Tag Archives: haunted home

Ed the Friendly Ghost

Age: 19
Performance Date: 10/23/2025

EH: “My mom and my dog, like, left the house, and they went to the park, which is not at all close to my house. And then there was, like, tacking on my window, and I heard my mom’s voice yelling at the dog. And it was like the same yelling that she had done the night before so the dog would come inside. 
And I was like, that’s weird because they’re not here right now. And so I asked my mom later. She’s like, oh, that was probably just Ed. I was like, who the **** is Ed? 
And she was like, he’s our house ghost. Don’t worry, he’s not like malevolent or anything. I was like, I hope you would have told me that sooner if he was, but also, we have a house ghost? 
And she was like, yeah, he’s like, he’s older, he died of old age in the house. It’s fine. He’s nice. 
He just likes to tap on the windows and mimic people. And I was like, okay, that’s crazy. But, like, apparently I had him around your whole childhood? 
During my childhood, I thought I had an over of active imagination, ’cause I would, like, I had a bunch of, like, figures and stuffed animals, and so I would, like, make these complex plots, and, like, I thought I was just, like, making voices, but, like, I realized now it wasn’t me making voices, it was Ed.”

Interviewer:  “But, like, other people hear him?”

EH: “Yeah, like, my parents heard him. He liked my room the most. 
I think that might have been where he died now that I think about it. Oh my god. Because my parents lived, their bedroom was originally in my current bedroom, and they would hear him in there the most. 
And then they moved bedrooms and they were like, let’s stick our daughter with that. Naturally. And so I heard him all through my childhood because I had, you know, like those weird horror movies where like the kid has like a playmate and then like they show a picture of it, like a drawing or something and then it’s like this horrific creature. 
That was me, but I never drew Ed and I didn’t think Ed was like a real person. I thought it was just violently hallucinating. But Ed is like a real person. 
He’s a real guy. I found him on ancestry.com. My parents looked him up. 
My dad had that **** bookmarked. Yeah, that’s crazy. I’m gonna ask them for his last name so I can, like, show you guys.”

Interviewer: “So all of a sudden finding this out, how did it impact you? 
Like, what do you take out of your experience?” 

EH: “Well, 1st of all, I lived with a ghost, so, like, there’s that. He was, yeah, he was a friendly guy. 
Friendly old guy. Like it wasn’t weird. He was just like, he played with me, you know? 
Apparently. Now that I think back, I was like, I wasn’t making all the voices, okay? Oh my God. 
But yeah, so I’m like…”

Interviewer: “And is he still there?”

EH: “I haven’t heard from him in a while. 
Mostly because I’ve been here, but when I’ve been back in my house, there hasn’t been much. I think there’s been tapping, but he hasn’t done a lot of voices recently. Let me text my mom.”

Context: This story was told to the informant by her freshman dorm roommate in late October, while the two were in their dorm with another student, and they were discussing classes together. When the topic of ghosts came up (as a topic of a GE Seminar), EH immediately mentioned her complete belief in ghosts because she had had a recurring experience with one. Piquing the interest of her peers, she immediately jumped into this story. 


Analysis: This tale illustrates a ghostly take on the classic ‘imaginary friend’ situation often portrayed in popular culture. Prior to this conversation, EH had not mentioned this aspect of her childhood, assuming it was not out of the ordinary to have had such a normalized relationship with the uncanny. The informant has true belief that throughout her childhood she continually interacted with this household ghost, and that ‘Ed’ continues to occupy (EH avoids the term haunt) her house to this day. Her encounters with the spirit are unique in the sense that Ed never fully presented himself to her, but just existed as a voice or tapping noise. The tapping noise associated with the company of the household spirit is a common motif across ghost stories, being seen, often ominously, as a ghost’s way to make their presence known. However, the subject makes it clear that in no way is the ghost unwanted or invoking fear. Rather, the ghost is treated as a member of the household, acting as a playmate and lighthearted imitator.

Family Haunted House

Text:

“Gee [grandma]’s house is lowkey haunted, it’s messed up. The man who Gee got the deed to their land from, we call him Old Man Hattfield. When my mom and my aunt were growing up they would come home from basketball games really late at night, and one night they came from the back door. They came around the corner and my mom swears that she saw a man at the top of the stairs, and then by the time that my aunt and Gee got over there the man was gone, they didn’t see him. Obviously my mom was freaking out, she was scared to death. So they all went upstairs, there was nobody up there, the windows weren’t open, there was no way anyone could’ve gotten there. They think it was Old Man Hattfield, my friends still refuse to go upstairs at Gee’s house because they think it’s haunted by Old Man Hattfield. . That’s one story. Gee has another story about this dress. So when they bought the land it was from debt, so I think with the deed to the land came other things like this pocket watch and this wedding dress. It’s this white wedding dress, and I don’t know who’s it was, but Gee had this dress up until maybe 10 years ago until she finally got rid of it. She’d wake up in the middle of the night and swear she saw a woman wearing this dress at the foot of her bed. So eventually she was like, “I’m tired of this, I’m gonna burn this dress.” So she sets it out in the burn pile. But then she’s going through their stuff at least five years later, and the dreams had not stopped. So she didn’t know what happened, she thought the dress had been burned. Then she found the dress inside the house in a drawer, and she’s like “what is this? How is this dress here?” And she asked Papa and he said “Yeah I saw you put it in the burn pile but I put it back in the house.” They burned it after that and the dreams stopped. 

Context:

GR is a 19-year-old college student from a small town in Arkansas. His grandma, Gee, has told him this story, and many members of the family believe that Gee’s house is haunted. 

Analysis: 

The figure of a ghost woman in a wedding dress is a pretty common one. She’s seen in La Llorona, a ghost women who walks around in a white dress, and there are many other versions of the “White Lady,” female ghosts in white dresses. The white dress is commonly associated with wedding dresses, and in this story the ghost is in a wedding dress. The wedding is a huge important ritual for a community, and it’s a large moment of shifting identity for women. They go from being part of one family to another, from being in the pre-reproduction phase of their life to being ready for reproduction. From a maiden to a wife, soon to be a mother. Weddings are a moment of liminality, where magic often happens. Ghosts are another figure of liminality, where they’re not quite alive and not quite dead. They’re not in this world, but they’re not in the next. The ghost bride can represent anxieties of when the marriage ritual goes wrong, just like how the ghost comes about from the death rituals going wrong. The wedding ritual is very important to a community, because it brings about new members of the community, but it’s also very anxiety inducing for the bride, because a lot can go wrong in this new identity and in the moment between the two identities. It’s also frightening for people to see these ghost brides because weddings are often supposed to be a large celebration of happiness, and people don’t like to acknowledge when they are not. However, oftentimes throughout different cultures weddings are not a moment of happiness for the bride. They could be just an economic situation, they could’ve been forced into the marriage, they could be a child, the marriage could tie them potentially forever to a bad person. There are a lot of negative things that can be associated with marriages, but people like to turn away from those. That’s why the ghost bride comes out, as a representation of all the anxieties that moment of liminality can bring. Studying a specific ghost bride figure can also tell you a lot about women’s place in that specific culture. 

The Haunted House of a Pagan High Priestess

Nationality: United States of America
Age: 24
Residence: Los Angeles
Language: English

Informant: A

Interviewer: B

Text:

A: “So I have a friend who, she was like 22 or 23 when I met her, but that doesn’t really matter, but she is like a certified Pegan High Priestess um a very interesting lady um and we stayed the night at her house one time uh me and my boyfriend at the time and we stayed at her house because we were all going to go to an anime convention the next day. Um and we were staying in her room and she was like “I have to warn you that my house is haunted” and we were like ‘Kimi what do you mean?” *laughs* “What does that mean?” and she was like “As a kid I did a ritual to summon a demon in my basement” and she didn’t realize it was a demon but she did the ritual to summon something in her home and since then, she was like 12, and since then it has been in her house. And we’re like “okay” and she was like “do not go down this specific hallway” and we’re like “okay umm” *strained voice* So um we stayed the night at her house and neither of us could sleep because of this feeling of awful. We were both like “did you just feel dreed all night” and we were like “yeah” and I don’t remember if it was that night or a different night but I distinctly remember um her coming to us and telling us that she woke up with gouging scratch marks on her back which she showed us and we were like “oh that’s fun and cute, how did you sleep through that” and she was like “this happens not infrequently because my house is haunted” and we were loke “COOL were not gonna spend the night at your house again, cool goodbye” and I’m pretty sure to this day that her house is haunted which is weird because she like cleanses houses, like she cleansed one of our rooms, but apparently she can’t get rid of the demon so *laughs* that’s the tale.”

A: “One is always skeptical when a friend of yours comes over and tells you they’ve summoned a demon and in hindsight I had a very high impression of this person because I met her when I was like 14 and she was like 20 something and so I like I already had a very, they’re like an older sister role model to me um but I did believe her because um idk it felt off before she told us that her house was haunted and there were actively, again this could be placebo, but my boyfriend at the time, we had concluded, we had seen things on her balcony. I guess this is a separate story but whenever we went up the stairs you would get up to the top of the stairs and, not out of breath or anything, not out of exertion, but our chests would feel heavy and other people had reported, had told us this too that “your upstairs has bad vibes”, and there was no reason for the upstairs to have bad vibes but it did and we had like seen things on the balcony like shadowy figures and were like you know what this is not good, so she like came and cleansed it and it helped. So obviously it could the placebo and the kind of wanting it to be better but um and I think a lot of ghost stories, their reliability has to do with how much you believe in it sometimes. I don’t know I think it’s fun and I hope she’s not being hurt by something that might be in her house.” *laughs*

B: “What was the house itself like?”

A: “It was a very normal house, the only thing is, it wasn’t out out in the middle of nowhere, but it was kind of on the outs. It was less suburbia and more like, I don’t know if other people use this terminology, but it’s what I would call ‘out in the country’ so but like the inside was perfectly normal. It’s not like the pool where it has an inherently creepy vibe, it was just like a house, yeah.”

Context:

The informant learned of the haunting as they were spending the night in their friend’s house. The informant and the owner of the house had been friends for years prior to the incident. The informant believes that the haunting is real and that the High Priestess is telling the truth. The informant saw deep cuts on the High Priestess’s back the night after sleeping in the same room together and barely sleeping due to a feeling of dread. Given that experience, the informant believes that the simplest explanation is that the High Priestess is telling the truth about the demon haunting.

Analysis:

I’m sure that understanding the particular form of Paganism that the High Priestess practices would help provide further context to interpret the haunting. However, the informant does not recall the specifics of the High Priestess’s beliefs. From preliminary research on overarching principles of Paganism, the inclusion of demons appears to be quite sparse. Perhaps the lack of information regarding demons in Paganism is why the High Priestess has not been able to remove the demon. It is also noteworthy that the house itself seemed quite normal and was not an uninviting space—further emphasizing the power of the High Priestess’s beliefs. I do not know what to make of the gauges in High Priestess’ back. The informant reported that the High Priestess’ back was smooth before going to bed and that she shared a room with two other people, none of whom slept deeply or left the room. Given that information, I cannot easily see an explanation for how the cuts appeared. However, I doubt the High Priestess felt that she was in frequent mortal danger as she did invite two friends to stay the night.

The Woman in the Kitchen

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student at University of Rochester
Residence: Bay Area, CA
Performance Date: 10/29/2021
Primary Language: English

Background: The informant recalls an experience in an old home of hers in San Jose, CA, in 2016.

JO: Well, I’ve told you before about the possible haunting of my old house when I still lived there.

Me: Right. Is there anything specific you can share that you recall from this time?

JO: At the time we still lived there, our neighbor had told us about how a previous resident passed away in the house. From time to time, the kitchen door leading to the garage would randomly open. Everybody would be upstairs, all of us in our own rooms and we’d hear the door downstairs open. My mom’s boyfriend went down to check it out but he saw nobody down there. While residing in the house, I overheard a conversation between my mom and her boyfriend about how my mom saw an elderly woman in the kitchen.

JO: She said she didn’t know this woman, and this woman was not solid. Like, this elderly woman was nearly transparent.

Me: That’s so creepy.

JO: I know. But my mom told her boyfriend to not say anything about it to us [JO and her siblings]. I think she just didn’t want us to be scared of our own home. We’ve moved out since then, thankfully. I’m still convinced that house was haunted and nothing will change my mind.

Context of performance: Recorded over a facetime call.

Thoughts: I think this experience is interesting because I still remember when the informant was telling me of these experiences, as it was happening when she lived there. Having been to the house once before, I can offer the memory that I remember feeling a bit unsettled upon setting foot in the home due to a weird energy.