Tag Archives: ghost

The Generous Jesuit Ghost

Nationality: USA
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: USC
Performance Date: April 10, 2015
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish, Hebrew

“So I have this friend who goes to Fordham, and I live in the Northeast so I’ve visited plenty of times, and she told me this popular legend around the school. There’s a church on campus since it’s a Jesuit school, and one day some girl saw a priest in the church that she hadn’t seen before. She was looking for tutoring in the field of his expertise, so she befriended him. He tutored her for weeks until the end of the semester, but something wasn’t quite right. At the end of the semester, she went back to thank him for all of his help, but she couldn’t find him. So naturally, she looked up the name of the priest in the school’s records, and found the name and picture of the priest who had helped her. The funny thing is, he had apparently been dead for almost 90 years!”


I got this from one of my friends who is from Providence, RI. Her friend is a freshman at Fordham, and keeps in regular contact with her. According to my friend, the legend circulates among Fordham students, and it’s a local legend that that building is somewhat supernatural. Having gone to a Jesuit high school, I kind of have an insight to this legend. The Jesuit priests at my school loved stories like this, and they always told kind of tongue-in-cheek stories about Jesuits helping people, so I feel like this may have originated with the Jesuits themselves.

The Ghost of Drunken Moon Lake

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA; Chicago, IL
Performance Date: 4/29/15
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish, Mandarin Chinese

The informant learned the following legend while studying abroad in Taiwan, and told it to me while recounting her experience at National Taiwan University.

“At National Taiwan University, there’s a big lake in the middle of campus, and it’s called Drunken Moon Lake, and the story is that there was a woman who was I think rejected by her lover, for some reason couldn’t be with her lover, and she drowned herself in the lake and I’m not sure how long ago it was, so they believe that a ghost is an unhappy spirit, like an unrestful soul. And they believe that she lives there on the lake. So there is a pagoda in the middle of the lake that doesn’t have a bridge to it, there’s no way to get to it, so there’s just birds there, and they believe that she lives there with other unhappy female ghosts, female sprits, and that if you’re a man, you should not walk by the lake, especially at like sunset or dusk. And if you do walk by the lake, you should definitely not talk to any woman because it could be an evil spirit trying to seduce you and she’ll drag you into the lake with her. Or else, if she doesn’t drag you into the lake, she could also go with you and pretend to be your wife or your girlfriend, but she’ll continue to bring bad things into your life and continue to haunt you without you knowing. And you’ll think you’re in love with her and meanwhile she’s destroying your life. So yeah, don’t find a girlfriend at Drunken Moon Lake”

The informant learned of this legend gradually over her time studying abroad in Taiwan, as whenever she would be around the lake, other people would warn her and tell her about the ghost that resided in it. She received pieces of the story in both English and Mandarin from different people.

The informant did not mention anything regarding the origins of this tale, or why people believed it, but it seemed to be taken quite seriously. Like many other horror tales and legends, maybe its origins had some practical application. Perhaps it was meant to deter young men from approaching the lake for some reason. Perhaps someone wanted to keep them away from flirting with the women around the lake, or keep them from trying to swim in the lake.

Ghost spirit in our house- Los Angeles

Nationality: American
Age: 30s
Occupation: Lyft driver

I was headed home from friends house and decided to use the lyft application, not knowing what to talk about i asked the driver Charles “Carlos” Van Stuesen if he knew any folk lore, he asked and i explained and he told me a rather interesting, supposedly factual story his mother had told him she witnessed, Afterwards he told me this:

Informant: Well there is a.. feels like a ghost sprirt in our house umm.. me and my roommates named him Prior Walter for like the Walters before him.. but.. just a funny name that we gave him .. but everybody that comes to our house.. kind of feels this..  that spends the night their question the next day is is there a ghost in the house cause they always feel something..but umm.. he’s not ever evil.. he seems like he is always at the entry way .. its a split level home so when you come in your either going to go up down or at that main level..and he seems like he is always at that main level.. like to me it seems like he’s waiting for family to come home but they are no longer there.. and he doesn’t know any better.. whats the weirdest thing is .. is when my dogs will walk around him they will go up do a U and go.. keep on walking they do not walk through him and thats the weirdest thing to see… um but.. like i said he’s never been evil or bad or anything.. just you feel a presence every now and then and like i said everyone who has stayed the night has always asked that the next day..

Collector: where do you live?

Informant: In montabello … i’ve kinda gooled but nothing comes up.. but we’ve always just said we have a ghost named Prior Walter.

Collector: Do the dogs look at the ghost as they walk around him.

Informant: umm yea actually all of them would look and walk around him except for one.. she would sometimes just sit at the bottom of the stairs and just stare at him.. she would just look at his direction when there was no one there to look at.

 

This story definitely raises some flags to me, i have personally asked the question of whether there was a ghost or not and people have responded.. everyone asks that. This consensus of “feeling” of a ghost might shed light on why we believe things. There could be multiple reasons why people are feeling this without it being a ghost but we begin to believe in the unbelievable, when multiple people are experiencing and witnessing an inexplicable phenomena the tipping factor of belief might be that it is a unanimous or majority consensus. Also for some reason Dogs always sense spirits as shown above as in the movies as well. Dogs have a great sense of smell maybe whatever is causing these sensations also gives off a smell which triggers the Dogs attention. Regardless the Dog’s attention is a contributing factor in the weighing of odds of whether or not there is a spirit, and as my informant has told us he believes that there is a Ghost because (1) he himself feels a presence (2) multiple people have felt a presence without foreknowledge of others’ feeling. and (3) because the Dogs don’t act as they usually do near where this presence is felt. These three pieces of folk-evidence might be sufficient to inspire belief in Ghosts.

The Ghost in the Weiner Theater

Nationality: American
Age: 16
Occupation: Student
Residence: Memphis, TN
Performance Date: March 21, 2015
Primary Language: English

The legend:

“During play rehearsal at the Weiner Theater, one girl brought a Ouija board, and while they were on break, the characters went backstage and asked if there were any ghosts residing in the theater. The Ouija board replied with the name Annie, and we have learned that there is a ghost named Annie in the Weiner Theater, and we keep a chair set for her in the tech booth during every show…But Ms. Caskey and everyone else already knew there was a ghost named Annie in the Weiner theater. And then, and then, so the Ouija board moved to Annie, and they were like, ‘There’s a ghost named Annie here,’ and everyone was, everyone who wasn’t there for the Ouija board was like, ‘Yeah we know,’ and they were like, ‘What?!’ and so, it was completely, like…there’s an actual ghost in the theater. Like, actually a ghost. Like Virginia and the people who were moving the Ouija board had no idea that there was a girl named Annie in the theater…but Mrs. Davis told them that there was an Annie. It’s really creepy.”

The informant, my sister and a sophomore in high school, heard this from her friend Virginia who was in a play at the all-girls k-12 school she attends in TN (and from which I graduated). The Weiner Theater is the school’s huge main theater that seats approximately 600 people for school plays, recitals, and other events. Ms. Caskey is the school’s theater director, and Mrs. Davis manages the tech booth in the theater department; according to the informant, both of these faculty members previously knew about the ghost named Annie who haunts the Weiner Theater. Virginia and some other girls in the school musical in the fall of 2014 were unaware of this ghost. Since the girls had no previous knowledge of the ghost, and the older faculty members already knew of such ghost, this Ouija board experience therefore proved to them that the ghost Annie is actually real. Memphis has a lot of old places, especially in midtown and downtown—the Orpheum Theater downtown is also presumably haunted by a little girl ghost—so belief in ghosts isn’t that unusual. The school was founded in 1902; it was one building on a small plot of land with very few students. Its old campus was downtown, but it moved campus to its current location in 1964. This is the history they taught us throughout elementary and middle school, along with even more detailed descriptions of the founder and her students. A portrait of the founder even hangs up in the library. Being over 100 years old, there is great emphasis on the school’s history and traditions. I believe its status as such a historical institution makes it very easy for its students and faculty to believe that it is haunted by ghosts. Ms. Caskey and Mrs. Davis have obviously accepted the fact that Annie exists. Most people who know this accept the knowledge and carry on with their day. They have even given her a chair in the tech booth to watch every show the school produces. And although the informant thinks it’s creepy, she obviously believes wholeheartedly that there is a ghost in the Weiner Theater.

Luther’s Ghost

Nationality: American
Age: 81
Occupation: Retired Dietician
Residence: Berkeley, CA
Performance Date: March 18, 2015
Primary Language: English

Informant: Great Aunt Charlotte was sick in bed once, and she looked up and saw the ghost of her tiny granny—quietly, quietly rocking in her rocking chair, smoking her corn-cob pipe.

Me: You believe in ghosts?

Informant: Oh, yes. The house in Berkeley was haunted, you know.

Me: Really?

Informant: Oh, yes. It was Luther. I passed it on the stairs, sometimes, and I could feel the inner—inner, you know—the inner stuff. And Uncle David said he always saw the rocking chair on the porch rock by itself. And I—we had a couple people—a couple people say they saw the lights flickering, going on and off. It was Luther.

The informant (my grandmother) was born in Missouri and has lived in Berkeley, CA for close to sixty years. She has always been a remarkably hard worker; she was raised by her uncle on his farm, where she more than carried her own weight, and, after completing four years at Penn State (where she was the only female Chemistry major at the time), she insisted on paying her uncle back every dime of her tuition. The informant moved out to California, went to graduate school at Mills College, and became a nutritionist working with nursing homes and other care facilities to develop standards for feeding different types of patients. After having two sons, the informant became the President of the Parents Association for the Head-Royce School in Oakland, CA and remained an active member of the Claremont Book Club.

This particular set of anecdotes came while the informant and I were discussing her house in Berkeley, which she was forced to sell a few years ago for financial reasons. The informant admits to “checking up” on the house frequently to see what the buyers have been doing to remodel it, and was outraged to find they’d changed the layout of the living room (a room visible only from the rear of the house, which means the informant broke into the gated backyard of a property she no longer owns to peer through the windows). Given her attachment to the house (she and her husband owned it for over forty years and raised two sons there), I was no all that surprised to hear that she thought the ghost of her late husband—Luther—haunted the place.

The informant specified feeling a kind of ghost energy, seeing objects move on their own, and flickering lights as signs of her late husband’s presence. All these phenomenon, in my opinion, are easily explainable. The informant is old and her staircase is very tall; perhaps the “energy” she felt was a response to the physical exertion. The rocking chair was stationed on the outdoor porch, so perhaps the wind rocked it. The house was in dire need of renovation (thought the informant would disagree), and I don’t doubt that the electric wiring through the house was ten to twenty years out of date. However, the informant firmly believes that the cause of these phenomenon was her husband’s ghost—no doubt, her belief stems from FOAF (friend of a friend) instances of ghost encounters, such as Great Aunt Charlotte’s, and a wider group of family members who seem to believe.