Tag Archives: ghosts

“Steve is Acting Up Again” — The Made-Up Ghost

Nationality: American
Age: 35
Occupation: Grad Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: March 24th, 2023
Primary Language: English

Context:

J is a 35 year old woman from The Bay with three young siblings. She is my co-worker and a graduate student at USC. When anything unexplainable happened in her house growing up, her family would blame it on a ghost named Steve. Although she has never seen a ghost or had a divine encounter, she believes they are real.

Text:

J: “My mom and I had this thing where we would say there was a ghost named Steve in the house for a long time. And anytime something would happen, we’d be like, there’s Steve. Oh, Steve’s acting up again. If a light flickered or if you heard a sound or if you couldn’t find anything, like that kind of stuff. Unexplainable things that no body wanted to take responsibility, we’d blame it on Steve. We didn’t ever see him, or anything, though.”

Analysis:

Many people use encounters with the divine as ways to explain what they deem the unexplainable. By doing so, they can find an answer for everything. In terms of the way J was using Steve, it was a bit similar. She and her mother blamed “unexplainable” things on Steve as a joke, even when those things could be explained. The reason they did this was comfort humor. By attributing everything to Steve, responsibility was lifted from their shoulders. It was also a way for J to take a break from carrying the blame for everything her siblings did.

The Ghosts of the Congress Plaza Hotel

Nationality: Puerto Rican
Age: 46

Context

MO is my mother. She grew up in Chicago, Illinois in the 70s. She was born to two Puerto Rican parents who came to America in their teenage years. Her father is from San Lorenzo, Puerto Rico, and her mother is from Moca, Puerto Rico. They go visit Puerto Rico every summer and have done so for decades. 

Text

DO: Chicago’s an old city, do you have any myths or legends that are specific to us?

MO: The old hotel over on Michigan Ave in downtown is apparently haunted. 

DO: The Congress?

MO: Yes. Apparently there’s a bunch of different ghost stories. The famous one is the story about the man with the peg leg. You know I love true crime so my favorite one is about the bellboy that’s a ghost. 

DO: Can you tell me about them?

MO: I think they called the famous ghost Peg Leg Johnny. He became an alcoholic after some accident where he lost his leg but then he did work at the hotel. Like maintenance stuff. People have said they’ve heard knocking on the door and then seen a man with a peg leg. The bellboy one is about a young kid who worked there and everyone loved him. Then one day he just went missing and nobody ever saw him again. Some people say they see him pushing the luggage carrier things and waving at people then he just disappears. Me and your dad actually have stayed in that hotel

DO: Really? What was your experience like? 

MO: Well we stayed there before we knew it was haunted. Your dad swears he did hear anything, but I heard people knocking on our door. I didn’t see anything thank God. After we stayed there we heard all the stories. 

Analysis:

All cities have folklore narratives that are unique to their major landmarks. The Congress Hotel in Chicago is no different. This massive hotel is hard to miss, seeing as it is on our most popular street downtown and is distinctive. The hotel has an old look to it which further encourages ghost stories to be told about it. After talking to more of my family each of them had their own ghost story that has been passed down by other Chicagoans. If you live in Chicago this hotel is pretty well known. These ghost stories bring Chicagoans together to talk about a landmark that they share as common knowledge.

A Memorate about Djinns

ZN.) My mom really believes in jinns, and she believes that she can see them sometimes. So do I, but this is my mom’s story, and she genuinely believes it, like it’s not just a scary story she tells for fun. Basically, my dad’s parents live in London, and they have a basement. My mom has always said she got bad vibes from the basement like there was a jinn in there, and one day she said she went down and saw a man standing across the room from her, with a blank face. She said he moved, and she ran back upstairs, and has refused to go back down into that basement since then.

ZN.) jk she saw the guy twice and refuses to go back lmao

Djinns, also known as Genies or Jinns, are ghost-like figures common in Muslim cultures. Whereas those in most of Europe or North America would use the term ghost instead, they both have similar meanings. Djinns are neither considered good or evil, and can have their own goals while existing in this world. What’s interesting here is that ZN’s mother’s experience with what are considered legendary figures have changed her behaviors to the point where the refuses to go back into her parent’s basement. By entering her experience with the Djinn, ZN’s mother has added to the collective legend present in Muslim culture.

Cahuenga Pass is Haunted

T is 70 years old. He is a retired teacher. He was born in Southern California and raised in Hawaii. He was 7 years old when his family moved there in 1959. He is very animated and speaks very quickly. He told me about the bad vibes he gets at Cahuenga Pass in conversation.

“There was a battle uh… like in the 1800s… something like that, I always have weird vibes in the Cahuenga pass. I think it was the battle of Cahuenga Pass, it changed the leadership of where the valley was going at the time… the end of where like Universal Studios is, that’s the haunted part. A Mexican governor, no one liked him, and a wealthy landowner, no one liked him either… they were fighting over it. Only two people were killed, not the governor or the landowner go figure, but the two that died, they’re the ones that haunt the place. I always got bad energy from the pass. I feel I attract ghosts too easily.”

There were two battles for Cahuenga pass in the 1800s, T’s story refers to the original Battle of Cahuenga Pass, the second was known as the Battle of Providencia (or the Second Battle of Cahuenga Pass) There are stories about the pass being cursed. Apparently, parcels of stolen treasure are buried somewhere along the pass but everyone who’s ever come close to finding it has suddenly and mysteriously died! So maybe it is cursed and haunted. For more information see https://bizarrela.com/2016/11/cahuenga-pass/.  

Ozok

Nationality: American
Age: 62
Occupation: Accountant
Residence: Maryland
Performance Date: April 18, 2022
Primary Language: English

Background:

The informant grew up in Chicago in the 1960s. There was an abandoned elevator for trash called a “dumbwaiter.” It was used by residents to send their trash down to the basement before the informant lived there. It went out of use when residents began carrying their own trash down themselves. The informant’s older brother would scare her with stories of a crazed man, named Ozok, who lived in the abandoned dumbwaiter and carried an axe through the halls of the building at night.

Context:

This piece was related to me over a Zoom call with the informant, discussing her childhood in Chicago.

Main Piece:

E: No one used the dumbwaiter when I was living there. It used to be used to send trash down apparently, but eventually people just learned it was easier to their own damn trash out themselves (laughs). But the trash room was in the basement, and the dumbwaiter and the basement were mostly abandoned. There was a legend that a spirit used to live in the abandoned dumbwaiter. The story was that there was some sort of crazy man named Ozop… no Ozok, I think it was. But the story was that Ozok lived in the dumbwaiter and the basement, and he used to carry an axe when he walked the halls of the apartment building at night.

Me: All the kids in the apartment building believed this?

E: I don’t know about all of the kids, but my siblings and I certainly did. Our oldest brother told us that Ozok lived in the dumbwaiter and the basement and haunted the building. He took me down to the basement one time during the day and showed me an axe leaned up against the wall as proof. I don’t think I slept for a week after that! My parents allowed us to believe it and even told us when we were being too rambunctious at night that we better get to sleep before Ozok came down our hall. I had these wild visions of what he looked like. My younger siblings and I would talk about it. We thought he looked like something out of that movie, the old vampire one…

Me: Nosferatu?

E: Yes! I conjured up some image of the vampire from Nosferatu in my head. That movie was the scariest thing I had ever seen as a little kid, and I thought there was a crazed vampire living in my own apartment building!

Thoughts:

The tale of some deformed creature haunting a residency is a legend as old as time. It is a theme well known to all, and it naturally takes on its own variations as people author their own variations of ghost stories and hauntings. In this case, the informant’s older brother authored a variation of a crazed man, Ozok, who haunted the halls of the informant’s apartment building. Children, as my informant was at the time, are particularly susceptible to the tales intent on scaring. The informant’s older brother applied much of a classic ghost tale’s motifs to Ozok and their environment. He pointed to the axe as evidence of Ozok’s existence, and claimed that Ozok inhabited the abandoned dumbwaiter and basement, just as a ghost or creature of the night might live in the attic of a haunted house. Folk beliefs regarding ghosts have existed for centuries. The legend of Ozok living in an abandoned dumbwaiter and basement was simply a new variation of an age-old legend.