded out. The boarders all go to bed, John and Lavinia stay up with the traveller. Lavinia then offers him a cup of tea! Not wanting to be rude, he accepts it. And the traveller, so as not to raise any suspicion, pretends to drink it. At this point, he’s unsettled but he also already paid for his room. And he’s thinking, “I could just be freaking myself out because yeah I’ve heard things about these people… about their guests going missing. But like… no one does that! They’re just being nice and I’m being paranoid.” But he goes to bed that night and finds that he cannot sleep. Then he hears footsteps like, outside his room, and he recognizes them as John’s. So he hops out of bed and hides behind the chair in his room. The footsteps go away and he stands up. Then he looks out the window to make sure his horse is still hitched. Then he hears this like, giant clatter, and the whole room shakes. When he looks back to his bed, there’s just an empty void in the floor. So he’s like, “I’m out.” So he hops out his window, jumps on his horse, and just books it to the dock, where he is the first person on the boat a couple hours later.

When he gets to Charleston, he tells the authorities there’s some shady stuff going down in the room. So they authorities go to the Inn, and they find… that all of the beds… are equipped with this mechanism that like… drops their guests into this murder dungeon! And they find like twelve bodies! Like this is real. John was executed, Lavinia had to watch. John’s neck didn’t break immediately, and he struggled for like… minutes. And Lavinia watched. And when it was her turn- by the way as the first woman executed in America- she looked to the crowd of curious onlookers and said… this is crazy… So Lavinia looks to the crowd of curious, morbid onlookers and she says, “If any of you have a message for the devil, tell it to me now, for I will be seeing him soon.” And then that bitch was hanged. And… she apparently still haunts the jail. 

Interviewer: Holy shit.

Subject: I know I know! I loved this legend as a little girl. I think my grandma first told it to me. My grandma is like super southern. And like yeah… Lavinia is terrifying but that last line always hit so hard. I think that’s why I remember it so well.

Context: The subject is a 23-year-old white woman born and raised in Charleston, South Carolina. She is of French Huguenot descent and her ancestors settled in Charleston, South Carolina and New Orleans, Louisiana. She is currently quarantining at her home in Charleston with her family. She is a close family friend, and knowing she and the rest of her family have deep ties with Southern history and folklore, I called her up over FaceTime and asked if she would mind sharing any legends she knew.

Interpretation: I too was born and raised in Charleston, South Carolina, and am all too familiar with the legend of Lavinia Fisher. This particular legend seems to be heavily commercialized in the Charleston tourism industry. I first heard it when I went on a walking ghost tour with three other tourists. Though much of this legend seems to have a factual historical basis, I know that certain elements are dramatized. Lavinia and John actually ran an inn, actually murdered people, and were actually executed. But I have heard differing iterations of the legend from the subject’s version. For example, rather than the subject’s account of Lavinia’s final words, I have heard the version, “I you have a message you want to send to Hell- give it to me. I’ll carry it.” Additionally, the concept of the beds opening up to a deadly dungeon is not necessarily based in fact, and was likely added into the legend through the years for dramatic effect. While the subject mentions only twelve bodies, other accounts mention hundreds. There is also the well known claim that Lavinia wore her wedding dress to her execution. And so on and so forth, the variations go.

Regardless, the most fascinating aspect of the legend is how much of it is based on fact, which is quite a lot of it.

For more on Lavinia, see:

Weiser, Kathy. “Lavinia Fisher.” Legends of America, 19 Dec. 2019, www.legendsofamerica.com/sc-laviniafisher/.

Annabel Lee

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, Charleston
Performance Date: 26 February 2020
Primary Language: English

Main Piece:

Charleston is known to be like one of the most haunted cities in America, because there have been lots of tragedies like fire, earthquake, and more crazy stuff. So there are ghost tours all around the city, and a lot of places are supposedly haunted. One spot that’s pretty famous is the Unitarian Church graveyard. People claim to have seen a young woman there at night, and that woman is supposedly the ghost of Annabel Lee. There’s an old Charleston story, like Antebellum era, where a Virginian sailor falls in love with Annabel Lee, a sweet Charleston girl, while he was stationed in this city. But her father disapproved, and while separated she died of syphilis. Where it gets interesting is that Edgar Allan Poe wrote a poem about Annabel Lee. Poe was actually enlisted in the navy and was actually stationed in Charleston, and he met his wife Virginia there. His wife also died young from tuberculosis, and people speculate how Poe wrote the poem based on the local Charleston legend and combining it with his own story. The poem is also the last thing Poe ever wrote, he died two days after finishing that poem. So when people say they see the ghost of Annabel Lee, it’s more likely that it’s actually the ghost of Virginia, because Annabel Lee was a fictional character.

Background:

My informant currently resides in Los Angeles, but was born and raised in Charleston, South Carolina. Sullivan’s Island, a region in Charleston, is where the historic forts used during the colonial era. This region has rich history and lore about spirits and ghosts, and it’s also where my informant is from. Ghost stories of Charleston, from what my informant has described to me, are very common and are tossed around especially amongst younger children. While not all of the residents of Charleston may believe these stories, the city still attracts plenty of tourists enticed by these spirits.

Context:

The conversation took place at my apartment in Los Angeles, and no other person was present during our conversation. It was a comfortable setting with no notable distractions.

My thoughts:

I found this piece particularly interesting, more so than other ghost stories, because it’s a mixture of actual folklore and literature. The myth of Annabel Lee predated Poe, but it was his poem that made this story mainstream to the rest of the world. And because his poem was so heavily based on his own life, it resulted in an interesting amalgamation of an author inserting himself into a folklore to enrich the myth even further.

The Black Dog

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Orange County, California
Performance Date: 5 March 2020
Primary Language: English

Main Piece:

My grandma would tell me these stories about black dogs, or the black dog I guess. Basically, she said that when you see the black dog, it’s a sign of bad luck or death. It’s not just any black dogs, but you would know if you see one because this dog has red eyes and would just randomly appear and disappear without you noticing. The Black Dog apparently is a ghost who works for the Devil himself, and seeing the Dog basically means that the Devil will eventually get to you. She told me this story of when she was little, she visited her dead grandparents at a graveyard. She supposedly saw the Black Dog there, and apparently she lost her aunt from a cancer a few months after. I haven’t bothered to check up on how true the story was, but it did scare me when I was little. My family even avoided getting a black colored dog when we first got our puppy. My dog is beige.

Background:

My informant is of Irish and Scottish descent, his parents being immigrants from those respective countries. He grew up heavily influenced by both cultures, and he’s told me that he relates more with Irish and Scottish cultures more so than Irish American or Scottish American identities. The Black Dog is a popular motif and a mythical creature in European countries, especially in Britain, Scotland, and Wales. While the details of the story varies per region, but in general the Black Dog is believed to bring terrible news. It’s also the motif behind the famous Sherlock Holmes story “the Hound of the Baskervilles”.

Context:

The informant relayed this piece of information during our lunch at my apartment, near USC campus. There no other people present during our talk, and we were dining as we talked. It was a comfortable setting.

My thoughts:

Because there’s so much cultural positive rep for dogs in western viewpoint, I found it fascinating that there’s a very old and famous European belief that a dog could ever be this sinister and evil. The color black being associated with Satan and the Devil seemed appropriate for Europeans to do so. From my understanding, to say “I have a black dog” nowadays means that someone suffers from depression, and it was helpful to understand where the phrase originated from.

For more information on the Black Dog, please see:

Quaile, Sheilagh. “The black dog that worries you at home: The Black Dog Motif in Modern English Folklore and Literary Culture.” The Great Lakes Journal of Undergraduate History, vol.1 article 3, 2013.

The Ghosts of Cheesman Park: Haunting in Colorado

Nationality: French
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/17/19
Primary Language: French
Language: English

Background: CW Originally heard the story from their father and once from their grandmother, positioning the story as fairly old within the history of Cheesman. CW Then looked it up on google to confirm it. CW Finds the story interesting and “Kind of messed up, to be honest” it matters to them because they lived in a haunted place and had a friend who was extremely interested in ghost hunting.
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Context CW, with a mug of hot tea sits, on my couch after an afternoon of doing homework and recounts stories from their childhood. The atmosphere is calm, the air is calm and the room is mostly quiet in between stories. CW has known the collector for some time and thus is excited to share their stories.

Performance:
CW:The park that I used to live by is supposedly super haunted because it used to be a cemetery
MW: Aw Hell yeah!
CW: CHEESMAN PARK
MW: Cheesman Park?
CW Cheesman Park.
CW: OK Cheesman park used to be a cemetery I don’t remember when but the …..the city was like “Hey why don’t we not make this a cemetery”
CW: Cause ok it was a cemetery for un unn, like you know like people who weren’t paying for a burial
MW: A potters field?
CW Yeah, and also Asian Americans in Little Cheesman which is a part of Cheesman but it’s like a strip on the other side of the road. That’s where the Asian Americans people were. I think, if I’m remembering correctly Idunno.
CW:And so the city was like “Yeah we don’t want this to be a graveyard anymore so lets like”….I’m starting to doubt what I remember
MW: Just tell me what you remember
CW: So they hired someone to, like basically dig up all the graves. Buuut he was super sketchy and he would like mix the remains and pack them into child coffins to make more money off of it….[CW trails off, and laughs at my bewildered expression inn response to the exhuming ]
CW: But now supposedly Cheesman park is like super haunted because of all the graves that were disrupted.
CW: My friends told me if you lay down in Cheesman park you’ll feel like you can’t get back up because the spirits are trying to keep you there with them and definitely like a lot of weird noises
CW: Because I lived right on the park, I was pretty convinced they were some whack noises for the middle of ….Denver….the Gay Neighborhood of Denver, but yeah…spoooky.
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Analysis:
The story plays on two key fears that might represent the anxieties in the Cheesman community, notably two different local marginalized groups at the time of the story’s conception, the poor and Asian Americans. These groups likely felt uncomfortable in the city anyway and made some of the majority uncomfortable with their presence thus the city’s desire to remove the cemetery can be seen as a drive to remove these people from the environment. The desecration of their graves, the stuffing of bones into childrens’ coffins serves to mimic the disrespect these communities received in life and why they’d be angry enough to trap someone in the park and force their victims to join their community. Likewise that Cheesmann is now “the gay neighborhood of Denver” the feeling of unrest and danger felt by the LGBT community there might to be an impetus for the survival of the story.

A Friendly Ghost

Nationality: Persian
Age: 59
Occupation: N/A
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 5, 2019
Primary Language: English
Language: Farsi

Context: While sitting with my family for our weekly Shabbat dinner, I decided to ask my family members if they’d ever had experiences with the supernatural. My mother shared a rather lovable encounter that had stuck with her for the last 29 years.

 

Background: The story takes place in 1989, about one year after my sister – her first child – was born. Her younger brother had suddenly passed away in 1985, one year before her wedding.

 

Main Piece: “She was almost 2 I think. Dad was always leaving really early in the morning and would work until late at night, so it was always just the two of us alone together in our old apartment. I was always so nervous around that time, I was scared to be alone with the baby because I had no idea what I was doing. That night I finally got her to go to bed after she was crying and crying for hours. Right after I put her down I was sitting in the rocking chair in her room and I was just thinking about [her brother], and I just thought to myself, I wonder what it would be like if he was here, I wonder if he would think I was a good mom. I kept thinking of what it would have been like if he had met her and seen me as a mommy. I remember I started dozing off and started imagining him standing with me and holding her in his arms, and at that exact moment, [my sister] started saying ‘agha, agha’, which is man in Farsi, and started pointing to the corner of the room. She only knew how to say a few words at the time, and I just remember I had goosebumps all over my body. It was as if she and I saw the same picture that I was imagining in my head. Or maybe he came to visit the both of us. I can’t tell you what happened that night, all I know is that there was no one else in that room, but it didn’t feel like it was just the two of us.”

 

Analysis: While this was not a typical “ghost story”, it definitely qualifies as some supernatural encounter. My mother has always been a very spiritual person, but always tried not to talk about death or the afterlife, and usually deflects when talking about her brother who had passed. It’s interesting to hear that individuals can still feel a supernatural presence.