Tag Archives: ghosts

A Figure in the Night

Nationality: Chinese & Vietnamese
Age: 20
Occupation: student
Residence: Boston, Massechusetts
Performance Date: 4/1/17
Primary Language: English

“When I was 12 or 13, one night I woke up to go the bathroom around 2 or 3 morning- you know, the witching hour. I cam back to bed, and was still fully awake- it usually takes me a little bit to go back to bed. I was alert. I was looking out my open doorway, which was lit only by the light of the nightlight in my bathroom coming out into the hall. Then I saw a figure walk out of one room, past my door, and into the next room. And it wasn’t, like, a dark, shadowy figure- it was very clearly a person, a person-shape. It wasn’t dark either, it was fair- more white and washed out than how an actual person would look in the dark. It looked white, and it was wearing some sort of clothes- nothing specific. I didn’t know what I saw at first, but my entire body just froze. I had never been so scared in my life. I just froze in my bed, and eventually was able to fall back asleep.”

My friend who told me this story also told me a lot about her mom’s beliefs, and it was interesting to hear them, and also see how they affected her own personal beliefs. Her mom is Chinese, but grew up in Vietnam. She is a strong believer in the supernatural, as well as the many superstitions that are common in her culture. One thing that I found particularly interesting is that her mom believes all young children can see ghosts up until a certain age, because they are still in the liminal early stages of life. Her superstitions were also interesting, a couple being that owls are an omen for death, and that if a cat jumps over a body at a funeral the body would sit up straight in its coffin. That latter one amused my friend who told me, and said she had asked her mom if she had ever experienced it, to which she replied that she hadn’t but didn’t want to take any chances by having cats at a funeral. It seemed like her mother’s, and grandmother’s as well, pronounced belief in ghosts actually caused her to be more skeptical for a while, not believing all the crazy stories they told her. However as she got older, and experienced the story she told me, as well as others, she began to accept it. She said that now she still doesn’t know if she believes some of the more out-there stories her mom has told her, or the superstitions. It was interesting to see the affect of prevalent ghost belief at home on someone who grew up in America (in Boston, Mass).

Ghost of Antetum

Nationality: Salvadoran
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: 4/14/2016
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: English

Background: E.M. is an 18-year-old student at USC studying Cinema and Media Studies. She is Salvadoran but as lived all over the US, so she has picked up folklore and customs from a lot of different places. When she was living in Maryland, she would often take tours to historical sites and picked up multiple stories from each of these sites and the people she met there.

 

Main piece:

When I lived in Maryland, we would often visit Civil War battlesites. Um and one of the major ones that was near where we lived was Antetum in Sharpsburg Maryland? Yeah Sharpsburg. Basically one of the bloodies battles of the civil war happened there. And it’s very chilling to go now because it’s all cornfields and it’s very quiet and lonely and you really get a sense of quiet and foreboding when you’re there. One of the park rangers actually shared this story with me, with us, with our family, um about uhh these strange happenings that occurred around a road known as Bloody Lane in the middle of the battlefield. Some people had reported smelling gunpowder when they walked down the lane and later it was found out that that road had been the site of this kind of standoff between the Unions and the Confederates where they were basically shooting at each other from opposite sides of the road for hours, and thousands of people died there. So it was said you could hear gunshots in the distance or even battlecries. There was also an old bridge in the park, um, where you could supposedly hear distant drumming if you walked over it at night. When I asked the park ranger whether they thought it was true, um she said that uh she had never experienced any of the gunshots or any – she had never heard anything strange. But one time she saw a woman dressed in this very old fashioned style? in the middle of one of the fields? Reading a book. And when she saw her, she assumed she was a reenactor, because there were civil war reenactments all the time, so she assumed it was a costume. But when she asked back at the visitor’s center, when she asked one of the coworkers if they were having any events that day, and the coworker said that they weren’t. So um she didn’t actually believe that she had seen a ghost, but she said that it was definitely one of the stranger things that had happened to her while she was there. When she went back the lady was gone.

 

Performance Context: This legend would be told when tourists would visit the battle site of Antetum in Sharpsburg, Maryland.

 

My Thoughts: I think that this legend was either created or shared as a way to get visitors interested in the history of the place, because everyone loves to hear ghost stories whether they believe in them or not. Such stories help visitors to connect to the site and to make it come more alive, especially for those who are not as fascinated by history.

Walking Gnomes

Nationality: Mexican-American
Age: 19
Primary Language: English

The informant, K, is 19 years old. She was born in Long Beach, California but was raised in Los Angeles. Her dad is from Guadalajara, Mexico (Southern Mexico) but moved to the United States when he was 2. Her mom was born in Obregon, Sonora (Northern Mexico) but grew in Mexicali (a US-Mexico border town), and she moved to the United States when she was 18. She is majoring in Applied Mathematics with a Computer Science Minor. She considers herself Mexican-American (or Chicana).

K- “Ok so we have like a folklore of garden gnomes where it’s like, so it’s like my family in Mexico like my tias (aunts) from my mom’s side they believe that garden gnomes they come alive at night. And like the proof they have of it it’s like my grandma used to own gnomes and her neighbors used to own gnomes in Mexico. And the garden gnomes the next day would be found in different places and a lot of stuff was broken and sometimes my mom and her sister would wake up at night, and they used to hear things and they would look outside and they would never see the gnomes there. So there’s that story that they become alive at night in Mexico.”

Did you hear this story anywhere else with other people or other versions of it?

K-“Well recently I was talking to one of my cousins who like is from same side from my mom side and we all grew up here in America but like my cousins was supposedly telling the story to some friends whose parents were also from Mexico and like their parents here in LA here in California their parents own garden gnomes. And the thing is that this friend was telling my cousin that he actually believes what the parents are saying, because one night the garden gnomes were not where they had placed them and they found them inside the house and like the friend found them one night in the house and they were like rolling in the hallway. Since then, they got rid of the gnomes, or at least they tried to. They threw them away but the next day they were in the same place they had put them before. That’s another version, at least from here in California.”

How long ago was the first time you heard this?

K-“Two or three years ago. I just found out about my mom”

Analysis- This story is very interesting in the fact that this is one of the few stories from Mexico where inanimate objects, that are not haunted, come to life. The Mexican culture does not traditionally include creatures such as gnomes but instead, it consist of larger creatures and ghosts. This is because the country did not originally have gnomes until places, such as the United States introduced them to there. This story can be seen as a representation of the fear towards the unknown and the things that are not traditional. Traditions or stories of gnomes coming to life are more common in Europe.

The Cat’s Manor at USC

Nationality: USA
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 4/20/16
Primary Language: English

Folk Piece

Informant: “So I live in a house on [REDACTED] street at the North University Park District of Los Angeles, California. Actually, the Governor of California used to live there in the early 1900s. But whoever lived there in the 1940s or ‘50s, um, they, there was a whole third story. Like picture the old victorian houses with the spirals and stuff. But there was this third story and it burned down, like, in this crazy fire. And the like room that burned like more than any others was the room where this crazy woman that lived there had all of her cats. And like all of the cats died, so now like in the middle of the night, if you go up, there’s like this stair case that leads to the roof of the house but as you’re going up this staircase you can see the remnants of this old third floor. Um, cause they like didn’t do a really good job of getting rid of that, and when you’re going up that staircase to the roof, you can hear meows in the middle of the night. I have not personally heard them, but I’ve only gone up there once.”

 

Background information

Informant: “I learned this story when I was a freshman when I joined a group that has lived there the past decade or so. I heard it from a senior who was also a very superstitious guy who said ‘Oh, I like, hear it every night.’  The people who believe it take it very, very seriously. But the people who never experienced it all kind of think of it as a joke.”

 

Context

Informant: “We tell the story when we let in new members. I don’t know, it’s just a fun thing to add to the aura of it all – they’re like, typically freshman, you know? It’s just fun to make them feel like a part of the group with a little story.”

 

Analysis

Ghost animals are not nearly as common as ghost people in folklore, as we’ve talked about in our class with Professor Tok Thompson. Yet, in this story, they are just as eerily scary. That this ghost story includes artifacts that tie the legend into real observable truth, in that the remnants of the burnt third floor are easily accessible, is truly haunting. In the participant telling the story, I could envision walking up the stairs and seeing the charred, blackened floor.

It also seems like there is somewhat of a ritualistic retelling each year for new members of this group. The story helps identify their group because they collectively lease the house year by year, and so in retelling this story and having it be retold primarily by their group, they are owning the house in more than one way. The formal telling of this story to another member is one way to extend that ownership.

Equally as interesting is that this group is a singing group and that the hauntings come in audio form. Oftentimes, ghost stories, legends, and other forms of folklore are described in terms that are familiar to that particular ‘in’ group. In no way am I comparing their singing to the meowing of 40 cats burned alive, but it is interesting that they are auditorily stimulated, rather than visually.

Train Tracks

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Texas
Performance Date: April 19th, 2016
Primary Language: English

3) Train tracks

  • I had a friend in San Antonio who would suggest going to the “train tracks” every night when we would be looking for something to do, insisting that it was the scariest haunted thing she had ever experienced. One night we finally gave in, and she drove us to the South Side of town and told us the legend as we approached. Apparently a school bus stalled on the tracks one morning as a train approached. The conductor tried to stop it but couldn’t, and the train barreled into the schoolkids, killing all of them. Their ghosts still haunt the tracks to this day, and they say that if you park your car on the tracks and put it in neutral it will start to move uphill from the children pushing it out of the way of possible trains. You will even find their tiny fingerprints on your car if you sprinkle baby powder or something on it. We got there and parked. It was very eerie, and once we put the car in neutral it moved a tennsy bit. We got the hell out of there, but I’m pretty sure the car just moved because of an incline.
  • I asked Annalise again, to tell me a folklore myth that she has experienced in her life and this is the story that she told me. When she performed this it was at night, and we were sitting in her dorm, and really added to the creepy vibe of this whole experience.
  • Again, I have never heard of this story before, neither have I been to the south side of town, but it all sounds very interesting and makes me wanna go and experience it. It kind of sounds along the line of those ghostly hitch-hiker story though; that probably something else in nature caused certain things to happen, but people, out of superstition think that it is something supernatural.