Stephen Oh, 18

Korean American

La Canada, CA

11/8/2011

            One of my good friends at the University of Southern California swears to me that his old house was haunted. So one night, I sat my friend Stephen Oh, who appeared to be calm at first, and he began to tell me about his haunted house:

“So before I moved to La Canada, I lived in Glendale, California until I was about four years old. And, so like, the reason why I moved was because La Canada is ranked number three in California among other public high schools. However, I was too young to understand why we moved. As I was growing older, my parents and my sisters would talk about our old house and my sisters, who are six and seven years older than me, so that means around the time I lived in my Glendale house they were pretty much in junior high, and talking to them, especially my older sister Stacy, she said some weird things happened in the house. For instance, we had a pool, and there was just one spot in the pool that everyone seems to drown, it was really weird because it really wasn’t that deep, it was about four or five feet deep, and my sisters really good swimmers, but they told me everyone would drown at that exact same spot in the pool. They had friends and family come over and swim, and every single person would start drowning in that exact spot, so my dad had to come in and save the people every single time. So I guess my dad found it weird, so he did some research and tried to find and faults with swimming pool under previous owners, but interestingly enough, he found out that the previous owner’s daughter had drowned in the pool and died. And so, um, basically my dad put a pool cover over the pool, and we never swam again. And my older sister, Stacy, also ran into some weird experiences also. And this didn’t come out until after we moved, when she finally decided to tell our family about the experience. So around second grade, after school she would go to an after study program, so she wouldn’t come back until about seven o clock in the evening. And when she went upstairs to her room, she would always see this figure sitting in her desk, a man in his mid forties just silently sitting there, and she told me when she first saw she freaked out and she would turn on the lights, and as soon as the lights would turn on the figure would disappear. So, at first she told us she thought she was just seeing things. But, she said that it happened every single day for the next two days, everyday coming back from after study. Right after she opened her door to her room, she would see this man, silent, not moving, very serious face, and then she would flick on the lights and he would disappear every single time. What was interesting though, uh she can’t find the words to describe this man, as in like my parents would ask her what color suit he was wearing, describe his facial features, and she literally would choke up and couldn’t find the words to describe him, which was really weird. And when she finally told us about this, she said it was so normal towards the end of the two years that everyday she would expect to see the man and as a second and third grader she kind of pictured him as her imaginary friend or acquaintance. But she did say often times at night, she would get that weird feeling that someone was looking at her. And also, we had a television downstairs and a radio, and my dad would told me also that once a week at 2:30 in the morning that the television would turn on by itself, and so would the radio. And no matter what channel it was on, it would always turn onto the black and white fuzz. So my dad told me that he would go downstairs when it happened and unplug both the television and the radio. Once though when he went downstairs in the morning, both the television and the radio were plugged back in. Secondly, my uncle also lived with us in the hose at the time and we had a shack out back by the swimming pool. My uncle was pretty young back then so then he would come back late night, like you know drunk or whatever. And he said sometimes when he came back, our guard dog would stop whimpering for apparently no reason, which struck us odd because our guard dog would never shut up. And he said, after he eventually moved out, was because one night he was sleeping and he randomly woke up in the middle of the night, and he woke up in scissor lock, where he couldn’t move his body, but he could see. And then he said, it got really cold, and then something started choking, vigorously chocking him, like he couldn’t breathe at all. And he would hear these sounds, illegible sounds of a girl’s voice, but he couldn’t understand what she was saying. And then it stopped all of the sudden, so that night they called the preacher, like a minister. And he came, put up a cross and said prayers and spread holy water and left. And the uncle moved out of there, as soon as the next day. So eventually when I was about four years old, we moved out. But when I was 13, my family and I ate dinner near my old house and we decided to just stop by it. And so we went to the house, parked outside, kind of just admired the new renovations made by the current owners of the house and stuff. And he actually came out and asked us what we were doing, because we were just awkwardly just parked outside of his house. And he told us, and he asked us why we were there. And my dad told him that we used to live there. The guy was actually welcoming and invited us in. And showed us good hospitality and brought us stuff to drink and you know. And my dad was talking to him about all the renovations that he had done, and how nice everything had looked. And my dad asked him about the pool, and the guy said he drained it. And my dad asked him why. And he would say at night, even if it was really a still night and stuff, no wind, there would be ripples across the surface of the water, as if someone was walking on it. And my dad knew that the house was haunted and stuff, so he stopped asking questions and stuff to refrain from scaring the owner. But suddenly, the owner asked my dad, was the house haunted when you lived here? And my dad skeptically said, I don’t think so. And the guy said I want you to be completely honest with me. My dad asked why. And he said cause his little daughter claims to see a man in her bedroom upstairs, which turns out to be the same room my older sister had, and his daughter claimed that, Henry or Harold, I’m not sure, and that he would actually talk to her. Then at night, she would always claim that a monster or some little thing in her closet. And so almost every night he would come and comfort her. And when he would open the closet, he wouldn’t see anything. But the little girl would always run behind him and close her eyes as if she had seen something. And to that day she would never tell him what she saw, no one knows, but that guy was freaking out. And then we left.”

Although Stephen does not remember living at the house, Stephen actually looked scared and relieved he didn’t have to stay in that house anymore. He immediately called his mother and tried to receive the address of the old house from her, but she only gave us the street name, due to privacy issues. However, Stephen said that he still remembers what the house looked at, so we looked up the street on Google maps. Soon, we found the pool, guest house, and the dark house itself. Upon switching upon street view, we were able to see the front of the house, which presented an eerie feeling to me. This story was particularly chilling, because the events that had happened in the house were disturbing to the witnesses. One thing I noticed about this ghost story is that Stephen had claimed that the man sitting at the desk in his sister Stacy’s room was there everyday, and also that everyone who passes a certain spot in the pool would almost drown without aid. It is obvious that the reason why people would drown in this certain spot is because of the little girl who had previously drowned in the pool before Stephen’s family had moved in. Also the event of Stephen’s uncle being caught in a scissor lock proves that the spirits in the house were obviously hostile to the tenants that are living in the house. Oddly enough, the family that moved in after Stephen’s family was experiencing similar occurrences, which adds credibility to the story. I believe these ghosts were hostile to the current tenants of the house, attempting to drown people who swim the pool and scaring little girls. A common theme I find in this story is tragedy, which would be the little girl who had drowned in the pool years ago. I attempted to research for any information on this specific house to try to find explanations for the other events, but unfortunately I was not able to find anything on this house. So from this story, I find that these ghosts are upset that there are people living in their quarters and the violent incidents explain that the current tenants are not welcome. In other words, perform in depth research before buying your next home.

Yen Hoang

Student

University of Southern California

11/9/2011

Dante Caravaggio, 21

Caucasian

Los Angeles, CA

11/10/2011

One of my roommates and close friend Dante Caravaggio, often spoke about these spooky occurrences that him and his family as a teenager. I decided to sit Dante down and hear the whole story. We were casually eating dinner and after I was done, he started his story:

“…So after living in um Katy, Texas, which is near Houston, my parents wanted a break from the city life. So we rented a ten acre ranch that had horses and uh a guest house among an indoor swimming pool, it was one of the greatest houses I’ve ever seen. The most fun house ever, three stories with an indoor swimming pool and a two story guest house. My sister, each of us had our own room, and she stayed in the basement and she was the first to hear noises that we couldn’t explain. We used to blame these noises on our cat, but she said that she was hearing the bathroom door opening and closing. Obviously the cat couldn’t open or close a door so we told her the door was creaking since the house is over forty years old. And um, her room was kind of an eerie room because the entire floor was a walk out room and her room was entirely surrounded by glass instead of the regular drywall. So she just said she saw shadows which she hoped to be the cat and the occasional sounds she would hear would be the bathroom door opening and closing. So that was the first thing. I used to hear footsteps up and down the stairs like a lot during the night. And uh you know like your mom would come check on you at night while you were in bed, so for years my mother would come into our bedrooms and check on us when we were like 13, so like we would hear, like I would hear, and I’d ask my brother if mom checked on him, and he said no. We were the only two on that level of the house, so there was a very distinct sound of footsteps going up and down on the stairs and we would hear it every night and we had suspected my mother to check on us, but it didn’t make sense at the hours of the night these events had happened.  So that was the second clue. My mother who had never felt comfortable in the house in the first place and was the biggest skeptic so there’s no way she could have made this up, she was sweeping leaves off of the basketball court and she swears that she saw an older woman wearing an apron standing in the kitchen. She was wearing a red apron, and was a little larger in size. She ran inside to see if the woman was actually there and of course there wasn’t anything there. I also hated showering because I felt like someone was watching me and I remember one time I was using my parents shower because it was way better than mine and it was a super sick shower of course. I was showering and I’m shampooing my hair and I looked through the stained glass and hand on the holy bible and I swear someone walked by. At first I thought it was my dad, but I soon realized that my parents weren’t home and like my brother and sister are in school. I was trying to explain to myself what was going on, but nothing else but a ghost made sense. We asked the former homeowners about the house, and they explained that their grandmother had a heart attack in the kitchen and the ambulance couldn’t make it in time. “

Dante and his family had lived in this house in Katy, Texas for about a year, starting from summer 2003 to summer 2004. After Dante told me the accounts that he and his family had encountered, he later called his mother that night to ask for more details of the unexplained events. His mother had spoken to the former house owners that had lived in this house before the Caravaggio family. According to Dante, the house and ranch was over forty years old, and had been passed down from generation to generation starting from the original family that had built the house. The previous house owners informed the Caravaggios that their grandmother, who was about 80 years old, was cooking in the kitchen one day, minding her own business, and then suddenly she had collapsed in the kitchen. The woman had died before the ambulance could make it to the house. The apparition of the larger woman in a red apron standing in the kitchen that Dante’s mother had seen is more than likely to be the same grandmother that had previously lived in the house. However, the door opening and closing, creaking of the stairs, shadows, and the shower event remain unexplained. We can infer that the house is home to at least the ghost of the grandmother. If the grandmother is the only spirit in the house, we see a common theme of motherhood that is portrayed in ghost stories. The occurrences of Dante’s room to his door opening and closing, the creaking of the stairs, and the shadows that his sister had seen, may be the ghost of the grandmother performing her daily duties in the household, which would usually comprise chores like checking on the children and cooking in the kitchen. The ghost of the house does not seem to be hostile, but seems to be more nurturing and taking upon a caretaker role, just like the grandmother was when she was alive. In conclusion, I believe that the ghost of the grandmother had bounded itself to the house, forever taking care of her house and family.

Yen Hoang, 20

Student

University of Southern California

Los Angeles, CA