Tag Archives: scary

The Haunted Virginia Apartment Unit Pt. 1

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Virginia
Performance Date: October 21, 2020
Primary Language: English
Language: Korean

Informant: This story was a bit before my 2007 baby doll story (I was around 7 years old). So I was laying in bed by myself playing with Webkinz. Parents were outside smoking on the porch. I was always by myself when these things would happen. I called my superhero Webkinz “Webkinzanator” (bad name I know I know). My bed is pushed up against the window, no fire escape, and I was alone at 10P.M. at night. I hear at the left side of me a grown man repeating the word “Webkinzanator” in my ear. I got chills and could not move my body at all. Later that night, I woke up and something was floating towards me. I screamed and then it vanished. It looked like a t-shirt was floating towards me.

Background/Informant Thoughts: The informant lived in a Virginia apartment when they were around 7 years old. There were multiple accounts of hauntings going on in there. In this story, the informant was unsure of what to think. At the time, the informant was absolutely terrified. She believed something was after her and didn’t know why.

My Thoughts: When listening to this story, I do not think about much except that is seriously scary. While the informant may not have seen what happened as scary today, back then, she was terrified and I would be too! I still am terrified hearing that spooky tale. I would not be able to sleep in my bed again if I had something like that happen to me.

Legend of Slender Man

Nationality: American
Age: 17
Occupation: School
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 04/30/2020
Primary Language: English
Language: spanish

Main piece: 

The following is transcribed from a conversation between the informant and interviewer. 

Informant: A guy who supposedly lives in the woods and he goes…  umm for young teenagers and kids. And it has it that he gets these kids to basically collect their faces since he doesn’t have one. And lets see… umm… where was I at? 

Interviewer: You said that he collects their faces since he doest have one.

Informant: Oh ok and he does it because he believes that he’ll get a face but he doesn’t. 

Interviewer: And does he get boys only or girls only? Or how does it work? Who does he kill? 

Informant: Well we don’t know. He just makes them go missing. They disappear but it’s random. 

Interviewer: Anything else about him? 

Informant: Well he’s known to have a black suit and a white face and octopus-like tentacles… you know like the arms I’m talking about. 

Background: My sister was born in LA and she goes to school in Downey. She knows this story from a couple years ago when she was talking to a friend about scary stories. She also watched the Slender Man film that came out in 2019. 

Context: We were in my room and I asked her if she can tell me any scary stories like myths and legends and gave her La llorona as an example. She proceeded with the legend of Slender Man. 

Thoughts: I’ve heard the story of Slender Man. I know there’s a mobile game about him and a film that came out. I’m personally into scary stuff so I know the legend. As to whether it is true or not, I believe it’s not true. It doesn’t make too much sense to me. I don’t find it plausible but it’s a figure I know relatively well, or at least I can tell his story, and can be frightening with the right setting. 

Citation: For more information about Slender Man, check out the following source

White, Sylvain “Slender Man” film (Fall 2018). 

The Banshee

Nationality: Irish
Age: 18
Performance Date: 4/21/19
Primary Language: English

The following is a story about an Irish legend.  The informant is represented by the letter S, and I am represented by the letter K.

Piece:

K: Tell me about the Banshee.

S: So, the banshee is… uh… and Irish legend. And it’s, it’s this spirit of a woman… who has this long, silver-white hair… like down to the floor.  And she’s always brushing her hair with this comb.  And her eyes are red- from like centuries of crying and grieving over people who- who other people have lost.  And uhm…uhm… and basically, the Banshee is the uhm, warning, that somebody you’re close to is going to die.  So if the Banshee comes to you, someone you love- is gonna end up dying.  And uhm, the Banshee is the…. kinda the predecessor to the… what is it? The Coach de Baron… What is it? The Cóiste Bodhar. Uh, which is… the… the coach that takes you to death, so… yeah, the Banshee is very scary. She wails. And if you hear the wailing, then you know… that somebody’s gonna die.

Context:

We were sitting at a dining room table on Easter Sunday.  We had just eaten dinner and celebrated the holiday.  We were sitting around and just talking and sharing stories and folklore that we knew about.  The informant is my friend’s younger sister, so she lives at the home we were at and she was sitting with her friend, with me, her brother, and our other friend sat across from them.

My Thoughts:

The Banshee seems to be a legend that is meant to kind of scare people into always being alert and always watching out for their family.  It was interesting because when I collected this piece of folklore, the informant told me that her dad’s friend had actually heard the Banshee at one point and then someone they knew died shortly after.  The informant seemed to strongly believe in the Banshee from hearing this story of the person her dad knew.  This goes back to the idea that with legends you never really know if these people or things exist/existed because there are stories of them existing, but there’s no proof they never did or that they don’t.  The Banshee seems to have some similar characteristics to La Llorona, actually, which was also interesting.  It’s possible that both of these legendary people are the same and the context of each story is different from culture to culture, but there’s a mass belief in this spirit of a woman with long hair that grieves. With the Banshee, a lot of the context I received from my informant and from her father, who followed up with some context is that the main thing about the Banshee is that you hear her, but you don’t really see her, which I also thought was very interesting in relevance to our class discussions about ghosts and spirits.  It seems as if in American folklore we’re much more scared of seeing actual ghosts, but here there’s a clear fear of hearing the Banshee.

 

For another version of this story, see p. 9-19 of Elliott O’Donnell’s 2010 Banshee (Project Gutenberg)

Ghost stories at Christian camp (Dolly)

INFORMANT: OOH girl I got a ghost story. You’ve probably heard it. I feel like everyone’s heard it.

 

ME: What is it?

 

INFORMANT: The Dolly story.

 

ME: Oh my god yes I have heard it! Tell me your version.

 

INFORMANT: Okay so according to the story there was once this little girl who went to the carnival and played some carnival games. They were those carnival games where you can like win stuff, ya know? So anyway this little brat played the game and lost and pitched a fit, so the carnival guy gave her this beat ass doll that only had two fingers and I guess she was like “whatever it’s cute” and took it home and named it Dolly. So she started noticing that her doll kept ending up in different places than the places she would leave it, and she asked her parents if they had been moving her doll around and they said no. The one time she came home and Dolly had not only moved but also had a knife in her hand. I guess she was an idiot or something because she didn’t think this was weird and kept the doll. Then one day her mom went missing and no one knew where she went. The girl went to the doll for comfort and noticed that it had gained a finger. The next day, while she was at school, her dad went missing. Once again, Dolly had gained a finger. The next day she came home from school early and walked in and found Dolly standing over the house keeper with a bloody knife. When she took the knife from Dolly she noticed that she had gained another finger. This was the moment when she realized that Dolly gained a finger every time she killed someone and that her parents weren’t missing. They were killed by Dolly.

 

Background

The informant learned this ghost story at Christian camp from one of her friends. She said that they often exchanged ghost stories right before going to sleep for fun, even though it was really scary. This story was her favorite one to tell because she thought it was so creepy. She also thinks that this story is the reason she now has a strange fear of dolls.

 

Context

The informant is a college student at the university and grew up in Dallas, Texas.

 

Thoughts

The idea that a doll could be possessed is a common theme in folklore. This perversion of something that typically symbolizes childhood is exceptionally scary in nature because childhood is suppose to be comforting. It’s scary to think that even the things we might turn to for comfort could also be evil. This type of scary story can also be seen in horror stories about haunted houses or evil stepmothers. It is terrifying to think that the things that should keep us safe could actually be the things putting us in danger. If you can’t turn to your childhood toy, your house, or your mother for comfort, then what can you do? Additionally, because the girl received the cursed doll after she misbehaved, it could have also been a way to scare children into behaving correctly and encourage them to not act so spoiled.

 

Haunted Driveway of Valencia

Nationality: Korean-american
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Valencia, CA
Performance Date: April 16, 2019
Primary Language: English
Language: Korean

TEXT:  This is a short transcription of my conversation with someone who knows the story of the Haunted Driveway of Valencia. My informant will be seen as A and I will be B. 

A: There was this one time where my friends and I drive through there at like 2 am just to see what it was like. And then we played a game of rock paper scissors and the loser had to get outside and touch a tree that was barely visible. It was almost pitch black because there were no lights or anything. No one lived there or anything. I ended up losing, of course, and I ran out to go touch the tree but my friends were slowly driving off. I was so scared. I chased after them but I swear, it felt like someone was behind me.

B: Why was this place scary? Like did it have a reputation?

A: Yeah, so Valencia is not that old but even still, for however long Valencia has been around, there has been no construction on this road at all. Everywhere around it, there are houses and stores and stuff but the city hasn’t even bothered putting lights here. And it’s a dead end if you drive far enough. And there was this girl in my school that did something similar to what I did and she came back traumatized or something. Apparently, when she got back in her friend’s car, she was bawling cause she said she saw a ghost or something.

B: Was she the only one that experienced this?

A: I think so. The driveway always had a scary reputation, even before her, but she kind of just solidified it.

B: Do people believe her?

A: People were talking about it and going up to her at school asking if she was okay for a few days or so. Personally, I don’t really believe her. I think it was probably her own head that tricked her. You know how when your foot is dangling off your bed at night, you feel like someone is going to grab it? I think it was something like that.

B: What are your views of the driveway now?

A: I mean, I don’t really believe in ghosts. But I do have to admit, it was pretty scary to be in the middle of darkness. I really do feel like someone was chasing me but I know in my head that there was no one. But it was still one of the scariest experiences of my life.

 

INFORMANT: My informant has lived in Valencia since he was in 3rd grade. Ever since he moved there, that road has had cones around the entrance. Even though there has not been any construction, cones blocked the entrance. He is not a believer in terms of ghosts or supernatural events. He loves to watch scary movies because he likes the thrill but never gets affected by the movies afterward.

CONTEXT: The informant and I were grabbing a meal on a weekday because we were catching up after a while of not seeing each other. I asked him if I can talk to him about the Haunted Driveway in Valencia for my project and he obliged. It was very casual and he did not tell the story with any scary or fearful intonations. This was primarily because of the fact that he did not believe in paranormal things or haunted areas.

MY INTERPRETATION: I was actually raised in Valencia as well so I had heard about this Haunted Driveway before. However, I did not know too much about it because I did not live as close to the driveway and because my friends did not like scary things so we never tested this myth. I also heard about the girl that was traumatized from her experience on this driveway but I heard a far more exaggerated version. I heard that she had to go to the hospital because she had fainted and when she woke up, she had not been the same for a few days. It was interesting to hear from someone that actually went to the same school as her. I couldn’t help but think about the idea of multiplicity and variation as the story gets performed by different people over time. This story probably started off as the story that my informant said and slowly deviated into a more horror-like story as it got to other people in the city. This supports the idea that as every time a story is performed, there is a little variation in the story. If there is enough of this variation, eventually, the story will be very different from the original.

In my personal opinion, I have a very similar perspective to my informant. I do not think that the driveway is haunted by any spirits or anything. I completely agreed with the small side story that my informant had said about the foot that is dangling off the side of the bed. It’s true that often times, people get scared that something will grab their foot. This is similar to when some people have to use the bathroom in the middle of the night. Often times, people don’t like to do it because they are scared of the dark. Especially because this driveway has no lights at all, being in complete darkness probably perpetuates fear in people who do not like the dark. I have driven on that road with my friends during the day and it seems awfully normal. There are just a lot of trees and mountains encircling this very narrow plot of land which also makes it hard for the moonlight to help illuminate this area during the evening.