Tag Archives: horror

College Ghosts

Age: 19

Date: 12/3/24

Language: English

Collector’s Name: Lia

Nationality: American

Occupation: Student

Primary Language: English

Residence: United States

Subject: I haven’t personally experienced any ghost stories myself, but there is a story in my dorm about some freshmen with spirits. Would that work?

Interviewer: Definitely. Could you tell me a little about it?

Subject: Sure. Okay, in August of the 90s, three freshman guys were roommates. Two of the guys were trying to join a fraternity, and the last roommate was a little bit different from the other two. Let’s call him Jake. Jake spent a lot of time in his room alone, was not that conversational, and secluded himself from the other roommates. One night, Jake randomly invited the other two roommates to partake in a haunted ritual to connect with spirits. The roommates were excited that Jake might finally begin to open up, so they agreed. 

Interviewer: Wait, so there wasn’t any sort of hesitation from either of the roommates about a haunted ritual they are only just hearing about? 

Subject: No, not at all, really. They are teenage boys who likely felt invincible and thought the whole thing wasn’t real. Jake started telling them about how to perform the ritual, which needed to take place in the haunted dorm room of the college. The three roommates walked over to this room that nobody stays in anymore, and messed with the lock to get in. Jake instructed them on how to begin the ritual, where each person would stand in one corner of the room with their eyes closed, leaving one corner of the room vacant. In increments, all of the boys would switch corners. They repeated this process on Jake’s command until being told to abruptly stop. Jake told them all to slowly open their eyes and shift their heads to the vacant corner. They all did as he instructed, and in the corner was a boy, one that looked just about their age. He was a little bit translucent, and his eyes had been scratched out from their sockets. There was dried blood all over his hands. The most notable thing about him, they say, is just how silent he was. His presence could take noise away from anything around him and leave this empty silence. Until he began to scream. He screamed the loudest any of the boys had ever heard, and all of the roommates covered their ears with their hands. He continued to scream with his piercing, angry voice and then started to walk towards the roommates. Immediately they all ran out of the room, closing it behind them. They returned to their dorm, trying to find somewhere that felt safer. They locked themselves inside of their room and sat down trying to catch their breath. Slowly, one another looked at each other, noticing that each of their eyes had scratches around it, and were slowly starting to swell. 

Interviewer: Did anyone else in the dorm building hear any of this?

Subject: It is a very well-known story, but that night nobody but the three roommates heard anything. Now, people who have a dorm room near the haunted one claim that every once and a while they will hear screams through their wall, but only one room can hear it at a time. Nobody really knows who that boy is, or what his story is. 

Nat Sain Legend

Nationality: Burmese

Primary Language: Burmese

Other Language(s): English, Chinese

Age: 19

Occupation: Student

Residence: Hanover, N.H

Performance Date: 03/17/2024

P.P has been my friend since middle school and is also a Burmese person who is originally from Yangon, Myanmar. When I asked her of any legends, myths or tales she knows of, she recounts a known legend about people who died really unfortunate deaths becoming spirits. Her housekeeper told her this story since she is from the rural areas of Myanmar where a lot of these myths are considered true. Back home, it was common for most households to have housekeepers and so the relationships between housekeepers and the children of the house was usually one that was really familial and close knit. 

“Nat Sain are spirits who, before they died, were good and kind people but were killed off in really unfortunate ways. Because of this, Nat Sain are known to be full of vengeance and malicious intent. In this one story, the village is trying to build a bridge but the bridge keeps tumbling and falling apart no matter how hard they try to repair it. The people of the town believed in mythical spirits so they thought that if they found someone that matched a certain requirement for a specific birthday, age, day of the week they were born, then they should sacrifice that person so that the bridge can work. There is this woman who had a husband that worked on the construction site near the bridge. She always brought him food everyday and was friendly to everyone and fed them her food as well. One day she started to converse with someone near the bridge and they started asking her questions about her birthday and realized that she matched all the sacrifice’s requirements perfectly. The next day, people captured her, wrapped her in a sleeping mat, and dug a hole where the bridge’s support is supposed to be, and buried her alive. They end up building a bridge on top of it. My housekeeper said this was a myth for a real bridge in her village so people would always worship or say prayers for that Nat Sain whenever they cross the bridge so that they can cross it safely. Honestly I think my housekeeper was just trying to scare me and tell me an entertaining bedtime story before I went to bed for her own entertainment ahaha. I still think it’s a real story but, I don’t think there’s another meaning behind the story other than just focusing on the Nat Sain’s background. Maybe the legend’s intent was to make sure people respect the spirits since they have their own history and can be dangerous to others if people come to their area/sacred place.”

After hearing this story, I was pretty terrified to say the least. I interpret this legend as a spiritual tale in Buddhism or Burmese folklore, that was used to scare people with the purpose of spiritual or religious reinforcement. These stories are scary yet believable enough to ensure people don’t stray away from religion since it implies that there are many mythical figures out there that could harm you if you are sinful. I think this story mainly serves to explain why the bridge didn’t work previously. By creating a story, it provided answers while making sure people prayed and was careful when crossing the bridge.

The Pig Man

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: 530 W. 28th st. Los Angeles
Performance Date: 03/25/23
Primary Language: English

Text: “I actually got told this story while I was in the cabin–this was Cabin 2. The story is before it was Cabin 2, the place was a pig pen. Some guy came to the island and he killed one of the pigs, and he like carved out the pig’s head and made a mask-like thing, and like lived on the island and killed people on the low. It sounds pretty fried, but I lived in the cabin probably when I was like 10 years old, and I was told the story in a very scary way and I was sitting in my little bet like ‘dude, fuck, like this is crazy.’ In the moment this stuff is very scary. When you’re at this camp, you don’t really have your phone, so when the counselors tell this stuff that they’ve told a million times, they tell it very well and there’s no other authority to check the story against.”

Context: My informant, NR, told me this story while we sat together and played NHL while listening to house music and eating frozen yogurt. This was a pretty ideal storytelling setting. He first heard this story as a middle-school-aged camper at a sleepaway summer camp in New Hampshire, and was scared by it at the time. He interpreted the legend as the crux of a practical joke that counselors enjoyed playing on campers. 

Analysis: I believe NR’s legend bears elements of practical joking in that it is leveraged by an ingroup, the counselors, to display the ignorance of the outgroup, the campers. The legend’s employment of elements that could potentially exist add credibility to the horror factor and play upon the ignorance of youth to frighten children. NR also emphasized the credibility of the storytellers, emphasizing that he defaulted to believing their account because he lacked a method to investigate other possibilities without his phone. The Pig Man’s employment of the mask also creates a fear factor, as anyone wearing the head of a dead pig would appear frightening, certainly in American culture where people are far removed from the slaughter of animals and death of animals in general. This legend can tell us about summer camp culture, in which authority is valued as well as respect for the surrounding land, which is often unsupervised and can be dangerous for a wandering child. In that spirit, the legend also plays a cautionary role, encouraging campers to stay vigilant in nature–the closer a camper is to being alone in nature, the more the camper will think of the Pig Man and desire a return to safety. I additionally believe that the death aspect of the legend taps into the childhood interest in death as a taboo topic. 

The Outpost

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: 720 W. 27th St. Los Angeles
Performance Date: 03/25/23
Primary Language: English

Text: “Alright so basically it was like, so my sleepaway camp was on an island in Lake Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire and it’s like an all-boys camp whatever but basically the camp is all centered around this island and it’s all kinda in this one area and there’s this path you can take through the middle, and at the end of the path is this place called ‘the outpost,’ which is basically a little hut with a bathroom, it’s got a fire pit for camping and stuff–you could spend the night there if you didn’t want to sleep in the cabin, like people did cabin nights there. And so basically only older kids really spent the night at the Outpost, but there were these things called cabin nights where you go with your cabin and basically like post up at like a little beach along the island or play hoops for a while or you could like do random shit honestly-go swimming maybe. You’d camp out with marshmallows and do all that stuff. Basically older kids who could go to the outpost started the story, and essentially it says there’s a murderer in the outpost bathroom. All these kids are out camping, and this kid asks to go to the bathroom and basically gets like stabbed and like blicked. Nobody knows where he is after a while, but the counselor lets another kid use the bathroom–other kid pulls up, gets stabbed, whatever, blicked. At this point the counselor is like ‘yo what the fuck is going on.’ So two kids blicked, blood everywhere. Someone else gets blicked, then they run back to camp super far. One of the guys who works in the office, his dad owned the camp, and he grabbed a gun and killed the guy. It’s really scary when it’s told to you as a kid around a campfire at the outpost.”

Context: My informant, NR, told me this story while we sat together and played NHL (hockey video game) while listening to house music and eating frozen yogurt. This was a pretty ideal storytelling setting. He first heard this story as a middle-school-aged camper at a sleepaway summer camp in New Hampshire, and was scared by it at the time. He emphasized the combination of his youth, the campfire setting, and the storyteller’s authority as elements that enhanced the fear factor of the legend. As explained in the text, the camp was all-boys and the legend revolved around a remote location on the property known as the outpost, at which cabins (groups of campers) would sometimes spend the night outdoors. The legend is traditional at the camp. In hindsight, NR interprets the story as a classic scare-legend, told to encourage adherence to the ‘buddy system’ and to scare younger children. 

Analysis: In my interpretation, the legend of the Outpost offers insights into summer camp and childrens’ culture, particularly through the classic campfire-horror trope. A few dynamics at play make the legend material to the young NR. For one, his youth relative to the storytellers enhances their credibility and thus the plausibility of the legend. In the days of early adolescence, age plays a major role in credibility–this legend is most popular/effective with young children, reflecting this truth. Also, NR’s unfamiliarity with the area adds to the legend’s effect. While he was a regular camper, the Outpost region was still not completely familiar to NR, which can create gaps in understanding that are prone to being filled in with horror legends such as this. In this case, his fear of the unknown, already exacerbated by the campfire setting, became manifested by the legend of a murderer who lived in the Outpost, reflecting a classic youth’s outlook on reality. On the flip side, I view this legend as a practical joke played by counselors on campers and as a cautionary tale leveraged to ensure safety. However, contrasting with many uses of practical jokes, I do not view this necessarily as a rite of passage or an initiation ritual–I believe it is more just a tradition that the camp can collectively identify with. Due to the temporary nature of the camp experience, there is no investment in seeing the children on the other side of understanding the reality of the story. 

The woman in the window

Text (urban legend): 

“There was said to be a book called “The Woman in the Window” and if you opened it the woman in the window would alway be watching you in a window.”

Context: 

A is my little sister who is 9 years old. She is in the fourth grade and loves to read. She recalls this story being shared around school by classmates of hers.”

Q: “Do you only need to open the book for this to happen?”

A: “No, if you open the book and read the pages out loud, then the woman will haunt you.”

Q: “Where did you hear about this book?”

A: “I heard it from one of my friends at school. We don’t know if the book is real or not (quietly)…”

Q: “What does the woman look like?”

A: “I have never seen her but my friend says she has long black hair and wears a white dress.”

Analysis: 

The text is an urban legend as its truth value is unknown and it was shared between two people who both belief it to be true. The fact that the truth value is unknown likely plays a role in the nature of my informant. She heard it from another classmate in primary school and I find that children’s folklore is more likely to be based on fiction rather than actuality or fantasy versus reality. As the story was told and shared between two children, I also view this as a cautionary tale in a sense that the narrative cautions readers to be wary of what they read and a general warning against the unknown as my informant didn’t know if this book actually exists but she was fearful regardless as her voice tended to lower when speaking about the instance in which the woman in the window may appear. I also notice a connection or similarity between the woman in the window and the story of La Llorna such as the white dress, long black hair, and possible feelings of revenge fueling their actions. As described by Carbonell, a variation of the story of La Llorna involves her acting out of revenge on a lover that wronged her. In a male dominated society, I find this common that children’s horror folklore, specifically in young girls, is center around this notion of the volatility and frightening nature of women’s emotions. Ideas of male versus female distinctions in children’s folklore by Meechling also supports my ideas in interpreting this legend in terms of young girls where the stereotype is perpetuated that a female figure fueled by emotions is something of which to be afraid of.