Tag Archives: scary

Always Check the Backseat

Nationality: Taiwanese American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/10/2013
Primary Language: English
Language: Mandarin Chinese

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“So there is this story about a girl at a gas station filling up and she sees [a gas station attendant] and this person is being really odd and waving and trying to get her to come to him and stuff so she gets scared and gets in her car and drives off. But apparently the attendant was trying to get her to leave the car because the attendant saw someone hiding in her backseat. And I think I heard this from my sister or something and apparently it might have been inspired by something that might have been true. And that’s why my sister tells me to always look in the backseat before I climb into my car because she’s scared someone will try to kidnap me. Either that or kill me, but I think I don’t know.”


The informants sister told her this piece of folklore. I have heard this piece of folklore many times. From what I can gather, there are two main versions of this piece of folklore. There is a version with a gas station attendant and a version with a motorist. Usually, in the gas station version, the attendant sees a would-be killer hide in the backseat of the woman’s car. The attendant then finds a reason to call the woman over to his office. The reason can vary a lot ranging from claiming the woman provided him with counterfeit money to telling her that her car needs an oil change. When the woman enters the attendant’s office and the woman is told discreetly that there is someone hiding in her backseat while the attendant locks the door and calls the police.

In the motorist version, a passing driver sees the killer rise out of the back seat while the woman is driving. This prompts the driver to flash his lights at the woman, trying to warn her. However, all the woman sees is that there is a car following her flashing its lights and panics. Eventually she stops somewhere in a panic, calling for police and the driver of the other car points out the would-be killer.

In both of these stories, the almost victim is always a woman. Perhaps this is popular because as a society we believe women to be vulnerable and in need of saving. Additionally, both versions hit home the idea that things are not always what they seem. In both cases, the strangers trying to help the women both seem like they represent trouble of some kind. When, in reality they were trying to save the woman. This piece of folklore also serves as a warning to women to be cautious when out and about alone, as the woman would have been murdered had a stranger not intervened.


Both versions and more information can be found in the following:

Brunvand, Jan H. Encyclopedia of urban legends. Santa Barbara, Calif: ABC-CLIO, 2012. Print. 358-351

A Ghost Story

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: California
Performance Date: April 2007
Primary Language: English

When my informant was about 10 or 11 years old, she was told a story by one of her mother’s friends because she was bored and there no cable in the house. She remembers the story well to this day because of how good a story-teller her mother’s friend, Dave Morton, was.

 

The following is a paraphrase of my informant’s ghost story:

 

“There is a big Victorian house is in Morgan Hill in Northern California. A young businesswoman moves in and discovers an ugly lime green master bedroom in the house. She starts to paint the room bright white because she hates the color and then goes to bed in another one of the rooms. She walks into this room the next day and one of the walls is a BRIGHT green again. But the others are still white. So she paints the wall again, but still the next day it appears bright green. Finally she gives up and decides to sleep in the master bedroom that night. But in the middle of the night she sits up quickly because she has this weird feeling….and there is a lady at the end of the bed staring at her, a tall, young, pretty, brunette, in Victorian clothing. The businesswoman puts her head under the bed to pretend it’s not real, she peaks under from the covers and there is no one there.

 

So the next day she has her dog sleep with her to make her feel easier. Once again she sits up in the middle of the night and she looks over and the dog is missing and the ghostly woman is there again staring.

 

She gives the bedroom one more night, she falls asleep, but she sleeps ‘on the surface’

It’s not a deep sleep. Then all of a sudden she starts to feel something in the room. She looks at the end of the bed and there’s the girl standing there again. The businesswoman thinks maybe something has to happen. She yells at the girl standing and yells ‘what do you want?’ The ghost lifts her arm and points at her.

 

So the next day she wakes up and the one green wall is a little lighter green. The business woman thinks that the wall is lighter because she talked to the ghost the night before.

 

The next night the ghost appears once again and the woman asks what she can do to help the ghost, but the ghost disappears.

 

When the businesswoman wakes up the next morning, there is a locket sitting on the edge of her bed. She sits there and she looks at the initials engraved on the locket. Then she notices that the green wall is even lighter, and realizes that the ghost wants her to figure out the ghost’s story.

 

She starts asking around if they know anything about the house and this woman. She finally finds a woman who knew stories about what took place in this house: that there is a young girl brutally murdered the night before her wedding in the master bedroom against the green wall. The girl’s fiancée found her the next day, and also discovered that the only thing missing from the room was the girl’s locket. The killer was also never found.

 

No one was in that room long enough to find the locket or for the ghost to give the locket to someone still living. So the ghost had found the locket and gave it to the businesswoman, the current resident, and because of that she was free, and the wall was no longer green and the ghost never came back.”

 

Now my informant said she wasn’t even interested in the killer or the fact that he was never found. What stuck with her was how her mother’s friend described the murder as a “splatter job,” and how there was a second person, who confirmed that the story was true.  My informant feels that there is no moral to this story. It was for pure entertainment purposes, as there is not much reason to stay away from the house because the ghost is now supposedly gone.