Tag Archives: ghosts

The Lady in White

Nationality: American
Residence: california
Performance Date: 2019
Primary Language: English

Main Piece:

“A couple of weeks before my first husband was diagnosed with cancer, I woke up in the middle of the night and saw a spirit of a woman floating in the middle of my room. She was staring toward me but was not looking at me. She looked sad. I decided to close my eyes and hide under the covers. After a while I fell asleep. The next night though, she appeared again, but this time she was much closer to my bed. She was at the end of my bed actually. I was so afraid and decided to slowly walk around her and out the door. My husband woke up after I left and he rushed out of the room as well. He was panting and his face was white. He said he had seen a woman in a white dress floating in the middle of the room and that she was staring right at him. I told him I had also seen her. It was so creepy. A few weeks later he was diagnosed with cancer and he died some months later.”

Context:

The informant is an elderly Caucasian woman born and raised in Tennessee. She had this spiritual experience while married to her first husband who died of cancer. She now believes that the spirit was trying to warn her about her husband having developed cancer. A couple of days after seeing this spirit, her husband was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

Analysis:

I believe that the informant now believes that the spirit she saw was trying to communicate to her the terrible news to come. Maybe back then she might have just felt fear but today the informant truly believes that that spirit was a good spirit.

Blue Ceilings

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Dallas, Texas
Performance Date: 4/6/19
Primary Language: English
Language: Italian, Spanish

Interviewer: Could you tell me about a superstition you have learned from your family in Alabama?

AC: Yes, one in particular that my family took and uses is we have our ceilings in our rooms painted blue. 

Interviewer: What’s the reasoning for that?

AC: The superstition behind it is that people believe that if your ceilings and doors are painted blue then they block spirits and ghosts from passing through to the room. My mom calls it “sleeping under blue skies”.

Interviewer: Why does the blue stop the spirits or ghosts?

AC: It’s supposed to represent water. I guess that they can’t pass through water. 

Interviewer: How do you feel about participating in this superstition? What does it mean to you?

AC: I really like it because like most little kids I would be scared of monsters and ghost being in my room while I was sleeping my room and my parents would tell me that they couldn’t come in because of the blue and it would always reassure me.

Interviewer: Where else have you seen this?

AC: My mom’s whole side of the family lives in Alabama, grandparents and both sets of cousins, and they all use it. But I have seen it in other places in the south at friends homes in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Florida. So it’s more of a southern thing than an Alabama thing. 

Context:  The informant is an eighteen-year-old young woman from Dallas, Texas. Her mother is from Alabama where the rest of her side of their family still lives. She frequently visits Alabama and her family there so she is very familiar with their superstitions. The explaining of this superstition was collected in person at the informant’s dorm in Dallas, Texas.

Analysis: This is a fascinating superstition that is used to calm the fear of ghosts and spirits that kids have. I never realized that this is why blue is often a color of rooms in the south but now I will recognize the meaning behind it when I see this. It is also interesting that this is something the informant’s immediate and distant family all participates in. 

 

Two Boys near Pirates of the Caribbean

Nationality: Indonesian American
Age: 28
Residence: California
Performance Date: 5/1/2019
Primary Language: English

Context:

The informant is a young woman of 28 years old currently working at the Disneyland Resort. She will be referred to as DG. While DG was working at her former location in a restaurant within Disneyland, she was talking with her friend, who we’ll call KE. He described an odd situation that happened to him during a marathon held within Disneyland before the land was opened to guests.

Main Piece:

I was at work at the Galactic Grill working with one of my friends, KE. We were cleaning at the time and I asked him how his marathon went. He’s a runner and a track coach and did one of the longer Disneyland Marathons. KE told me that he was running out front ahead of everyone so there was no one around when he was running through New Orleans Square. As he passed the Pirates attraction, he heard children laughing and giggling in the distance like they were playing so he ran faster. Later he found out that the attraction was undergoing maintenance, so there was no one around or inside it. Maintenance workers were not scheduled to work on the attraction during the hours of the marathon. The voices sounded like two young boys playing.

Notes:

Disneyland has a fair number of stories shared by cast members about phantom voices and ghosts. One of the stories is of two young boys near the Rivers of America which is located directly across from the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction. In 1973, two boys decided to hide somewhere in Tom Sawyer’s Island which is in the middle of the Rivers of America. After park closing, they thought they would swim onto the main land to play in the park. While attempting to swim across, one of the boys struggled and when the other attempted to help, they both drowned. This event is the origin of the stories shared by cast members and guests who have heard the boys’ voices and have seen movement in the river near Tom Sawyer’s Island.

 

Ghost in McCarthy Honors Dorm 3107

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Charlottesville, VA
Performance Date: 4/21/19
Primary Language: English

Abstract:

This piece is about a ghost sighting in USC McCarthy Honors Dorm Room 3107. A white figure sleeping with the informant in bed was spotted by her roommate and told to her later.

Main Piece:

“L: Last year I was in the dining hall and one of my friends that wasn’t one of my roommates was making some joke about my room being haunted. And I was like “what? No. Don’t tell me this.” And my friend was like “Oh did your roommate not tell you this?” So it was my direct roommate. So one night we were all hanging out and watching movies or something and the next morning my roommate asked that friend, “why did you sleep in my roommate’s bed last night?” And she was like “I didn’t sleep in her bed last night.” And my roommate said “No I definitely saw a really pale bed laying next to her at night.” So it was laying with me.

C: That’s the creepiest thing I’ve heard.

L: So I think it’s because I have all white blankets and maybe it’s because I had all my blankets pushed to one side and maybe looked like a person. It happened in May of last year, so I only had a few more weeks left in that room.

C: And you lived in the village so they were new?

L: Yeah they were new. So no rumor of them being haunted. But we were watching Buzzfeed Unsolved, so maybe she was super paranoid or something.

C: What room were you in?

L: 3107. In the lofted double. So we were high up. Like you can barely see each other from the beds because we are so high up. She thought it was my friend who was really pale, but then we thought it was a ghost.”

Context:

The informant is a 19 year old sophomore who lived her freshman year in Room 3107 in McCarthy Honors Dorm at the USC Village. She was the first year of students to live in the newly built dorms, so there was no rumor that there could be ghosts from past students or people.

Analysis:

Unlike the informant, I had heard rumors about ghosts being at the USC Village before. Though these ghosts were not trying to haunt students, it was more of the idea that they were haunting the school for taking over the neighborhood due to gentrification. I had heard from people in the community the continuing dislike of the expansion of USC, especially the USC Village. I have heard of ghosts from Denny’s that couldn’t afford to get a place in the Village due to this type of sentiment as well.

The Ghosts of Alcatraz

Nationality: American
Age: 13
Occupation: Student
Residence: San Francisco, California
Performance Date: 2/26/19
Primary Language: English

Main Piece

Informant: “My class always talks about how Alcatraz is haunted.”

Collector: “Really? Are there any specific ghosts that people mention?”

Informant: “Yeah! Al Capone is one of the most common ones I hear, and then the people who tried escaping the island when they were prisoners. A lot of my classmates say that they are stuck at sea, and that on the boat ride over there that the ghosts try to get help from the passengers.”

Collector: “Do they know that Al Capone didn’t die on Alcatraz?”

Informant: “I think so…they say that the reason his ghost stays there is because that is where he suffered the most during his life.”

Collector: “Has your class been there together or have they just hear about it in the city?”

Informant: “We went on a field trip and people working there even mentioned it. They sell some stuff in the gift shop that has to do with it! I think they might give tours about the ghosts.” 

Analysis

Alcatraz offers a prime example of how folklore can be used in a marketable way with a great deal of the tourism to the spot inspired by famous ghost stories. Although the informant is younger and did not have any detailed examples of haunting stories on the island, she probably has a greater idea of it being a haunted spot than some older people she knows. The amount of time that has passed since the prison was actively in use and not just a National Park designated land has allowed it to become further associated with the past identities that it has held, with particular attention to the era in which it held its prison.