Tag Archives: haunted

Haunted Pike Place Market

Background: My informant, ET, attended the University of Washington from 2009-2013. I asked her about campus/Seattle folklore, and this was her response:

ET: “Pike Place is supposedly haunted. My freshman RA thought it would be fun for the floor to go on a haunted Pike Place Market tour. But apparently people have like, died, at Pike Place Market. They accidentally slipped on the ground with the fish and everything, because you know how they throw the fish around, so there’s apparently lots of haunted fish mongers, and you would see them walking around after the markets closed.”

Me: “Do you feel like Pike Place is haunted?”

ET: “Me? I only go during the day so I hope not, but I also wouldn’t be surprised since it’s so old. It’s also close to the Seattle Underground tour, and people say that place is haunted too, so yeah, maybe it’s just a downtown Seattle thing.”

Analysis: I love a good ghost story. Having been to Pike Place myself, I can confirm that all the traditions–the fish toss across the market every half an hour or so–could naturally progress into ghost stories too. With all of the history and bustle in the market, it seems natural that a place with that reputation would naturally have a few ghost stories as well–it seems entirely plausible that a fish monger in the process of throwing a raw fish across the market died while slipping on the floor. People primarily go to Pike Place for the market itself, but I think the existence of ghost stories like this one once again offer room for multiplicity and variation–I’m sure each fish stall at Pike Place likely has their own variation on this story depending on their brand–but also invites tourists and other visitors to be in the in-group in a location that would otherwise seem like a one-dimensional farmer’s market.

Boots

Context: C.O. learned about this story on a ghost tour in Old Williamsburg, Virginia.

C.O. : And then the ghost story I heard when I was, oh gosh, eleven?
P.Z. : Eleven?
C.O. : And I was in Old Williamsburg in, just outside DC.
P.Z. : Okay
C.O. : On a trip with my parents and we went on a walking ghost tour of the town, uh, at night and one of the stories they told us outside the old inn was about two sisters who I guess back in the early eighteen hundreds were staying there and it was late at night they were asleep in their beds and one of the sisters woke up because she heard something outside the window
P.Z. : Okay
C.O. : That sounded like bootprints, or footprints. Or, I can’t, footprints. Boot noises. And she went to go look at the window, pulled back the curtains and there was nothing there so she went back to bed
P.Z. : Okay
C.O. : And then she heard it again so he went back to the window, opened the window, looked outside the window, still can’t see anything, asked your sister if she heard it, she didn’t, so both of them went back to bed. And then about five minutes later she heard the, the bootstomps outside her door. And there was light but she couldn’t see any shadows, so she opens the door and nobody’s out there. So now she’s freaking out. She doesn’t know where the noise is coming from, if someone’s messing with her so she goes back to bed. And then a little whiles later, maybe about an hour, she hears the bootprints or footprints even closer. In the room. So she throws the light on, there’s nobody standing there, so she goes to sleep again, turns the light out and like not 10 seconds later she starts feeling someone pushing up on the side of her bed for her feet
P.Z. : Ohh
C.O. : Slowly pushing up. And she feels like the indentation of someone sitting like right next to her head on her bed and she freaks out turns the light on and there’s nobody there
P.Z. : No, I hate that
C.O. : And that is the last time it happens that night and that’s the end of the story. And they called it Boots. And that scared the shit out of me as a kid, I didn’t sleep for two days
P.Z. : Oh yeah I can imagine that
C.O. : But the kicker is like a week later when we got home and I was in my bedroom, going to sleep. And I felt the same thing on my bed like at the foot of my bed as if someone had sat on the edge of it and I turned the light on and there was nothing there. My cat wasn’t in the room, my pillow didn’t fall off my bed, my parents and my brother were both asleep, and it was just, and my door was closed, and it was the weirdest feeling and it was just too much of a coincidence for me.
P.Z. : I hate that
C.O. : Yeah. So that’s my one ghost story.

Thoughts: This seemed a fairly standard ghost story or legend. I’ve heard many ghost stories that similarly focus on past tragedies, colonial-era ghosts, and unexplained footsteps. I thought that the truly interesting part of this story was the personal story. As a child, I also would be terrified by these sort of stories that people told me, so I understood the concept. I thought that it was interesting to hear the first hand experience of an otherwise general story.

Haunted Hospital Stories Among Nurses

Nationality: American
Age: 24
Occupation: Nurse, Critical Care
Residence: Atlanta, Georgia
Performance Date: April 30th, 2021
Primary Language: English
Language: None

Informant Context:

Stella is a traveling ICU (intensive care unit) nurse who currently work in Atlanta, Georgia.

Transcript:

STELLA: Nurses believe their hospitals are haunted, oftentimes. 

INTERVIEWER: Really?

STELLA: Yeah.

INTERVIEWER: Do they believe that the hospital *you* work at is haunted? 

STELLA: I mean like, when I worked at a different hospital, like—there were certain rooms that like, had really weird, like—vibes. And like, people—nurses would be like, “Oh yeah, like, I worked in that room”. And like, you know, lights would flicker and like, things would be moved. I just, like—it was always cold like, I just felt really weird. And like, there were definitely times, like… like before they would even mention that to me, like—I would walk down to that side of the hallway or like, near the room and I would like… like I felt different and then they like, told me about it later and I was like, “that’s so weird, like—I like, felt that like… [kinda(?)] that way or there’s like certain rooms like, in ICU or something where like… the patients like, always do bad and like… it’s kinda like the “cursed room” sort of thing.

INTERVIEWER: Wow… that’s really interesting and really takes the form of ghost stories [laughs] kind of in—in general, the—

STELLA: Oh, yeah. I mean, I was like, working on like, a neuro ICU at night one time, and there was like… this like, curtain that just like—kept moving. And me nurse were just like, “what the heck? Like, what’s going on?” And there was like no draft in the room and like, there was no reason for there curtain to be moving, but it was just like, fluttering. And like, it was in like the “haunted corner”. You know, it’s just like… it’s like, super spooky. 

[…]

INTERVIEWER: Yeah, because of all places to be haunted—I hadn’t thought of hospital rooms. But it does make total sense now. Um—

STELLA: Oh, it’s a thing. Like, all these nurse Instagrams that I follow online like… especially around Halloween, like—people will send in their like, haunted like, nursing stories. And it’s like, ICU nurses and they like… will be like “Yeah, like—this like, hospital used to be like, a psych hospital, and patients would like, jump out the window. And it—you know, it’s—like, it’s haunted. Or like, they’ll have multiple patients in the same room like, see like, the same kid in the red dress. Or like, the same like, patient who like, died there tragically will be like “oh, like—the lady with like, the blue shoes.” And it’s like, multiple patients like, have… have like, said that they see this person and like, stuff like that.

Informant Commentary:

The informant seemed to relate beliefs in ghost stories among nurses to community. Shared experience is powerful, and the experiences Stella relates from her time travelling between units and hospitals served to bond her with her new, and ever changing, fellow medical professionals.

Analysis:

The prevalence of ghost stories among medical professionals might be explained by a common association of hospitals with death. Transience of people (coming-and-going) is also a factor, which might also explain the prevalence and proliferation of ghost stories among professionals in the hospitality industry (hotels, theme parks). One of Stella’s accounts also follows a common pattern seen among ghost stories: a person has a moment of discomfort or a brief paranormal encounter (without being told about any possible paranormal activity beforehand) which is later fleshed out by others who already know about the phenomenon. Perhaps the most interesting thing that Stella notes is the belief, not only in ghosts in the building, but in a supernatural force which acts upon the physical world, such as malevolent forces which cause a room to become “cursed”, and patients to “do bad” when assigned to them. This might suggest a search for comfort by members of the folk group, seeking to attribute unexplained medical tragedies to forces outside of their own control. There is a strong desire among medical professionals to exert control upon illness and suffering, thereby ending it with scientific means. When this fails for no clear reason, and seems to follow an uncanny trend, it makes sense for medical professionals to replace their own uncertainty with a conclusion which gestures towards the metaphysical, beyond science. 

The Goat-Man Of Pope Lick Creek

Nationality: American (Kentucky)
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/7/2021
Primary Language: English

Informant’s Background:

My informant, AH, was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky, but now lives in Los Angeles where she attends undergraduate study at USC. She is 21 years old.

Context:

The informant is a close friend and former roommate of mine. I asked her if she had any folklore from her hometown in Kentucky she could share with me. For the purposes of this performance, she is labeled as AH, and I am labeled as AT.

Performance:

AH: “So there’s this creek, pretty close to my house, probably about like ten minutes away, it’s called Pope Lick, I don’t know why, but uhm me and my friends would go there pretty often because there’s these like train tracks that run up above and underneath there is where the goat man is supposed to be. So the goat man he’s supposed to be like legs of a goat, top part of a dude, and what he’s supposed to do is if you’re there at night (which we were pretty often), he’d go and like either like lure you down and then go and like grab you and eat you or he’d like fucking jump down and get you. But that was his whole thing like (*in spooky voice*) oooOOhhh we’re hanging out, and we might die! Someone’s gonna get killed by the goat man! But it was very fun, yeah, that’s most of the stuff.”

AT: “Where did you first hear about it?”

AH: “So I first heard of it… my uh-my girlfriend at the time she was like “oh, have you heard of the goat man?” and I was like “no” and she was like “yeah so if we go here at night we might see this like goat man person thing.” And that was like when I first heard about it and then we went together and we didn’t see anything, but it was definitely kind of like a creepy vibe, like abandon fucking train tracks, kind of creepy.”

Thoughts:

The first thing that came to mind upon my hearing about this was Ray Cashman’s article Visions of Irish Nationalism, which we read in class, more specifically where Cashman discusses how a seemingly innocuous location can hold a special meaning to the locals of the area or to those properly informed (Cashman, 373). In this case, the location is seemingly mundane, a railroad trestle bridge, yet there it has a different meaning to those that live in the area that are “in the know”. According to my research, there actually have been a number of deaths as recently as 2019 at the location, as it is actually not abandoned and is a major railway for trains. So in this case we see an example where depending on the time of the visit, and how safe they were being, the informant and their partner could easily have been seriously injured by going to a location that is actively dangerous and prohibited of entry to the public, yet the myth surrounding the location provides a new meaning to the location, and makes it a desirable destination to visit for locals.

Cashman, Ray. Visions of Irish Nationalism. Journal of Folklore Research, Vol. 45, No. 3. Pp. 361-381.

The Black Stallion and Creature With Three Red Eyes: Don’t Walk Alone at Midnight in Guatemala

Nationality: Guatamalan-American (American citizenship)
Age: 20
Occupation: Student studying medicine at USC, Hospital Tech
Residence: 2715 Portland St Los Angeles CA 90007
Performance Date: 2/12/21
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

I heard this legend while many of my housemates were gathered around a table and drinking. The first time the speaker shared this story, he mentioned that his grandfather never drank after he saw a red-eyed figure in Guatemala. When I asked him to retell his story for collection, he gave much more detail about the two creatures his grandfather feared.

*

The speaker’s grandfather used to tell this story when he would get drunk: he saw two creatures. One was a being with red eyes, the other was a black horse. In 1960 in San Rafael, Guatemala at exactly 12 am, neighbors in a village of only 15 or 20 houses could hear a black stallion. And if stragglers outside a home were caught alone, they would hear a horse running after them. They wouldn’t see the horse. If they managed to slip inside their house and close the door, they would hear the horse pounding at the threshold until 12:01. Then they would not hear it anymore.

If the horse caught stragglers, they would die of an underlying disease like cardiac arrest or drug overdose, something “easy to explain.” In those days, a lot of children went missing in the wilderness because the area was “unexplored.”

One night, the speaker’s grandfather and his friend left a larger group of friends playing soccer to walk home around midnight. They were both drunk. Suddenly, the speaker’s grandfather felt dread. Every step they took felt “like mud” and the speaker’s grandfather felt like he was being watched. Both friends turned around to see a seven-foot-tall humanoid figure with three red eyes watching “like a little kid goes onto a tree and just sticks his head sideways and stays staring at you.”

The speaker did not know how his grandfather got home that night, but the friend went missing for over a week. “They did find the guy, his friend, my grandpa’s friend. And so he just told me that this dude was torn. Like torn apart. “

When asked what this creature was, the speaker said that “It’s from the time before even that place was colonized by Spain… around the Mayan time… the Mayans just disappeared one day. They were so advanced for their time.” He went on to say that his grandfather believed that the Mayans, who the speaker mentioned were polytheistic built massive pyramids, disappeared because they were killed by these strange creatures. “These things that they [victims] see now are from times that we can’t even comprehend because he’s like, yeah, they’re from the future. And I was like, What the hell do you mean the future?” The speaker trailed off.

“I’m not sure if it’s real or not, I’m going to believe because the way he will talk to me, he would stare me down in the eyes,” the speaker continued. “And my grandma would also support that, because even she would hear the black horse because that another story my grandma told me when my grandpa was asleep, was, he couldn’t sleep at night, most of the time in Guatemala, because he said that that’s the human figure would haunt him because of his friend.”

The speaker noted that black stallions were also a status symbol in Guatemala reserved for members of the military.

When asked why he first told the story, the speaker noted that ” Usually when I’m under the influence, then the story comes out But usually, when you’re impaired or under the influence, you see, I wouldn’t say another dimension, but you see something else? Like you see? We see different.”

The speaker’s grandfather worried that these two creatures would come for him after he moved to the U.S. He later died of a heart attack.

*

This speaker is a good friend but he embellishes stories a lot. He later told me that he believed that he’d seen the red-eyed creature in the U.S. even though he called both of these creatures “just legends” in the recording. I also happen to know that in telling these stories, he was trying to get me to trust him again after a breakup. After, he often offered to tell similar stories. But I think he was being genuine when he told me what he knew and what he had seen.

This speaker also struggles with drinking alcoholic beverages. Telling this story may be a way for him to express the fear he feels drinking to suppress emotions or escape responsibility.

He later asked me not to tease him about ghosts because to him, these stories are very real. I might not believe these stories in the daylight, but I will never walk alone at midnight in Guatemala.