Tag Archives: ghost

Hungry Ghost (Preta) in Burma

Nationality: Burmese
Age: 17
Occupation: Student
Residence: Burma
Performance Date: 10 November 2011
Primary Language: English
Language: Burmese

My room mate, ThawZin, is from Burma. He is a Buddhist, and is very religious. This is the story he told me from his country.

 

ThawZin: “First, some background info! In Buddhism we have different classes for spirituality. There are the demigods at the top, followed by humans, animals, hungry ghosts, then devils. Hungry ghosts are what we call ‘preta’ (pronounced pale-tar). Pretas are people, who, when they were alive, were greedy and malicious. Their death is usually caused by a greedy act they brought upon themselves. You know… pretas are actually pitied by humans, because they have to face suffering, but they deserve it. It’s karma. They are invisible, but they can scare mortals. They like eating the gooey shit coming from meat and other things, haha! That is why, every time I go to the market with my mom, we always have to spit on the floor, so that they won’t follow us. Their appearance: they have big bellies, and small heads. The big bellies symbolize how greedy they are, you know… They want so much, but the little head, little face, little mouth, symbolize that they can’t get anything, can’t get shit, you know? Haha!

 

Anyway so the story… my mother told me this before. In Burma there’s this guy. He was fucking greedy during his life time. One day he was really hungry. He loved eating intestines, so he went to his wife and said, ‘Where the fuck is my food?!” But the wife didn’t have anything prepared. He was so angry, so he went to the barn and, you know, he cut the tongues of the cows there while they were still alive! I mean the cows were still alive, and he just cut them, and so they were bleeding and shit. The cows were like… mooing the whole night, haha!  And they died a slow, painful death. He went to his wife, threw the cow tongues down at the table and told her to cook them for him. So the wife did. As he was eating the cow tongues, suddenly his own tongue started to dissolve. You know, it dissolved all the way to his insides. But karma did not kill him yet, it made him suffer. The cow tongue just dissolved his insides for days, until he died. He died just like the cows… a slow, painful death. When he died, that is when he became a preta. Well, he was reborn as a preta.”

 

Me: “Where in Burma was this? I mean, is there a specific place where he haunts?”

 

ThawZin: “Oh yes! It is in the old first kingdom of Burma, in Bagan.

 

Me: “Do people avoid that place?”

 

ThawZin: “Oh not at all! Actually you know, when he died, his preta was located under the ground. And then one day farmers in Bagan found that one part of… you know, the ground, started becoming fleshy. And that’s when they figured out that there was a preta there. They don’t avoid it. They constantly plow over the land, again and again. The greedy guy has to suffer again and again, getting plowed, but they can’t do anything about him. It’s karma, man. He deserves what came to him, and he has to stay there until he has repaid his debt, his bad karma.”

 

ThawZin’s story shows a lot about the Burmese culture, especially about the strength of the people’s belief in Buddhism. For one, the whole idea of a preta ghost is based on Buddhist beliefs in spiritual hierarchy and rebirth. As well, he says that even though people pity these pretas, when the farmers found out that there was a preta under the ground, they still plowed over him, again and again, even if it made the preta suffer, because they believed in the Buddhist concept of karma: that people deserve what is coming to them, good or bad. In many ways, his story also comes as a story of morality, particularly for the idea that greed and blind rage are unwanted negatives that will get you in trouble, and will follow you even after you die, in your rebirth, or the afterlife.

 

Orphan gets run over by train

Nationality: Chinese
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: 920 W. 37th Place Suite 3301C
Performance Date: 31 Oct. 11
Primary Language: English
Language: Chinese

Orphan gets run over by a train

In Melbourne, there was this orphanage. I’m not exactly sure how it happened, but the orphanage burned a while back and was finally replaced by a school – like, a boarding school – not too long ago. Apparently, there are these umm…(positions arms perpendicular to each other)… railroad tracks nearby, and an orphan went over to the railroads and was run over by a train. The way the story goes you can see hand prints on the windows when the train passes by on foggy nights. It’s probably the first thing the train…you know…the first point of impact or something like that.

My roommate, E. F.,  heard the story from another friend, who was inspired to share after hearing a similar story on the local news, only a few nights ago. Right away, various elements of this story identify it as a legend. The setting, for one, is the capitol of Australia, a geographically distant but nonetheless real location. The events, for another, comprise the untimely death of an unnamed child and his/her haunting the location, which, although a known motif within ghost stories, present obvious challenges to belief as well as common thought – even for an individual who comes from an East Asian culture in which ghost stories are far more prevalent than here, in the US.

Despite the absence of any discernible proof and his usually pragmatic demeanor, E. F. didn’t altogether reject the possibility of the story’s events. He said he didn’t know any others but later mentioned that “at home [i.e., Hong Kong], parents usually tell their kids stories like this to prevent them from doing anything stupid.” As such, my being elder (even if only by a 3 years) likely removed the value of telling the story which could explain the unimpressed tone and lackadaisical gesture E. F. used.

Unfortunately, I find it difficult to form alternative analytical suppositions without more details. However, lack in this regard also limits potential outcomes. Elders clearly aren’t the only people who tell the story, and children aren’t necessarily the only ones who hear it. Therefore, elements are bound to vary based on circumstances of each telling. Furthermore, the abstract nature of an metaphorical approach to analysis is desirable.

Young miner’s return

Nationality: American
Age: 17
Occupation: Student
Residence: 920 W. 37th Place
Performance Date: 1 Nov. 2011
Primary Language: English

“Alright, I think it was before the Great Depression – in the late 20s or early 30s – when my grandma was a teenager. Back then, my family lived in a hotel because my great-grandfather was really rich. He just bought a hotel, and all his kids had their own rooms and stuff. He lost it all in the depression, of course, which is why I think this story may take place before that. Well, he owned these mines – or was it a mill? Um, either way, they would have like workers that worked down there. Some of them would stay in the hotel as permanent residents or whatever. It was my grandma and her sister’s job to take care of their [the workers’] laundry and stuff during the day after school, and, um, there was one miner that was working or, uh that was there with them. Actually, I’m not sure if he was a miner or a mill worker. I do know he was a worker for my great-grandfather, and he was younger than all the others – around like 18 or 19. All the girls were really into him, hanging all over him, paying him extra attention and whatnot. There was one day, while they were at work in the morning, where my grandma and her sister laid out an ironing board to iron the laundry like they usually did. Back then, ironing boards didn’t have the fancy stands to hold them up. You just took the ironing board and laid it across two chairs. Whenever they did that, it would always end up blocking the door, so they had it all set up and they had the ironing board down. Um, the bell hadn’t rung yet, saying that work was over, but the young guy had come home and opened the door like he was just coming home. Before moving on, he stood there and just looked at them, watching them iron his sheets. They had to like move everything [to let him pass]. He didn’t say anything, though. He just waited until they had moved all the chairs and the ironing board. They waited for him to pass, so they saw and heard him go up to his room and close his door before they put everything back and started working again. Three hours later, the bell rang, so all the workers came home, except for him. They [my grandma and her sister] assumed he was already there. But then, a messenger came from the mill or mines came over and told them that he had died in an accident that day and that they shouldn’t expect him to come back. They went up and checked his room, but he wasn’t there. It wasn’t as if they just thought they saw him passing by, either. He legit, like, waited for them to move everything, and, so, yea. That’s really it. I mean, like, with a story from this time period, I can see how or, at least, why he’d come back. There’s no, like, ‘rehaunting’ or anything, just that one encounter. It freaked them all out, though. It’s weird, too, because you always wonder – That’s the only one I think we have in my family, though. I don’t know.”

As illustrated by his version of this story, J. M., is a loquacious individual. He heard this recounted from his grandma, who lived with his grandpa near the Ohio River Valley, and retold it around midday – not midnight, unfortunately. Now 19 years of age, he openly admits to not believing this story as a child, a sentiment somewhat implied by the emphasis on the term rehaunting. Naturally, one might consider this a healthy degree of skepticism. Viewed as psychic premonitions, dreams of this sort are not uncommon among women in J. M.’s family, however. Both his mom and grandma have them. Although he does not elaborate on his initial statement of regarding his beliefs as a child, J. M. believes, now, “after hearing grandma tell older relatives the same story…”

Given its physical setting and believable events, I believe this story clearly falls under the legend category. J. M. did not appear overly concerned with the accuracy of his date, but I do not feel as if this had a negative impact on the story. The distinguishable imbalance of all other details placed throughout the story clearly identifies the young man’s return from the dead as the focal issue in this legend. Although, or perhaps because, I have come to to recognize J. M. as an excellent storyteller, I was somewhat worried that J. M. might add or overemphasize particular elements the story in order to make it sound more believable.

Fortunately, a story that emphasizes specific details and/or conditions, especially those surrounding a visitation, agrees most with author/editor Gillian Bennet’s typography of ghostly narratives, set forth in her collection of memorates and analyses entitled Alas, Poor Ghost!, as a story of cause. A narrator who tells a story of this type generally highlights contextual evidence that furthers a sense of order and purpose (1999). Seemingly at odds with this definition, the key data J. M. includes – namely, the current year and the worker’s age – is relatively inexact; likewise (un)defined are his occupation in life and reason for resurrecting in death. However, the first two of these inconsistencies are, at best, debatable.

In a temporal sense, the Great Depression, effectively the nadir of modern American history, replaces any value or clarity lost in his estimation of the “…the late 20s or early 30s…” Issues with details specific to the worker falter accordingly. His occupation as a miller or miner is unclear, but that stems from the state of the workplace, which is never definitively identified as either a mill or a minor discrepancy considering the relevant context. At “around…18 or 19” years of age, the young worker’s death occurs unquestionably early and, in accordance with the popular motif, is equally untimely. Furthermore, the majority of these “uncertain” elements relate to the young worker. The girls usually pay the young worker extra attention. J. M.’s grandma and her sister typically do the laundry and set up the iron-chair contraption. The young worker is essentially the only uncertain person, and guess who ends ends up being the ghost.

The Ghost of Lawrence Hall at Asheville School

Nationality: caucasian
Age: 19
Occupation: Student-Writing for Screen and Television Major-USC
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: November 5th, 2011
Primary Language: English

 

The Ghost of Lawrence Hall

My boyfriend went to boarding school at The Asheville School in Asheville, North Carolina. He was born in Boone, North Carolina and grew up there. He knows a few ghost stories that have been passed down over time at his school. The school has been around for over 100 years and has a romantic, isolated setting. He told me this story a few weeks ago:

JH: “When I was in high school, one of the older kids told me this story about the hallway that I lived in my senior year. So, back in the 20s, my high school, The Asheville School in North Carolina was an all boys school. One of the dormitories called Lawrence Hall had three floors of all boys with 24 rooms in each hallway. Now, at the end of each hallway was a faculty apartment where young faculty members and their families would live. Legend has it, that on the third floor, which was the top floor, there was a faculty apartment and in it lived a young biology teacher and her husband, who was a soccer coach. There was also an African American janitor that would clean all three halls day and night. He would get paid to clean the hallways and clean the bathrooms. The dormitory bathrooms are next to the faculty apartments. So, most of the time he would just clean during the day when he was supposed to. However, he started coming around at odd hours, especially when the biology teacher’s husband was away. The kids on the third floor started believing that the janitor was having an affair with the biology teacher, which was a big taboo back then and would have been preposterous.

So there was this attic in the roof that has been a part of the building forever and practically no one ever goes there. The attic stairs are right next to the faculty apartment. The janitor had been working on the third floor a lot and cleaning up the attic and what not. And one night, it was about 2 am, when some students swore that they heard crashing, sounds of a fight and then screaming. No one thought too much of it though and it blew over the next morning. Once it came to be the afternoon, people figured out that they had no idea where the janitor was. He just never showed up to work that day. Eventually, a person went up to the attic to see if he was in there. And he was. He was dead in the attic.  It looked like he was trying to stack something up on a shelf in the attic, and it had fallen down, smashed his head and broken his neck. But of course, the question always remains, is that actually what happened? Or did the biology teacher’s husband kill him and put him up there and set up the scene? It was never fully looked into and it was reported as an accident.

            So now it is believed that the ghost of the janitor haunts the place, especially the attic and the third floor. There were a lot of odd squeaking sounds, people complained that doors were closing and that there were sounds of the bathroom being cleaned very late at night. When they turned the third floor of Lawrence Hall into a girl’s hallway, it got a lot freakier. Especially, when girls are out between 2 and 4:30 in the morning, they just get really freaked out. They say that there is a lot of activity going on in the bathroom and that they are too scared to use the bathroom late at night. They say that if you are up around 4 am, you can sometimes hear the sound of someone knocking on the walls and on the doors of every room. Ten years before I got to Asheville School, this one girl was convinced that this older man who was a security guard, opened her door at 3:30 in the morning and watched her while she was sleeping. She was absolutely convinced that he was staring at her. Either she was dreaming or it was someone actually there. To this day no one knows. And that’s most of the story that I’ve heard.”

JH’s Interpertation:

“If the janitor really is haunting the building, I think it is because he was actually murdered and that it was not an accident.  Everyone just assumed that it was an accident and took the couple’s word for it rather than investigating and finding out what truly happened. Pertaining to the fact that it became a girl’s hallway, I think there is a lot of unrequited love on the janitor’s end and a feeling of not fitting in. If he did have this affair, he would be looking for a lover again. And, since he couldn’t find his original lady, he would go for the next best thing—one of the young girls who lives in the third floor of Lawrence Hall. So, in essence, he is still haunting the building to find either the same or a new true love again.”

My Interpretation of his story:

 This story falls into the legend category, because the events may or may not be true. I think there are a few reasons why the janitor ghost still haunts Lawrence Hall. First, I think that the ghost wants to avenge the man who killed him. But since the man is no longer living at Asheville School, he has decided to just act as a “poltergeist” to those who live happily on the third floor. He wants to show the living that he is still angry and upset about what unjustly happened to him. We have talked a lot about ghosts who come back to avenge the living or who have “unfinished business” on Earth and I think that this is one such example of a ghost coming back to Earth to finish business that he couldn’t complete before his death.

The Ghosts of Greyfriar’s Kirkyard in Edinburgh, Scotland

Nationality: Caucasian
Age: 22
Occupation: Student-film studies
Residence: South Pasadena
Performance Date: November 4th, 2011
Primary Language: English

The Ghost of Greyfriar’s Kirkyard Cemetery in Edinburgh

Told on November 4th, 2011

My best friend’s boyfriend studied abroad in the U.K. last year and he visited my best friend at her school, University of Edinburgh in Scotland.  I asked him if he could possibly tell me any ghost stories from his time in the U.K. He told me that he had a perfect story about a cemetery that he went into while visiting his girlfriend in Edinburgh. I have been a best friend of the girl since 9th grade and I have known her boyfriend for a few years. Here’s the story:

R.Y.: “When I was studying abroad in London, I visited my girlfriend who goes to University of Edinburgh in Scotland. I visited The Greyfriar’s Kirkyard Cemetery really late at night with my girlfriend one night. It was like midnight, it was dark and there was no one there. It was supposed to be locked, but the gate was open. We walked around and we were just talking and stuff.  We were in there for like 30 minutes. My girlfriend had taken a tour of the cemetery prior to this visit and she decided to tell me the story of the ghost/ghosts that haunt the cemetery. So, apparently there was a homeless person who was trying to find a place to stay because it was raining, as it always does in the UK. So he went into the cemetery and he decided that he would get into a crypt to get out of the rain. He was on top of a crypt with a dead person in it and then someone came into the cemetery walking his dog in the rain with an umbrella. The dog walker scared the homeless person and the homeless person fell into the crypt and got lost in the bones and it closed on him. It was said that he awakened and disturbed the dead. But what just dead did he awake?

Well some time ago, in like the 1600s, there was a judge, nicknamed ‘Bloody Mackenzie,’ who persecuted the covenanters—Scottish Presbyterians—and he mass burned and crucified them. Then they were buried in masses in this cemetery. He kept them in a field next to the cemetery and murdered some and let others starve to death then they were all thrown into the burial pit. They were all buried together in giant crypts and they were buried without their names on their graves or anything. He was truly an evil person and he would take money from children and kick dogs and what not. Then when the judge died he was buried in the same cemetery with those bodies.

The incident with the homeless person is what disturbed or awakened the burial pit. Apparently, they have to lock up the cemetery at night supposedly because someone was actually injured there one night at the “Black Crypt.”  The “Black Crypt” it the one where the judge was just thrown in with the other people he killed. It is in the corner of the cemetery and it has no ones names or years on it. It was an unidentified crypt.  Sometimes, when tours are held at the cemetery, people will encounter cold spots and when people take photos they see a lot of mystical orbs come out on the printed film. People say that they go into the cemetery and all the sudden there is one spot that is way colder than others. Usually the spots near the “Black Crypt” are way colder than others. Some people also claim that while walking through the cemetery, they feel that they are physically pushed to the side, like someone is angrily passing them. The really creepy part is that when people are on tours, they leave and later they discover that they are covered in scratches and bites.  They don’t feel the scratches happening to them while they are there, but when they get home they will discover small scratches on their arms and body. Apparently, this one time, this one guy was really badly injured, and had cuts scratched all over him. Who caused these scratches and bites? It varies on whom you ask. Some say that it is the judge, known as the ‘Mackenzie Poltergeist’ cutting up people from the grave. And others say that it is all the disturbed and improperly buried dead, having their revenge on the living. Anyways, that’s the story I heard. The versions may vary on who you ask, but almost everyone who visits the cemetery feels some kind of strange omen or deep anguish that occurred there.”

RY’s Interpretation:

“I think there are a lot of ways to interpret the story. I think that the scratches could be from the homeless person that fell into the pit, in that he is trying to claw his way out of the crypt to escape the dead bodies. He is literally clawing his way out and scratching anyone who comes too close to the crypt. Or, it could be that the judge could still be hurting people from his grave because he was so evil. One of the main ideas in the story is that this judge just ruthlessly killed people on no basis other than religious prejudice. So one theory of the poltergeist type ghost or ghosts is that there are many ghosts—the unnamed dead who were wrongfully persecuted and improperly buried. In my opinion there is an obvious moral to the story: wrath and immoral persecution of human beings is wrong and can cause disturbing consequences both here on this Earth and in the afterlife. This legend serves as a way for distancing and understanding a tragic event that has happened and it allows people to remember and reflect on the wrongs of the past.”

My Interpretation of his story:

This story falls into the legends category because while there is documented evidence of Judge Mackenzie’s persecution of the Protestants, he may or may not still haunt the graveyard today. I think that the scratches are coming from ghosts of the improperly buried dead. As we learned in class, when people did not have proper burials, they came back to haunt the living, sometimes until they were given the burial that they wanted. In addition, disturbing the rested dead is often advised against because it is wrong to disturb those who have been put to rest for eternity. I do believe that when the homeless man fell in the crypt he probably angered a lot of spirits. The story is one of warning to those who hear it—it is not a good idea to wake the dead and anger their spirits.