Tag Archives: haunted

“When the Log Rolls Over We Will All Be Dead”

Nationality: American
Age: 26
Occupation: Actor
Residence: Torrance, CA
Performance Date: April 23, 2013

“Ok, this one: on the 13th floor, there is a room—said to be haunted—they can never rent it out to anyone, because anyone who does rent it out… dies. One day, a very rich man, well dressed, comes up to the counter and says, ‘I need a room for the night.’ And he says, ‘I’m sorry sir, we’re all booked up, the only room we have is room 13 and it’s haunted.’ The rich man says, ‘pfftttt, I’m not afraid of ghosts.’ Rents the room and, uh, goes up  to get ready for bed. He goes up and changes his jacket and pajamas, and he hears: ‘if the log rolls over we will all be dead!’ The man is petrified, and he jumps out the window, lands in the street and dies.”

“A couple weeks later, a very rich woman comes to the hotel and says ‘I need to rent a room.’ The man behind the counter says, ‘I’m sorry ma’am, we have no rooms to rent except room 13 and it’s haunted. One man died in that room a couple weeks ago.’ The woman says, ‘Pffftt, I’m not afraid.’ And she goes and rents the room. She’s just about to go to the bathroom and rent a shower and she hears: ‘If the log rolls over we will al be dead!’ She is so scared, she runs out the door, down the stairs, and out the lobby and into the street and she gets hit by a taxi and dies.

“A couple week later… a rather common man comes to the hotel… shabby dress, not a lot of money… he very well may have been living off the street. He goes to the counter and says, ‘I’d like to rent a room.’ The man says, ‘I’m sorry sir, we’re all booked up except for room 13 and it’s haunted. Two people have died there in the last month.’ The man says, ‘I’m not afraid.’ He goes and rents the room. He’s about to take a shower, and he hears: ‘If the log rolls over we will al be dead!’ Instead of being scared, he thinks, ‘that sounds like it came from the bathroom.’ He goes to the shower: nothing there. He hears it again: ‘If the log rolls over we will al be dead!’ He thinks, ‘is that coming from the taps?’ He goes to the sink: nothing there. He hears it again: ‘If the log rolls over we will al be dead!’ And he thinks, ‘That couldn’t be coming from the toilet?’ And he goes to the toilet: nothing there. He looks into the tank of the toilet: nothing there. Finally, he opens the lid. He sees a huge log of shit just floating in the water, and about a dozen ants perched on that log of shit, and every so often, the ants perch their heads up and chant: ‘If the log rolls over we will al be dead!’”

 

The informant is not sure where it comes from, but thinks his sister, who was around ten at the time they began making a ritual of telling this story around campfires (the informant was around six) learned it from her Girl Scout troop. At least once every camping trip since the first it’s retold. He likes it because they thought it to be hilarious, and they could also recite it from memory after the first time they heard it. He finds humor the fact that the rich people and the poor man just distract from the joke. He also likes the visual produced by the final scene (the informant says he imagines it as a single frame comic strip with the ants on a log and a speech bubble).

The structure of this story is so memorable it makes it extremely easy to retell. The groups of three (the right man, rich woman, and poor man; the three recitations of the “log rolls over…”), which occur frequently in folklore originating in Europe may be a result of their being so memorable. The repetition that occurs in the dialogue also makes it easier to remember, but perhaps what makes it so sticky is that the real joke of the story has almost nothing to do with the lengthy set up (which in itself is funny because it’s completely unexpected).

Duke Family Haunted Basement

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: College Student
Residence: Providence, Rhode Island
Performance Date: 4/18/13
Primary Language: English

The informant details the story of her aunt’s haunted basement.  The basement is located in Vermont.  The informant details that this story has been shared through her relatives and friends.  The urban legend of the haunted basement goes as follows:

A woman was down in her basement doing laundry one, calm summer night.  As the woman was doing her laundry she suddenly hear a really loud, deep maniacal sounding laugh.  The laugh roared, “MUAHAHAHAHAHA, MUAHAHAHAHA,” much similar to a cartoon villain laugh.  The woman nervously yelled to her older brother, “Tommy, stop fooling around!” The woman thought her brother was playing an old trick on her, but the laughing continued and the brother didn’t respond.  Once more the laugh rang out: “MUAHAHAHAHAHA, MUAHAHAHAHAHA.”  The woman now utterly frightened rushed upstairs, yelling for people, but there was no one in the house.  She decided to run straight to the beach outside of the house and the whole family was at the beach.  To this day it is believed that the basement is haunted with whatever creature had that the maniacal laugh.

Images of stereotypical scary movies popped into my head when I hear this story.  A woman, alone, is completing a simple innocent task such as laundry.  A scary villain arriving to create havoc and instil fear in the woman and the woman finally deciding to leave the place and get help.  Luckily in this story the woman escapes free, unlike most scary movies.  I think this story captures the listener’s interest as most people can relate to instances of hearing something and wondering if what is heard is real.

Haunted Hollydale Mental Hospital

Nationality: self-declared "cholo"
Age: 22
Occupation: unknown
Residence: Compton, CA
Performance Date: February 26
Language: spanish

My friends and I were hunting for haunted houses and after googling haunted places in los angeles, we decided to go check out the abandoned Hollydale Mental Hospital in Downey, CA.

We drove around the hospital campus for a bit, and then decided we should probably leave considering all of the buildings were fenced in and we really didn’t know what we were doing. Then we pulled in to a nearby parking lot and saw a group of people get out of their car who looked about our age, in their early twenties. We asked them if they were there to check out the hospital and they said yes, so we asked if we could join. They were very welcoming (the four guys were drunk, and the one girl was clearly  their sober driver) and explained that they were there to “initiate” Cherry because it was his first time visiting this haunted place. According to them, it was tradition to run up to the main house, “where they kept the craziest of the crazies”, and touch the front door for your first time visiting Hollydale. We decided this was exciting and tagged along. The girl, Cindy, began to explain how they were from the area and that they heard stories about Hollydale all the time from other kids in school. She also told us the story she knows of why it was abandoned:

Back in the 70’s, there was an outbreak of Tuberculosis at the hospital, and their way of dealing with it was to get all of those who had not yet been infected out and then left the rest of the people there to die. That is why the whole compound looks as if everyone just up and left, because they did. They just closed up shop like it was the end of another business day.

Cindy told us that they had been inside one of the buildings before and they took a whole box of papers from beside a desk and it had a lot of old, interesting papers and files inside.

She also said that about a year ago, the town planned  on tearing the place down because it was costing them money to have policemen constantly patrolling and whatnot, but a group of animal rights activists wouldn’t allow them too because the site has become a breeding ground for stray cats.

 

Child Spirits Still Haunt the Orphanage

Nationality: Caucasian American
Age: 23
Occupation: Student (Screenwriting)
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/24/12
Primary Language: English

Informant Bio

My informant is a USC student who hails from Detroit, Michigan. He grew up in the suburbs around Detroit and attended a private Catholic school, and has great pride in his city. He has a large family with whom he is very close.

He told me this story when I asked him about childhood in Detroit. He said that though sneaking into old buildings was not a huge part of his childhood, visiting the orphanage was something that he remembers doing more than once because he and his friends wanted to see a ghost.

The Abandoned Orphanage

Near where my informant lived in Michigan he recalls a fenced off compound of brownstone buildings that as long as he could remember had never been occupied. He never gave much thought to what it was until one day when a friend of his in school asked him if he wanted to explore it with her.

They were twelve years old when my informant’s friend (I’ll call her Marie) took him into the compound. He found out from her that it had once been an orphanage, but now it was abandoned.. They slipped under the fence at a place where it had been pulled up a bit. Marie’s sixteen year old brother led the way because he had been there before.

When they got inside, Marie’s brother began to narrate their tour of the dusty, empty hallways with stories about how the place was haunted. He said that the orphanage was still haunted by the spirits of the kids who were never adopted.

My informant couldn’t remember any stories specifically, but he does remember thinking that Marie’s brother was not telling the stories well. The stories didn’t have much of a point and it soon became clear that he was only telling them to scare his younger sister.

My informant never saw a ghost in the orphanage, though he, Marie and their friends did sneak back in on other occasions without Marie’s brother. The place large and empty – and they never found anything too interesting there. Barely any furniture or other items remained. Looking back now he’s quite relieved that they never came across anyone who had decided to squat there.

Other children also had stories that they had heard about ghosts in the place, and the ghosts were always the spirits of children. However my informant claims that none of the stories told how the children died, simply that “little Susan” or “Jim Bob” was never adopted, so they haunted the empty halls, still waiting to be taken to a good home. It seems almost as if the stories imply that the children were abandoned there with the building.

Shanghai Tunnels

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Portland, OR
Performance Date: 4/12/12
Primary Language: English

My informant grew up in Portland, Oregon, and was fascinated with ghost tales and haunted areas. He told me about the Shanghai Tunnels in Portland, which are notorious around the city for being haunted and creepy. My informant told me that as the story goes, in the 1800s there were people known as “Shanghaiiers” who worked for the shipping industry that ran through Portland’s Willamette River. These Shanghaiiers would kidnap unsuspecting men and women from bars and other places around downtown, and bring them down through secret entrances to the underground Shanghai Tunnels.

These tunnels, which still exist today, were said to have been the preferred route to take these victims down to the river where they would be shipped out and used for slave labor, and possibly prostitution. These days, it is common folklore that these tunnels are haunted with the souls of those who were taken down these tunnels and shipped into slavery. They are said to be dangerous, and one of the “most haunted places in America”.

My informant has heard these stories from many friends and peers, who tell it as a part of social interaction. There are now tour groups that will take you on a tour through these tunnels, but my informant says that they are “only for the bravest of the brave. I’d never go”. My informant says that he believes that there really were Shanghaiiers who would kidnap individuals in the 1800’s, and says that he really does believe that the tunnels are haunted nowadays.

I believe that this story may be true, based on how widespread and widely popular it is around Portland. I believe that at one point, they likely were used as underground transports for kidnapped adults and children. On the other hand, I believe that the tunnels are likely not truly haunted by the souls of these individuals. Firstly, because the individuals were shipped other locations immediately after, and secondly because the whole idea of ghosts may just be a false identity, spread throughout folklore. Nevertheless, you absolutely won’t find me wandering these tunnels anytime soon, even on a tour.