Tag Archives: horror

Spirit-Medium Friend

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Residence: Simi Valley, CA
Performance Date: 4/6/23
Primary Language: English

Context:

LB is a 20-year-old female who had a friend in High School, AS, who allegedly could see, hear, and sometimes communicate with the spirits of the dead. AS claimed to regularly be ignoring spirits when engaging in normal conversation and only mentioned that she perceived them after the fact. LB, who is deeply disturbed by paranormal activity and the supernatural, remembers being horrified by AS’s abilities.

Text:

Interviewer: “What’s one time you remember AS having one of these ghost-medium episodes?”

LB: “Once we were at my neighbor’s house dog-sitting at night and we were on a call with another friend. Out of nowhere, AS asked if I could hear knocking and I said no and got super confused. It didn’t take me long to realize what was happening, and I told our friend on the phone that we had to go. AS didn’t like a lot of people knowing about how she experienced this stuff. So she continued to hear the knocking and I still didn’t, so clearly we figured it was a supernatural thing. Then we freak out and get the dogs back into their kennel quickly and book it out of there. I was the one driving us home, but kept noticing AS looking behind us while we were in the car. I told her to stop because it was freaking me out. She didn’t tell me why at the time, but she eventually told me she saw a girl running toward us behind the car screaming for help.”

Analysis:

In those high school years of transitioning from childhood to adulthood, people feel like they are in a very liminal space. Therefore, it is common for youth to take on and be more aware of the liminal realm of the supernatural. Just as college students are more likely to believe in ghosts, the same can be said for high schoolers as they begin to become more aware of their futures and potential as future working members of society. They start to learn to drive, to work a minimum wage job, and as a result, eventually pay their own taxes.

For this reason, it makes sense why AS would be experiencing or perceive to be experiencing these episodes of spirit communication. Whether or not any supernatural activity occurred or if it was mostly in her head, AS’s mind was nevertheless in the bordering realm between childhood and adulthood, making her more superstitious overall.

The Puppy in the Basement

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: University of Michigan
Performance Date: 4/4/23
Primary Language: English

Context: KC is a friend of a friend who volunteered to share her story with me when she found out I was interested in hearing people’s stories. She heard this story at her summer camp, although she failed to tell me where it is located.

Performance:

KC: This story is called the puppy and the basement, I heard it from summer camp.

Mommy told me never to go in the basement, but I wanted to see what was making that noise. It sounded like a puppy, and I wanted to see the puppy, so I opened the basement door and tip toed down a bit. I didn’t see a puppy, and Mommy yanked me out of the basement and yelled at me. Mommy had never yelled at me before, and that made me sad and I cried. Then Mommy told me never to go in the basement again, and gave me a cookie. That made me feel better, so I didn’t ask why the boy in the basement was making noises like a puppy, or why he had no hands or feet.

Analysis:

This is a short story but it still reveals much about cultural ideas of the sick and twisted. The story plays upon the childhood innocence of the narrator and the presence of a puppy to subvert the listeners expectations of what would be normal to have in ones basement. Upon the reveal that the thing in the basement is actually a mutilated boy it becomes clear that the horror aspect of the story comes from the fact that a seemingly normal suburban home, common in American culture, could house something so deranged and sick.

Buried Alive

This story um… is from our Paine side of the family and it goes back to I believe around 1727, the year 1727. And we had a relative named William Winston and. . . he wasn’t a wealthy man, but he worked hard, but he was relatively poor. And he lived up in Northern Virginia and he met a woman who he fell deeply in love with. She was. . .she became his paramour. She was all he had hoped for in a mate and he decided this is going to be the woman that. . . I. . . I am going to marry, and her name was Sarah Dabney. And, so he started courting her as they did back in that day, and the courting process went on for quite a while. Um. . . long enough for him to save up a lot of the money that he had and he had made from work in order to buy her what was going to be one of the most beautiful rings that anyone in Northern Virginia had ever seen as an engagement ring. And. . .they were going to get married in mid spring, and it had been a terrible winter, and William Winston lived in a small, small house. You know back then it was probably a shack. But, the poor weather continued and it snowed and then the snow to rain and sleet for quite a while but he and Sarah went ahead and got married. I think it was. . . late. . . late April of 1727 if I am correct on the date, and word got out that she had this incredible engagement ring that he had gotten for her that was (you know) a sign of their betrothal. And, the word got out. . . and she fell sick with pneumonia and he thought um she became really really sick and. . . to the point to where the doctors pronounced her dead. And this was like a month. . . this was not long after they had been married. And he was devastated, he was totally traumatized. And he buried her . . . I guess he buried her in a somewhat shallow grave and the word had gotten out that his wife who had this beautiful ring. . . that this–this laborer who had married a woman and given her this just almost priceless wedding ring–that she had died.

And  three–I guess they would have been equivalent to highway men,robbers, grave robbers–after she had been buried, they dug her up, and because the ring fit so tightly on her finger that they couldn’t slide it off of her finger, and they cut her finger off! Well he was back in his home, and they dug her up in this dark and stormy night, and he’s (you know) probably sitting at his little table in his little shack with the candle flickering and the wind howling and the rain beating and the roof leaking and you know just crying into his hands. . . and there was a scratching at the door! And he’s– and he (you know) he’s just just sobbing and the scratching continued and it got louder and louder and louder and he finally realized somebody or something is scratching at my door! And he got up and he went to the door and he opened the door and there was Sarah and she hadn’t died, she had been buried alive! When they dug her up and cut the ring off of her finger it. . . it. . . it resuscitated her enough, along with the oxygen that she was able to breathe again. . . and that’s the story. And they lived happily ever after after that.

Slenderman

Nationality: United States of America
Age: 16
Occupation: Student
Residence: Kansas City, MO
Performance Date: 4/23/20
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

“The idea is that there is a man that lives in the woods, he is very tall and lanky, he wears a suit and has tentacles on his back but the biggest thing is that he doesn’t have a face, when you look at him it’s just a white head, a flat nothing. I honestly don’t remember how I first heard about- it was probably just through talking to other kids because it became such a big deal because Slenderman started as a creepy pasta where someone wrote a story and it just spread through the Internet. There’s a whole bunch of scary photos with a child next to him and the whole idea is that he would lure kids into the woods and kill them. One of the things that was scary about him was that the more you research the Slenderman, the more likely he is to get you. So like as you look stuff up, he’s like gonna put you on his list like this person looking too much into it. I don’t fully know how that started and it made it scarier because we can’t find anything about him.”

Background:

My informant is a 16-year old from Kansas City, Missouri. She is active on the Internet and has been on YouTube since early 2010. In the early days of the Internet, people invented short stories that would be spread throughout the Internet via copy and pasting, earning the name copy pastas. Eventually, this act of sharing stories transformed to fit the horror genre and this subculture was known as creepy pastas. These stories are shared in Internet circles as short and creepy stories and are subject to reinterpretation with each telling. My informant, being invested with the Internet, learned of several of these throughout the years and remembered this one in particular. 

Context:

My informant brought up this story during a walk around her neighborhood when I asked her about scary stories from her childhood. 

Thoughts:

This story is interesting as it represents several fears for a generation that is heavily present on the Internet. Firstly, the Slenderman takes from similar urban legends of the past featuring a man in the woods who seeks to hurt others. It should be noted though, that this specific story states he only seeks to hurt children, which is done to emphasize his cruelty and evil nature. Furthermore, it is tailored to fit those who would stumble upon the story, most of which would be younger children using the Internet. Being entirely on the Internet also changes how people could discuss the story, which features prominently in this telling of the story. The informant told me that she heard you could not look anything up about the creature, as it would make you his target. This is fascinating, as it plays into the fears of a generation with seemingly unlimited access to technology, which is a restriction of said content. If nothing else, the Slenderman also represents an entire shift in the methods by which stories are told. Whereas other classic horror stories are primarily told orally, the Slenderman’s origins are entirely on the Internet. This pushed the content of the piece to better fit this audience, and it adapted to address fears of this generation of kids on the Internet.

For an in-depth look at the history of this legend, see: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/15/movies/slender-man-timeline.html

Vietnamese Friday the 13th

Nationality: Vietnamese
Age: 25
Occupation: PhD Candidate
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/11/2020
Primary Language: Vietnamese
Language: English

 Main Story: 

The following is transcribed between myself and the informant, from this point forward the informant will be known as TT and I will be MH. 

TT: Are you familiar with Friday the 13th? 

MH: Yes, I am. 

TT: In Vietnam we also have Friday the 13th, but it has a different context then the commercialized one in the United States. The story goes, in the early 2000s there was a storm in a city in Vietnam and that city was semi-destroyed in the storm and many people were displaced. The people in the surrounding regions banded together and came into the town to deliver aid and help out. Then one day, well Friday the 13th, two busses carrying people who were supposed to be delivering aid crashed and almost everyone died in the collision. And now the day is cursed. 

MH: Is there any relevance of Friday the 13th as we know it in America, or like are the two ideas completely separate? 

TT: From what I remember the two are not linked but purely by coincidence. 

Background: 

The informant grew up in south Vietnam, however he moved here for school alone when he was sixteen. While adjusting to America he found this to be an interesting coincidence and parallel between the two vastly different cultures. 

Context: 

The conversation happened over FaceTime during quarantine. We were talking about tattoos and how tattoo parlors do “flash tattoos” (pre-designed tattoos that clients can pick from that usually only cost no more than 50$) on Friday the 13th,  and how often they are spooky themed. This then got us talking about the concept of Friday the 13th and the odd parallel between the culture of it here in the USA versus in Vietnam. 

My thoughts: 

I think the concept of the unlucky number 13 is fascinating as it centers from the western christian ideal of the 13 disciples – the 13th being Judas the traitor of jesus- so there were really only 12 proper ones. The fear around the number  was popularized in the 1890s in England. This trickled in building codes as most western buildings, especially in the U.S. omit the 13th floor. However, my friends and I are familiar with the fear of 13, and Friday the 13th, from popular slasher films in the 1980s-90s. It’s interesting to see the presence of fear surrounding Friday the 13th in a non-western culture.