Tag Archives: house spirit

Ghost in Old House

Text: Basically I was falling asleep in my bed. And to get to my room you have to go through my brother’s room. Anyways I was trying to fall asleep, and I was facing the wall when I heard my door open. I assumed it was my mom, but I didn’t hear the door to my brother’s room open. Then I heard pacing back and forth and heard someone going through my things for so long. I was so scared. I forget how long it was until I worked up the courage to move and look to see what it was, but there was nothing there, and my door was closed.

Context:

Informant is a freshman at USC studying Journalism, originally from the Bay. We are waiting for class to start as she dramatically tells her experience. She is genuine and convincing in her manner of storytelling.

I live in a really old house (like 115 years old I think) in the Bay, and so I’ve always been aware of superstitious stuff there. This was one instance that freaked me out probably 4 or 5 years ago. I would define this experience as supernatural or a ghost story because I feel like there was no other way to explain it. It couldn’t have been sleep paralysis or anything because I could move.

Analysis: This ghost story folk narrative is an example of a legend. Ghosts are a type of legendary creature, and therefore, this story is an example of a memorate, or a personal experience that has been translated into a traditional legend. The informant’s experience has been translated into a ghost story because of the prevalence of ghost stories in this particular context, making it plausible within this society. Furthermore, the idea that ghosts are more common in “old” houses goes back to an idea highly promoted by Ulo Valk in “Ghostly Possession and Real Estate: The Dead in Contemporary Estonian Folklore,” where he proposed that spirits maintain the value placed on ownership, a “powerful relationship between the self and material objects that is often projected beyond the grave” (Valk 49).

The Woman In The Corner – Ghost Story

Main Piece

Informant KO recalled a memorate from when she was in middle school after moving with her family to a new home. While renovations were being performed on the home, she and her family found a number of strange things: “a child’s train tracks, a weird oil permit…a picture of this woman in the wall.”

KO and her family started asking and telling each other stories about who this woman in the portrait might be: “What if she was someone’s mistress? What if she was murdered? [My family and I] went to all the dark stuff first.”

One night, while asleep in her bedroom, KO randomly woke up in the middle of the night – unusual for her – and recalls that it was either exactly 3 or 3:30am. She looked towards the corner of her room and saw the woman standing there “in a long white dress, with long black hair.”

She recalls that she was very tired and more nervous than afraid at the time, and “hoped she’d go away if [she] just hid,” so she pulled the covers over her head and tried to go back to sleep. When she woke up in the morning, the woman in the corner was gone.

KO told her parents and a few friends about the experience. When told, her Mom said that she’d been “hearing footsteps down the hallway” but didn’t want to say anything and scare KO’s little sister.

KO and her family have been living in the house ever since, but KO has never seen the woman again. She questions whether the experience was just a dream.

Interpretation

Informant’s Interpretation: KO, as stated, questions whether the whole affair was just a dream and thinks her “brain was primed to see a ghost” because of what had been found in the house and her mom’s observations. She finds it to be a classic example of thinking you may have seen a ghost, and key to her uncertainty about ghosts’ existence.

Personal Interpretation: I see this story and experience as reactive to and inclusive of the environment it takes place in, similar to many ghost stories. The context of moving, renovation (altering the old), and being confronted with unknown pieces of physical history set the stage to wonder and consider who lived in this house beforehand, and speaks to a human curiosity towards trying to understand the unknown. I also feel that this experience seems like it sticks out in KO’s memory so prominently because of the age she was when it took place–at a time when kids are starting to process their own place in the world and sort out what is real from what is, an personal experience with one of these unknowns holds a great impact. The actual appearance in the corner being a woman wearing a long white dress evoked wedding-esque symbolism to me, and I can recall many ghost stories focused on brides / the marriage status of a woman, particularly in relation to death and household spirits.

Background

Informant KO is a current student at USC pursuing a degree in Narrative Studies from Seattle, Washington. Her family (mom, dad, younger sister) still lives in the house noted in the story. KO remains unsure whether she believes in ghosts, but thinks of this as a key part of her belief that they “maybe” exist.

KO is white and of Canadian and Swedish descent, and is female-presenting.

Domovoy

Um, in Russia, we believe that there is a little gnome-like creature living in your house, and you have to, if you’re like, if you are, if you got robbed or something like that, or, if something bad happened to your house or you don’t have enough money or something like that, or you keep losing stuff that’s the main thing, then, uh, you have to like bribe the little gnome guy and everything’s gonna be ok, he’s gonna protect your house. And, I believed in him until I was like 13. Because, when I was like 11 or 12, I was in a camp, in a summer camp, and there was like uh, like I’m pretty sure it was a fire extinguishing door, like you know, like, just was like a little door on the wall, right? I’m pretty sure the fire extinguisher was stored there or something, but it could never open. And I believed that the little gnome, I thought that the little gnome guy lived there, and one day, I leaved – I left. I left, um, little snacks below the door, and the snacks disappeared and I was like, oh my god, it was the gnome guy.

People are looking for explanations for things they can’t explain, like. My mom still, or like even I, even I still do it I can’t get rid of it. When something disappears, like when I can’t find something I say, “Devil devil, you played with it, can you please give it back now.” And, in Russian, and like, just because, the moment when you say it you’re already desperate enough and you’ve looked for so long, that there’s a big chance you’ll actually find it, after saying the phrase. So because of that, it’s like, it almost has a 100% success rate so you continue doing it. And like, when I’m on a call with my mom and I say I lost something she’s like, oh have you have you tried saying the phrase yet?

Background: My informant is a recent immigrant from Russia. They recall having always had this knowledge and having continued the tradition of appealing to the Domovoy (a name which they later provided to me) until the present.

Домовой

Domovoy

Context: This piece was collected in an in-person conversation in my apartment.

My thoughts: This legend reminds me of several other “house spirits” that I am familiar with. I was surprised at the benevolence which my informant described this creature as having. The invocation of this creature whenever an object is lost seems to be an extension of what my informant called “explanations for things they can’t explain,” a cry for supernatural aid when all natural means of finding a thing have been exhausted. I was interested to hear about my informant’s own encounter with the gnome – their brief story is a wonderful example of a memorate, of their witnessing their snacks disappearing and fitting that occurrence into their existing belief in this creature.

Ghosts and staircases

Nationality: American
Age: 22
Occupation: Geotechnical engineer
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 4/30/21
Primary Language: English

Background: I asked about the informant’s background with Pacific Islanders and how they heard about it to which they responded, “I work with a lot of Filipino coworkers, I have friends who are various nationalities, I know some Indoneseians, I know some Fijians, Samoans, Hawaiians. And they all have similar, like, the one consistent thing is that the stairs cannot be in line with a door leading to the outside.”

KD: The Pacific Islanders have a superstition, that in a multi story home, the stairwell cannot be in-line with any door leading to the outside because that can allow ghosts to enter and go up to another floor so I know a lot of Pacific Islanders when they look at houses, one of the things that they check for is, okay, does my front door line up with the stairwell, does my back door line up with the stairwell? And if it does line up with the stairwell, is it a continuous set of stairs that goes all the way to the top, or is there a landing and a switchback, to which, ghosts cannot make that turn or the switchback to get up the stairs. It, it has to be one continuous route, so, in my mind that doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense, like okay well if a ghost can enter the house and they can go up the stairs, once they’re up the stairs, they’re free to move about, they can turn left, righ, turn around, they can go into any room, but, why can they not make that turn on a switchback and ascend another flight of stairs. So, the logic and the rationale of like, okay you don’t want your stairs to be in line where the ghost can move straight, can take a straight path up, it’s like okay that, some aspects of it don’t make sense to me, but I can understand the other parts of it’s like okay once it’s up the stars, it’s free to move about because it’s reached its path, it can do its haunting, it can do its uh–sometimes ghosts are good, sometimes ghosts are ebad, I know that as you move between the various island nations, in some cultures ghosts aree past residents, so if you destroy and build a new home and you’re the original owner, it’s safe for the stairs to be in line with the door, but if you move into, that house is now haunted or it’s, I don’t understand like when it’s haunting versus when it’s like okay these are my grandma and my grandpa and they’re visiting us and they’re blessing our children. I don’t understand the background of the ghost, but the superstition of, okay, ghosts can go front he outside straight into a house and up stairs that are in line, that kinda makes sense to me, like I understand it’s like yeah they do that, but why are they allowed to roam freely in the upstairs portion but not in the downstairs portion. Its, there are inconsistencies but that comes from a place of not being a part of that culture.

Context of the performance: This was told to me during an in person conversation.

Thoughts: This is coming from an etic perspective, so unfortunately I don’t have insight into the emic at all. This was shared with the informant from people he is very close to, but he is reiterating and sharing his beliefs based on looking into another culture’s beliefs. It seems to be preserved by the culture though as a way of maintaining identity.

For another example of ghosts and haunting as related to houses, see Valk, Ülo. “Ghostly Possession and Real Estate: The Dead in Contemporary Estonian Folklore.” Journal of Folklore Research, vol. 43, no. 1, 2006, pp. 31–51. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3814859. Accessed 28 Feb. 2021.

The Domovoi

Nationality: Macedonian
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 4/24/17
Primary Language: English
Language: Macedonian

Background:

My informant is a twenty-one year old USC student; she’s studying human biology and is currently applying to medical school. She was born in Macedonia, and immigrated to the Long Beach, CA with her mother and stepfather at the age of five. Her father still lives and works as a doctor in Macedonia, and my informant visits each summer. She speaks the language fluently.

Performance:

“My grandparents always had a bunch of stories, that were like, supposed to make me do their bidding (laughs) but my grandmother had this story about a little house elf called a Domovoi. It’s spelled — (she struggles to spell it, and I tell her I’ll look it up later) Okay, but yeah, these little house elves would like, live in your house and protects it and neatens up at night. But if you were bad — like, made a mess, broke stuff, tracked dirt in — he’d get angry and start making scary noises all over the house. I remember once I broke a vase or something and that night while I was trying to sleep there was this thumping on my door and I remember being so fucking scared because I’d pissed off this elf and I thought he was going to like, murder me or something. I was a lot more careful around the house after that.”

Thoughts:

This seems to be a classic example of adults using folklore to control and discipline children. This household beast shares a lot in common with characters from other cultural traditions, like brownies, hobgoblins, and even the Roman concept of a household god. The adults use the creature as an incentive for children to respect their home and keep things neat — in other words, to prevent them from adding to their parent’s workload.