Tag Archives: ghosts

Ghost Story – China

Nationality: Chinese-American
Occupation: Student
Residence: Hacienda Heights, CA
Performance Date: April 15, 2007
Primary Language: Chinese
Language: English

Ming dynasty in a village somewhere lived a despicable man. All the villagers despised him because of his wrong doings. One night, he came down with a sickness he caught from one of the dead bodies he was stealing from. As he was about to die because no one would help him, an old doctor kindly took him in and treated him back to health in hopes of him starting a new life to be a better person. However, he did not learn his lesson and kept stealing. The villagers eventually beat him out of the village and threw him in the forest. A couple days later, he came back to the village begging for help but this time none would help him. Again, he was beaten, this time tied up to a tree. He ultimately died on that tree but his body went missing soon after. A couple months later, he came back as a ?? (Jiang Shi/Zombie) and killed off the whole village by biting them, converting them to zombies as well.

Jiang Shi literally means rigid corpse. It is one of the more popularized ‘monster’ figures in China. Much like ‘Frankenstein’ there have been numerous depictions of Jiang Shi in books, movies, plays and other media. I first heard of Jiang Shi from an older friend of mine when I was still in elementary school. I also remember watching horror movies about it and being scared to death.

Now that I think about it, there is definitely a correlation between Jiang Shi and its western brother, zombies. They are both evil walking corpses with cannibalistic tendencies out to kill and convert others to increase in numbers. Jiang Shi is also similar to vampires because they also drink blood. In fact, their Achilles’ heel is some sort of a Chinese prayer tag, much like the cross and garlic to the vampires. Does this suggest that zombies are a prevalent theme in every culture? Much like tales about the sun, the stars and the moon. Or is this an example of polygenesis? We may never know but one thing for sure is that monsters and ghost stories are a huge part of folklore regardless of cultural boundaries.

Festival – Chinese

Nationality: Chinese-Australian
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Australia
Performance Date: March 2007
Primary Language: English
Language: Chinese

My informant is actually a Chinese-Australian. She was born in China and lived there until she was in junior high. She then moved to Australia, where she lived until college. Although she had moved a couple of times, she still remains true to her heritage. Thus, she told me about a festival called the Ghost Festival that many Chinese people celebrate. This is actually a festival and a holiday in Asia that is quite like what Halloween was in the beginning. The Ghost Festival is held the fourteenth night in the seventh lunar month.

This festival started as a day when ghosts and spirits would leave their underworld to come visit those that they have left behind. However, this is not a day to be afraid of the dead. Rather, it is a day where the living and the dead can coexist for a few hours. It is a day for ancestors to visit their loved ones. My informant tells me that she and her family will often visit her family tomb and leave offerings for her ancestors. They also burn money so that the spirits of their ancestors can still live a fruitful life. Another tradition that is not as common anymore that her family used to take part in is the releasing of paper boats. Her family would hand make miniature boats and set them on fire. The glowing boats would be “lanterns” for the ghosts to find their way back home at the end of the night.

My informant told me that in her family and especially in Chinese culture, the idea of a family is very important. Her family believes that her ancestors are very much in control of their future. If they respect their ancestors, their ancestors will bless them in return. This is why during festivals such as these, her family makes sure to work extra hard to please her ancestors.

Annotation: Yih, Jung-tzung. “Ghost Festival.” Calendar of Holidays and Festivals. Government             Information Office, Republic of China. 26 Apr 2007             <http://www.gio.gov.tw/info/festival_c/ghost_e/ghost.htm>.

Ghost Story – Hispanic/Native-American

Nationality: Italian
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Ventura, CA
Performance Date: April 02, 2008
Primary Language: English

The San Buena Ventura Mission in Ventura County, CA was built on an Indian Burial ground.  Next to the mission a school was built called Holy Cross for grades kindergarten through eight. One of the buildings was really old, it was first building of the school. The school used to be a small one-building school. The building had a bell tower and the bell tower was said haunted by the spirits from the burial site. Friends of Charly claim to have heard funny noises and seen shadows when no one was there. The bell tower was torn down 4 years ago. On the night the tower was torn down people nearby claimed that there were strange noises and lights around the construction site. A new, really large school building was built in its place. Now it is said that if you are at the new building at night time lights will flash on and off and that you will hear sounds. These are supposed to be signs from the angry spirits in the burial ground. They were angry that they were built on top of in the first place and remain angry that buildings still stand over the burial ground.

Charly went to Holy Cross School in the 6th grade. She said that she heard the story when she became a student at the school. She said that the new students were always told this story when they first got to the school to scare them. This ghost story could be seen as a type of initiation for the new students. Charly said the kids would tell the new kids this story and then also embellish different parts of the story. She said that the kids would pick normal, modern objects and claim that they were haunted too just to scare the new kids and make them feel uncomfortable. This would go on only for a few weeks in the beginning of the year according to Charly, after that liminal period the students would get tired of scaring and just accept the new kids.

The setting of angry Indian spirits is a common beginning to many ghost stories. The Indian polytheistic belief system is directly juxtaposed with the Christian monotheism in this story because a Christian mission is built on top of the burial ground. This may symbolize the stomping out of Naive American beliefs by monotheism and the oppression the Indians went through during the colonization and Christianization of southern California. The angry spirits are a means of retaliation by the Indian people and also bring recognition of their presence.

The active bearers of the story are middle school aged children, ages 12-13. At this age kids are beginning to want to impress others, boys impressing girls and vice versa, and therefore scaring a new kid may be a way to impress these groups. Also, if a new kid says he or she’s not scared he will probably impress the new kids more than if he bought into the story and revealed his fear.

Kids telling ghost stories or daring each other is a commonplace in middle schools, especially when it involves welcoming a new person into social groups. At this age social groups and standards are becoming more important and cliques are established. The ghost story of the Indian burial ground at Holy Cross appears to serve more as a hazing ritual for the new students at the school versus a story actually investigated by the students.

Ghost Story – New York, New York

Nationality: German
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Rumson, NJ
Performance Date: April 11, 2008
Primary Language: English

While the New Amsterdam Theater on W. 42nd St  was being renovated some of the construction men claimed that  they frequently saw a beautiful young woman wandering aimlessly through the theater when they were working. She is always dressed in a Follies costume and a blue glass in her hand. She wore a sash with the name Olive on it too. They think that she’s the ghost of Olive Thomas who died in the 1920s. She was a Ziegfeld Girl which were part of the Ziegfeld Follies that the theatre hosted. Olive died of syphilis in Paris. But once when reconstruction was going on the workers got freaked out because they saw her ghost and they ran out of the building screaming. Another time the ghost talked to a worker in the lobby saying “How are you doing, handsome?” but when he turned around she was gone.

Chauncey spends most of her weekends in New York City shopping, visiting friends from boarding school and going to shows. When Chauncey was about 13 years old she went to see the musical 42nd St. with her Mom. While she and her mom were waiting for the show to begin her mom told her the story of the ghost in the New Amsterdam theatre. Her mom heard the story from a friend of hers who knew the owner of the theatre. Chauncey and her mom both believe the story to be credible because the owner supports it.

The story of Olive Thomas is interesting, but has a fundamental flaw. First and probably most obvious is the fact that Olive Thomas died in Paris, where the follies show was originally conceived. It makes little sense that her ghost would return to New York City. When I asked Chauncey about this she said that she thought perhaps Olive’s most beloved memories are of her time in the theatre and that’s why she wanted to return.

The traits of Olive that came through in her appearances may also reveal reasons as to why she died of a sexually transmitted disease. Olive appears with a glass in her hands, it could be assumed that this glass had a cocktail in it, leading to the assumption that Olive often drank. Also, Olive hit on the workers in the theatre calling one handsome, this might imply that she was promiscuous.  Alcohol and sexual promiscuity are both likely the precursors to sexually transmitted diseases and perhaps Olive is looking to warn others of the dangers.  By appearing with the traits of her downfall maybe it will scare others from engaging in the acts.

Perhaps the only reason her ghost appeared is because the theatre was being gutted and completely reconstructed, this may have disturbed old spirits of the theatre and could be the main reason Olive appeared. As far as Chauncey knows, Olive was the only ghost who appeared to the construction workers. Currently the New Amsterdam theatre is owned by Disney productions and is in use on Broadway. Since it’s reopening in 1997 Chauncey and her mother have not heard any more accounts of Olive’s presence in the theatre, or any other haunting for that matter.

Ghost Story – Nutley, New Jersey

Nationality: White
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Nutley, NJ
Performance Date: April 30, 2008
Primary Language: English

Ghost Story-Graveyard

“So, this is the story of Jill Rose Amelia. Jill Rose Amelia was a regular girl, an elementary school student. She didn’t necessarily fit in. She was an outcast as she walked home by herself everyday after school. Everyone was always kind of creeped out about this girl because everyday after school, this girl would always walk through a graveyard. They would all look from afar because they were all scared of big graveyards. They couldn’t ever see what she was doing but she would always stop at one tombstone. She would stand there for a long period of time and then just keep walking. So, they kept watching her and would never see her at school but would always see her walk home with a backpack. So one night, the group of kids that were watching her mustered up some courage and went into the graveyard to see what tombstone she always went to. So there walking through this dark graveyard at night in the center of town, right next to the oldest church in town. So they finally get to this gravestone and they realize that it’s one of the oldest in the graveyard. It’s pretty hard to read so they have to get really, really close just to see what it says. They get up to it and the one kid who was closest read it. It read Jill Rose Amelia. So they all realized that she was a ghost visiting her own tombstone. As soon as they all realized this, all of the kids freaked out and scattered into the town. But, they were never seen again as Jill Rose Amelia claimed them as her own.

Ivan said he heard this story in his hometown of Nutley, New Jersey from all of the different children. He said that everyday after school, he would have to walk past this same graveyard on the way home. Sometimes, older kids would come and tell them about the ghost of Jill Rose Amelia in order to scare them on their way home. From that point on, Ivan and the rest of his friends always walked nervously around the graveyard, looking into it fearfully. They always wondered whether or not they would see Jill Rose Amelia. Some of his friends claimed they did see her one time walking into the graveyard with her little backpack, stopping at the tombstone before walking into the distance. Ivan, however, never saw the ghost when he walked by.

Ivan said that this story is usually told at two different times. The first is the way he heard it by walking next to the graveyard and someone telling him. The other way, however, is when friends get together at night and tell it in an eerie voice to scare everybody else. He said that sometimes, people would get freaked out about it enough to actually try to find the tombstone. He doesn’t know where the tombstone is inside the graveyard because he has always been too scared to go in. Some people he knows, however, have gone in before searching for the lost tomb of Jill Rose Amelia. Whether or not anyone has seen it, he didn’t know. He did mention that the remains of the children that searched for her in the story were never found.

When I asked Ivan what the ghost story meant to him, he said that it reminded him of how scared he was whenever he used to walk past that graveyard. Now that he is much older, he wonders whether or not the ghost story is true. He hasn’t heard of anyone disappearing again so he debates if it ever happened. He did say that it impacted him enough during his childhood to never enter the graveyard without any parents or adults. Other than that, it didn’t have any importance to him because it was just a childhood ghost story. He likes to tell it to his friends that come into town though just to freak them out.

When I listened to this story, I thought it was very interesting and pretty scary. If I had a graveyard so close to my elementary school, I would be deeply afraid of it and the little girl. I also think that whether or not this story is actually true, little girls tend to be the central focus of many ghost stories. I don’t know why exactly but many ghost stories portrayed on TV and in the film industry have to deal with creepy little girls with frightening smiles. Therefore, I can see why this story easily scares people. I also think this story represents graveyards in general and the fear they put on people. Graveyards are typical beginnings for a lot of ghost stories just like this one. I believe that individuals can find stories similar to Ivan’s in many small towns with eerie graveyards.