Tag Archives: ghosts

Haunted Theaters and Ghost Lights

Nationality: Afro-Latinx
Age: 20
Occupation: FIDM Student Studying Fashion Design, Food Service
Residence: 2715 Portland St Los Angeles CA 90007
Performance Date: 4/13/21
Primary Language: English

My friend shared this story with me and another female friend one night in the kitchen after work. I asked this friend about her haunted house and she later shared that her classmates always left a ‘ghost light’ in the school theater. It was bad luck not to leave a ghost light. This friend also said that she believed her theater may have housed some recent ghosts.

This speaker went to an arts school in Tampa, Florida. She took classes in the drama department and was in school theater productions. Here is her story.

*

“Theaters are traditionally haunted all the time… they’re just traditionally haunted,” the speaker said. “After you’re done striking a set or cleaning up or after you’re done rehearsing. You’re always supposed to leave a ghost light, or the ghost, or else that was bad luck.” I asked whether the light was meant to guide the ghosts, but she said that it existed to appease them/ She said ghosts do not like the dark, and that this was ironic.

One day after practice “a student forgot to put the ghost light on, you know, it’s not anything, not a very big deal. It’s literally like a stick and a light ball. And you roll it out onto theaters, like, but we just forgot about it. And then the next day, like a spotlight fell, and that was really bad.”

The speaker said that there were some specific ghosts she thought haunted the theater. “There were a couple of tragedies that did happen at our theater. And there was actually some of them were actually pretty recent. So I’d like to think there were good spirits rather than bad spirits,” she said. The drama director’s brother had passed away that year, and the speaker said that she would like to think that he came to see the productions at the theater. The speaker also added that a young actress had died of a disease in the past, and that there was a plaque in front of the theater honoring her memory. The speaker said that she would like to think that the actress’ ghost visited the theater as well.

When I asked what this meant to the speaker, she said that the young actress had “put so much of her craft into theater.” I suspect that knowing that deceased guests might visit the theater is comforting to the speaker, and that these two particular ghosts help future productions.

*

The speaker has shared other ghost stories and believes that these stories are real, so it makes sense that she would believe these ghosts could be real as well. She began telling this story discussing ghost lights and bad luck, but the story ended on a note of good luck. I was taught to act as if a god was always watching, and I know many people feel comforted to know that someone else is guiding them during stressful parts of their life. It might be comforting to know that ghosts are watching over stage productions as well, since the ‘good’ ghosts the speaker mentioned had theater or theater-adjacent backgrounds.

I did not know that movie theaters and stages are supposed to be haunted or that actors would leave a ghost light. My school had a small theater that we used for small class meetings when the drama department was not at practice. I can’t remember a specific light that was left on the stage, but the room was never completely dark. This was likely for security reasons.

The haunted theater trope may be due to the fact that theaters serve as a sort of liminal space when not in use. Theaters are such specific buildings, and sticking around after the show is not an expected reaction. Only janitors and stage crew might remain after a show is over.

Additionally, members who know about the ghost light are ‘real’ members of the theater community. They understand the traditions of other actors and stage crew, and they are part of an in-group.

This story also draws upon similar ideas as the article ‘Ghostly Possession of Real Estate: The Dead in Contemporary Estonian Folklore’ by Ulo Valk. Actors and other community members who believe in ghosts come to terms with tragedy by carrying out traditions in the hope that loved ones continue to exist in the ‘haunted theater.’ The ghost does not necessarily need to be buried near the theater, rather the theater belongs to them because their devotion to acting tied these ghosts to this particular spot.

For another ghost legend by the same speaker, see ” Haunted House in Indiana- The Funny Man and the Woman with the Red Eyes: Sleep Paralysis and Two Traveling Ghosts” in the USC digital Folklore Archive.

Do Ghosts Moonwalk?

Nationality: Indian
Age: 67
Occupation: Retired
Residence: Mumbai, India
Performance Date: 28/04/2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Hindi

The Interviewer will be referred to as ‘I’, and the informant as ‘N’. Explanations and translations for Hindi words will be italicised and in parentheses. The Informant is a 67-year-old Punjabi father, raised primarily in Gujarat.

N: Ghosts stay on imli (tamarind) trees. Okay? So, you never walk close to a tamarind tree, late in the night. And, also, if the ghosts follow you, they walk backwards, they don’t walk front-wards. So you have to keep that in mind, and avoid tamarind trees. Or, they stay on… vadh (banyan), what is… banyan trees. They stay on banyan trees, because banyan trees are very old trees, you know how they expand their roots. They spread, so they are large. So, if you have to sleep in the open, especially in the night, never sleep under a banyan tree, or a tamarind tree, because they both have ghosts. 

I: What do you mean by them walking backward? They don’t face you?

N: No, it’s like their feet are… like, like our feet are facing forward, a ghost’s feet are generally supposed to be facing backward. So, a ghost’s face is here [he gestures to his own, where it would face normally, forward], but the feet are the other way around. So, in the night when you go out, if you feel scared of somebody, you have to check. Check, are their feet facing forward or backward. That’s what it means. 

Analysis:

I think this is an especially interesting belief, because I’ve heard it many times — ghosts live under tamarind trees, mango trees, banyan trees, an assortment of trees, depending on who you ask, but their feet always face backwards. I think this could partially come from the fact that sleeping under a tree at night is inadvisable because of the whole taking-oxygen-giving-CO2 thing, because it would make people feel weaker. At the same time, for the feet-facing-backwards thing, I think it is extremely common to imagine ghosts are human-like but still different from us, somehow grotesque, somehow wrong. Their feet facing backward and head facing forward is, in itself, a weird image to have, it feels intrinsically wrong, ‘freaky’, because it has that almost uncanny valley effect about it, close enough to human, human-like, but still different enough in both status (ghost) and appearance (feet), to be weird, uncanny, scary.

Heartbeat Bridge

Nationality: American
Age: 22
Occupation: UI/UX Desinger
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 30, 2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Japanese, Latin

The informant grew up in Omaha, Nebraska. Here, he tells the story of how a bridge in Nebraska received the name “Heartbeat” Bridge.

N: There’s a place in Portal, Nebraska just south of the Pillar, called the Hatchet House. It was a school house and there was a legend that a teacher there went crazy and chopped off all her student’s heads and put them all at each desk. And then took all of their hearts to a nearby bridge and threw them into the river. And that bridge is called Heartbeat Bridge, and as you walk across it the boards thumping below your feet sound like heartbeats. And it’s supposed to be the heartbeats of the dead children.

Thoughts:
The informant also told a similar story as to why a local creek was named “Rawhide Creek”. It seems that in this region, it’s important to remember tragedies, and in order to do that, the areas that tragedies happened in are named after them.

Haunted Quarry

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Chicago, IL
Performance Date: May 2nd, 2021
Primary Language: English

Background

The informant, Chase, is the brother of the interviewer. He grew up in Chicago, Illinois where he currently resides. 

Context

Chase tells the interviewer about a haunted quarry where he used to work.

Transcript 

“Every summer in high school I have worked at a kayaking company. In the center of town is this ancient quarry that they have filled with water so it looks like a small lake. I taught kayaking and paddle boarding lessons on the quarry. The company rented out these kayaks and paddle boards to anyone in town. So over the quarry is this big bridge that a lot of cars drive over. It is pretty busy. People at work always claimed that like sixty years ago this family was driving across the bridge, but the dad was drunk and speeding and accidentally drove their car off the bridge into the quarry. They say it was too deep to retrieve the car or people and if you were able to dive down deep enough you would still be able to see the car and their bodies. Sometimes, at night, you can see the ghosts of the family crying in the middle of the quarry. I personally have never seen any shit like that before, despite all my years working there. I do believe that someone could easily drive off the bridge, it kinda looks like an accident waiting to happen. But I don’t really believe that they didn’t retrieve the car or people’s bodies. It’s definitely a fun story to tell though.”

Thoughts

I too worked at the quarry throughout high school. I never had an encounter with the spirits like other people at worked described and I don’t really believe it either. I do agree that the story of someone driving off the bridge accidentally is probably true, but I can’t imagine the quarry is so deep they cannot retrieve the bodies. It is very interesting town lore though.

Na Tuk Kong

Nationality: Malaysian
Age: 52
Occupation: Finance Manager
Residence: 60 TR 9/2, Tropicana Golf & Country Resort, Selangor, Malaysia
Performance Date: October 24, 2020
Primary Language: English
Language: Malay, Mandarin Chinese, Cantonese

Context:

My informant, YM, is a 52 year-old woman of ethnic Chinese background who grew up in a small town in Malaysia called Taiping in the 70s. This story was told as a re-telling of an experience her father had during a nightly excursion. Throughout the story, there will be references made in other languages, so a glossary will be provided for better understanding. The interview was done over the dinner table, as I asked my informant if they recalled any ghostly experiences.

Transcription:

Informant: Oh yeah, I remember last time gong gong saw before. You know, last time gong gong was a part of Rukun Tetangga right. So last time they will always gather around at night to patrol, and it’s always late at night. So they went on one of their patrols, they do that every night. At like 4am, he saw this one man, he was dressed in all white, just walking in the middle of the road in front of them. You remember the corner road there?

Me: Is it, like, the intersection?

Informant: Ah yes, so there’s this one man, very tall and thin, dressed in white, just walking in the middle there. Who would walk alone at that time right, in the middle of the night some more? So the group tried to follow him when he turned the corner. You would think that if he was a real person then they will still see him walking ahead of them right? But when they turned the corner, the man disappeared. He wasn’t there anymore. How can?

Me: So it was a ghost?

Informant: I think it was Na Tuk Kong. I don’t know whether that’s a ghost lah.

Me: What’s Na Tuk Kong?

Informant: It’s some kind of god or spirit that is supposed to protect your land. Do you know those santoi that you see at those buildings? Around the corner there. That one is for Na Tuk Kong so that he will protect the land or the building. I don’t think he’s a Chinese god, I think we only have it in Malaysia. He’s supposed to be a Muslim man I think. Na Tuk is supposed to be datuk, that’s where it came from.

gong gong: grandfather (Mandarin)

Rukun Tetangga: a neighborhood initiative where men of the household would patrol the neighborhood during the nights

Na Tuk Kong: Malaysian local guardian spirit

santoi: altar

datuk: people of a high social standing; elder, usually a male (Malay)

Thoughts:

I think this is a classic story of a sighting of this particular spirit. There are also notions of the spirit to be considered: He is dressed in all white; in Chinese traditions, white is usually associated with death. He is seen at an intersection; an intersection is a liminal space. He is seen at 4am; a number that in Chinese culture is synonymous with death. It also contributes to the idea of a localized spirit. He is a guardian for the area, so he is only seen in that area. The spirit itself also shows that for this community of people, the peace and safety of their land is important, to an extent that a spirit is worshipped to serve that purpose.

Also, it is interesting to see that this lesser deity was a result of a syncretic culture. He is exclusively worshipped by the Malaysian Chinese community, but in folklore, he is a Muslim Malay man. This is a testament to its origins in Malaysia— a country that is multi-ethnic and multi-religious. In a way, it also speaks to the fact that spiritual identity and belief is not necessarily cemented in one religion, and can borrow elements from different religions and cultures.