Tag Archives: haunted

Haunted Dorm/Former Morgue

Nationality: US
Age: 23
Occupation: Student
Residence: Sewanee, Tennessee
Performance Date: 21 April 2018
Primary Language: English

Context:

Will Lord is my brother. I visited him at his University recently. He attends the University of the South, also known as Sewanee. Given its regal name, one would assume that the school is rich in tradition and folklore. One would be correct. The school was established in 1857. Given its small student body, many feel compelled to join fraternities and societies which each have their own collection of folklore. The school itself is full of legends. While walking around campus, I recorded him talking about famous locations, legends, etc.

Transcript:

Will: This one here, this is where I lived freshman year. It was a morgue way back in the day. Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t have any ghost stories from there but a ton of people say they’ve heard things or seen ghosts or just had sleep paralysis.

Interpretation:

This is another example of a vague hauntedness. Will could not point to exactly what goes on within the space, but assured me it was haunted. Like so many folk stories about haunted spaces, it once dealt with death. We often hear of a haunted space once being a burial ground, a morgue, a hospital etc.

Haunted Dorm at USC

Nationality: US
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: 10 April 2018
Primary Language: English

Context:

Isabella Estrada is studying history at the University of Southern California. She is graduating this year and is in the process of applying to/hearing back from law schools. This was clearly on her mind as the first piece of folklore she gave me dealt with law school applications. She was born and raised in Torrance, California.

Transcript:

Isabella: Okay, so freshman year, I lived on campus in Pardee Tower and there was an old ghost story that the seventh floor was haunted because some girl…I think two years prior to when I lived there, she died in her room, and her roommate was gone for the weekend, her roommate didn’t find her body until she came back the following Monday. And she was just dead.

Interpretation:

This piece is interesting because the event was historical–thus not fitting into the categories of legend, myth or tale. What is folklore is the belief that the floor of the building is now haunted. Bella could give no specifics on the haunting–for instance, she could not even say for certain if the deceased student wanders the halls or something to that effect. I have often noticed people mentioning that a building, a room, etc. is haunted but they know no more information beyond that.

 

The Haunted Escanaba, MI Lighthouse

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Ann Arbor, Michigan
Performance Date: April 8, 2018
Primary Language: English

Informant, a screenwriting major, was talking about his screenplay for his class and mentioned it took place in Northern Michigan. The conversation is as follows, the informant is TP, I am PH:

PH: Of course it’s about Michigan [because the informant talks about his home state very often]

TP: If I knew of any other lakeside town with a haunted lighthouse, it’d take place there, but I only know of Escanaba

PH: A haunted lighthouse? Can I write this down for my folklore collection?

TP: Yes

PH: Okay, can you tell me about the haunted lighthouse?

TP: So there’s a famous lighthouse in Escanaba [in Northern Michigan] because people think it’s haunted because when Michigan was founded, the Menominee tribe used to have land in Northern Michigan but we slaughtered them so their official reservation is just in Wisconsin now but the land is still sacred spiritual ground and they built a lighthouse on this sacred ground… I think it was a burial ground

PH: Who is “they”?

TP: I think the Michigan people? The people who slaughtered the tribe… So people say the lighthouse is haunted by the tribal chief from the time and that, like, if you visit the lighthouse you’ll see his spirit and he’ll try to chase you out and that’s pretty much it

Haunted High School Auditorium

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/19
Primary Language: English

The informant told a group of friends this story when recounting weird traditions and stories about their high school experience. The informant is from a rural town in Eastern Oregon.

“So, our auditorium at my high school is also haunted, and rumour has it that the drama/english teacher that later got fired because he apparently had sex with a student, um, basically he confirmed this, and was the director  of the theatre and stuff, but there was like this kid who was really into theater and everything, and he killed himself and we don’t know why or how, but he killed himself apparently, but the specific seat, J26, is supposed to be particularly haunted and that’s where he always sits, and my teacher would say how they would be putting on plays, and the light box you would see shadows or voices or scuttering about so, Yeah. That’s basically it.”

Analysis:

It is hard to see what the English/Drama teacher would gain by spreading the rumour of the ghost, but it has been widely accepted in the informants school as truthful.

Otok Daksa (Daksa island)

Nationality: Croatian
Age: 68
Occupation: retired
Residence: Dubrovnik, Croatia
Performance Date: 4/17/2017
Primary Language: Croatian

NK is my grandmother who was born and raised in Dubrovnik, Croatia. Being a local she knows a lot about the city and its folklore. She first told me this story in elementary school for a project on islands near Dubrovnik.

“Daksa is a small island near Dubrovnik. For years after World War 2 access to this island was forbidden. The island is haunted and even the owners of the island don’t live on it and have tried to sell it couple of times now. The island is haunted because there were 48 people accused of being Nazi sympathizers and were brutally executed in 1944. Locals say it’s haunted by their ghosts looking for justice.”

 

What’s the real story behind it?

 

“Yugoslav partisans celebrated their victory over the Nazis by rounding up anyone they thought corroborated with the enemy, including the village priest and mayor,

The ‘guilty’ were then rowed out to the island where they were gunned down in cold blood and left unburied. The locals were told that the same fate awaited them if they intervened, so the corpses remained uncovered for decades and it wasn’t until recent years that they were finally laid to rest. So the legend has it that spirits of the dead men haunt the island, demanding justice against those responsible.”

 

The ghost story obviously has some true facts. I’m guessing that because of the tragedy that occurred on the island, the locals had to cope with it some way and said the island was haunted.