Tag Archives: sleepover

The Ghost in the Mirror

Age: 19

I interviewed my informant, KD, on a story she heard from friend at a sleepover. In the interview below, she shared the story and her personal thoughts on the matter. Q refers to me, the interviewer, and A refers to KD, our interviewee/informant. The Q&A is a direct transcript, which is why some of the sentence structure is very casual. Below is my personal reflection on the ghost story.

Q: Could you first start by clarifying the source of your ghost story? Like where you got it from?

A: I got this story from my friend in middle school.

Q: Was it told just one on one, or a group setting, or, do you remember the context?

A: I remember we were at her house sleeping over, and she wanted to freak us out, so she told us the story. It was like me, her and a group of maybe four other girls.

Q: Okay, cool. That’s interesting because HP had a similar, sleepover situation, since hers was at summer camp. All right, you could just start by telling the story then, please.

A: Okay, so she’s telling us that she goes to this cabin in the mountains every year, and she went with one of her friends, and she went up. Her parents brought her up, but her parents weren’t there when this was happening. They were out at dinner and drinks or something, and they left her and her friend at the house. So they [the girl and her friend] were taking pictures with a flash camera, and when they were looking back through the pictures, there was a mirror behind them, and in this mirror there was a face of a man, [but] there was no man in the house, or allegedly, no man in the house. It was just these two girls, their parents were gone, so they were looking at these pictures, and there was a face in the mirror. So then they started taking pictures somewhere else. And every time they took a picture somewhere with a mirror there was, like, a face. And they checked the mirrors. They checked everything after and they couldn’t see anything. And then later, when I asked her, because I was curious, I was like, “Wait, do you still have these pictures?” She goes, “No. A week later, the SD card was wiped,” and she doesn’t know how

Q: Okay, so obviously, this is something you said happened to your friend, right? So this isn’t like, tied to any folklore or anything like that, but it was told through a peer group. Did you believe it when your friend told you the story? Like, did you get chills? Did you/do you believe in what she was saying, or did she believe in it being a ghost?

A: She acted like she really did believe in it, but I don’t really believe in it, just because I’m not that kind of person. I think she is just making the story to freak us out. But knowing her, she wasn’t really someone who, like, just made stuff up like that, right? And she’s not like a pathological liar. 

Q: Like, do you think there was anything in that story that I guess is a motif that would guide you to believe it’s a ghost, or that kind of thing?

A: Probably just like the face. Like, that’s like, kind of something you see in movies a lot, you see something in the mirror you can’t really in real life.

Q: And do you believe in ghosts ever, in general, is your disbelief applied to every situation? Or is it just like this situation with your friend? 

A: I feel like everything that happens there has to be a logical explanation for it. I don’t really believe in ghosts, but there are some things that I’ve heard of, like stories like, you know, “The Conjuring” or whatever. Like those stories, those real stories that have been made into movies. I find it hard to find the logical reasoning behind it. But personally, in my daily life, or like in this story too, I just find it hard to believe.

Q: If it had happened to you, do you think you would believe?

A: If it had happened to me, and the whole wiping of the SD card thing just would also be confusing. So maybe if something like that did happen to me, I’d believe it right. 

Q: Do you think there’s any chance she just imagined the face there, or, dreamed it all, or something. Do you think there’s, do you think there’s any chance she imagined the face there, or something?

A: There’s a chance, like, we were 12 years old, so, like, maybe just some sort of reflection on the mirror, or some weird camera setting.

Q: In ghost stories we talk a lot about children and ghosts and ghosts appearing to children, because it’s the whole idea of, your life being cut short before, you’ve reached your prime, or before important things happen to you. Do you think there’s any tie between the child seeing it and the parents not being there, versus how she would have reacted if she were older. 

A: Yeah, I feel like, well, like that whole trope of like, ghosts appearing to children was, kind of logical, because children are not mature yet, so they kind of, they won’t really look for like, the logical reasoning behind it. They might just believe it, or like, also, children might be taken advantage of, because if they talk about it, people will be like, oh, like, they’re used to managing it, because children tend to make up their stories. So I feel like that’s why, like, in a lot of literary texts with ghosts and stuff, they never really target the adults, because the adults just wouldn’t believe it. They find a logical explanation. So I feel like it could be possible to get ghost stories by targeting children, mainly because no one will take them seriously.

Personal Reflection: Much like our interviewee, KD, I just find it hard to believe in ghost stories in general, and thinking back to the days when I was little, this sort of feels like one of those small things that I would find and hyperbolize into a huge spooky story for fun. However, I do find this story more easy to believe than the police chief camp story because it aligns a lot more with classic ghost stories. The whole apparition in the mirror and the fact that it was a ghost appearing only to a child really aligns with a lot of traditional ghost stories, so this one is a bit less surprising to me.

Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board — Memorate

Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 2, 2023
Primary Language: English

Text

“My mom told me this story of when she was playing ‘light as a feather, stiff as a board’ during a high school slumber party. Right as they began to lift a girl, she had a seizure. It was the first time she ever had one, and she was later diagnosed with epilepsy. 

“Since they all went to a Catholic high school and their parents were devout Catholics, the sleepover was immediately disbanded, perhaps out of fear they had conjured some sort of demonic spirit or something. Ever since hearing this story as a kid, I have never participated in those sorts of activities at sleepovers.”

Context

SR is a 20 year-old college student from Thousand Oaks, CA. Her family is Catholic and has Italian roots.

‘Light as a feather, stiff as a board’ is a levitation game played at girls’ slumber parties. It is a sort of ritual that embodies the liminal space between life and death as one girl is chosen to ‘die’ and the others must lift her up. There are certain things to be recited that supposedly make the girl’s body light enough to be lifted or rise on its own, depending on versions of the game.

SR’s mother told her this story to warn her against playing the game. Since the ritual attempts to draw upon some dark magic or power, a Catholic family would not want their kids engaging in such practices.

Analysis

This story is an example of a memorate, a personal experience that gets interpreted into an existing legendary structure. SR noted the Catholic upbringings of all the girls at the sleepover, meaning they all had a degree of belief in the devil and demonic forces; perhaps they had been told stories of possessions and exorcisms as this is something commonly done in Catholic teaching against the devil.

Thus, when something scary happened to their friend, this belief system offered a framework through which to understand the experience. 

This game being performed in the context of a sleepover highlights how belief is a social process. SR’s mother played the game in high school, a liminal time when a child is beginning the transition into adulthood and thus experimenting with belief. Legend questing/tripping is something done within peer groups at this time in an attempt to see if a legend is true.

Many beliefs are acquired from social sources in narrative form. Thus, SR hearing this story from her own mother makes it especially memorable and believable. Regardless of the truth value of the story, the legend is strong enough to discourage SR from doing any ‘legend tripping’ of her own, as she said she never participated in these activities after hearing her mom’s story.

Mirror Man

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Ann Arbor, Michigan
Performance Date: March 28, 2018
Primary Language: English

After I told a friend that I was collecting folklore for one of my classes, he was intrigued so I asked him if he had any folklore he’d like to contribute. I briefly explained the different kinds of folklore he could tell me. He said he wanted to think of something that is specific to his hometown, and the following came to mind, though he prefaced his account to mention that he wasn’t sure or not if this practice was just specific to his hometown.

“I’m not sure how local it is, but I’ve heard many people tell it, it’s called ‘Mirror Man.’ So, what Mirror Man is, it’s similar to Bloody Mary and in…at a sleepover or something one of the kids would go into a bathroom or something, alone, at midnight or 3am or something, lock the door, and look in the mirror in the dark and think of something you want, and you have to stand still and stare at your reflection for long enough to see your reflection move, and that means your wish has been granted and then you have to move. But, if you continue to stare after it’s [the reflection] moved, something bad will happen to you, like being sucked into another dimension by your reflection or something. But, then, some people will try to stay as long as possible after the reflection has moved to see what happens so it’s not just a wish granting thing but a bravery, dare thing.”

Afterward, he told me that he often did this at sleepovers when he was younger, and told me a few personal anecdotes surrounding his experiences, but requested I did not include them.

“Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board”

Nationality: Mexican-American
Age: 43
Occupation: Teacher
Residence: San Jose, CA
Performance Date: March 28, 2014
Primary Language: English

This folklore was collected from my mother, who told me about a slumber party ritual she would do with her friends when she was younger. So, this would have taken place in the late 1970s, early 1980s.

“At slumber parties with pre-adolescent girls, there were a couple of stories, rituals that were passed on from generation to generation. One was a story that the group of 5-8 girls could lift one of the girls up over their heads by using only their fingertips. In order for this to work, all the girls in the group had to concentrate solely on the task at hand and chant ‘light as a feather, stiff as a board’ over and over. The girl who was subject to the lifting started off lying flat on her back on the floor. The other girls encircled the subject and puts their hands underneath her, touching only with their fingertips. As the chanting beings, the group attempts to lift the subject up off the floor until she is suspended above the heads of the others. If this was unsuccessful (as it always was), it was due to one or more members of the group lacking proper concentration or belief…. There was always the accompanying story that someone had succeeded before… or someone’s older sister had told the tale of a successful lift”

I had never heard of this sleepover game/ritual before, so it might be specific to the area/time period my mother grew up in. Or, perhaps it became less popular because it never worked. Another slumber party ritual my mother mentioned to me was the “Bloody Mary” chant, which is well-known (I heard about it from other kids when I was younger) so it was interesting that this wasn’t a familiar piece of folklore within my generation.

 

“Levitating” at a Slumber Party

Nationality: American
Age: 57
Occupation: Housewife
Residence: Irvine, CA
Performance Date: 4/27/13
Primary Language: English

The informant discusses a game she would play with her friends at slumber parties when she was a child, which involves levitating someone.  She holds this game as a fond memory from her childhood growing up in Fullerton, CA.  The informant is now 57 so the game was played in the mid to late 1960s.

The informant explains that late at night all the girls at the slumber party would choose one girl who they would try to levitate that night.  The chosen girl would lie down flat on her back and every other girl would gather around her sitting down with legs folded underneath you.  Each girl would put both hands with their first two fingers under the chosen girl and the girl would go into a trance-like state.  From person-to-person around the circle they would say, “Your bones are turning, your bones are turning.”  After that is repeated enough all of the girls would rotate saying, “you’re dead, you’re dead.”  Then at some moment when people felt that the chosen girl was light or in a trance they would try to lift person with two fingers.  The informant notes that all the girls thought that the person did indeed feel as light as a feather.  There was a belief that they had somehow lightened the girl.

This folklore shows young girls interests in magic and the supernatural.  The act of trying to levitate a girl indicates each girl’s curiosity with magical powers as well as themes of death and altered states as seen with the lines “you’re dead” and “your bones are turning.”  The game demonstrates young girls exploring with ideas of mortality and life after death for the first times.  Understanding more complex ideas such as death is important in this time of life.