Tag Archives: spirits

Hide and Seek

Nationality: Filipino
Age: 43
Occupation: Business
Residence: Manila, Philippines
Performance Date: 11/2/21
Primary Language: Tagalog
Language: English

Background: The informant recalls a personal experience that occurred in 2002 in Manila, Philippines, months after her son had passed.

Me: I remember a few years ago, when you told me this story you had with BC and I don’t really remember all the details aside from the fact it had involved you two somehow, and maybe it was a foot? I would greatly appreciate if you were able to retell this as you remember it happening.

AC: Of course. So, um, my first-born son, BC, was very much a mama’s boy. He loved playing hide-and-go seek in the small spaced we lived in. It was his favorite game considering how, you know, here in the Philippines, especially at the time, television and video games were not a very affordable or common option for children’s entertainment. Anyway, of course, I’d always play hide-and-go seek whenever BTA would ask.

Me: That’s so cute, I love that.

AC: Yeah haha, so did I. Um, so one of the most memorable times we were playing the game, I could not find him hiding while I was seeking. I ended up sitting in the bed when I felt a tiny hand squeeze my foot. I threw the sheets off the bed as it was so unexpected just to find BC laying at the foot of the bed, erupting in giggles. This was when he was four years old.

AC: He then passed away in December, uh, 2001 at the age of five, from a heart condition and that was the most difficult time in my life. Months after that I just remember this one particular night when I was unable to sleep due to being so overwhelmed and continuously overthinking. I kept tossing and turning around in bed when I suddenly felt the warmth and the presence of a tiny hand squeezing my foot. After that, I instantly felt comforted and at ease to finally sleep because I knew in my heart it was him. And to this day, I still believe it was BC’s spirit with me that night.

Context of performance: This experience was shared over a recorded phone call.

Thoughts: This informant shared a personal, intimate, and comforting experience with the spirit of a loved one. Just based off this short moment from years ago, I’d also confidently agree that it was BC with AC that night trying to comfort his mother.

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.

Ghosts Can’t Cross Running Water

Nationality: American
Age: 59
Occupation: Creative writing teacher and head librarian at a high school
Residence: Durham, NC
Performance Date: 4/29/21
Primary Language: English

Background: The informant has lived in Durham, North Carolina his whole life. His whole extended family has also lived in North Carolina their entire lives.

TR: This is uh, this is kind of like a superstition that I remember, um, and it had to do with porches, remember and this is from a long time ago, but, so the superstition is that um, ghosts, ghosts can’t cross running water. Don’t ask me why ghosts can’t cross running water, I don’t know. Um, it doesn’t, um, you know, unless, unless it has to do with the fact that you know, once you’re across the river Styx, you can’t get back across without the boatman, so if you’re a ghost on that side you can’t get back, I don’t know. Anyway, that’s the superstition, and so, you know, because, maybe not so much now, but a lot of porches were painted blue for that reason. The whole thing was like blue is the color of water so that would protect your house from ghosts. Um, so that’s, you know, and I think it’s persisted a little bit like maybe there’s still like actual entryways like foyers in houses that maybe are painted blue and that could just be an unconscious, unknowing continuation of this practice, but, that’s something that’s like a very old like oooo ghosts can’t cross water, so um, porches would be painted blue for that reason.

Me: Do you remember who and when you first heard this from? Do you know if it’s a regional thing?

TR: Uh, it’s probably regional. Um, I remember it from my dad’s side of the family. This would be my great uncles and aunts, um we would go out to my great uncle’s farm and so we went out there quite a bit and he had this really old house, I mean old house, which, of course, when we told ghost stories about the house, so it was all, ghosts were just a popular thing. So that’s probably where, if I had to say I mean, I don’t have a memory of like oh this is you know, that’s when I first heard this story about ghosts can’t cross water.

Me: Have you ever thought about painting a deck blue? Like do you have any belief in it?

TR: Oh, no. absolutely not.

Context of the performance: This was told to me over a Zoom call.

Thoughts: This superstition about ghosts has been enacted into a practice. It relies on color meaning and symbolization for the connection to work. It works under the assumption that blue represents water and therefore the color is what is creating meaning, as the thing acting as a barrier between the ghosts and houses. The informants theory about the river Styx connects this superstition to myths to form a hypothesis about the meaning of the saying–the superstition–itself. This suggests that even though myths take place before, after, or outside the real world, people draw meaning from them and connect them to real life beliefs.

Salt After Funeral

Nationality: American/Chinese/Japanese
Age: 21
Occupation: Student

Description: After a funeral, people would put salt on themselves in order to keep spirits out of their home.

Background: The informant observed the ritual from his mother.

Transcript:

ML: My mom puts salt on herself before entering the house after a funeral.

Me: Is there a reason that your mom does that?

ML: I think it’s a japanese thing, it wards off spirits so they don’t enter your home. she sprinkles it on top of her head right before entering our house when she comes back. She tells us to leave the salt by the doorway when she goes to a funeral so she can just grab it and pour.

My thoughts:

In many traditions, salt is seen as a way to ward off spirits. While I do not know precisely why that is the case, I have a few theories. It might be tied to salt’s ability to preserve food, linking it to an ability to ward off death and decay. Of course, the entire concept of preventing evil spirits from entering your home is a staple in not just Japanese culture but Asian culture in general. Home is a sacred place because that is where we spend most of our time. Evil spirits can curse your house and give you family bad luck. So there are often rituals such as this to ward off and prevent bad spirits from entering the home. On the opposite side, there are also rituals, such as presenting offerings, to draw in good spirits to the home and create good fortune.

The Warding Effects of Garlic

Nationality: South Korean
Age: 60
Residence: Illinois
Performance Date: 1/1/2021
Primary Language: Korean
Language: English

Main Piece:

During many traditional Korean commemorative ceremonies called jesa (제사), there is a part where a family’s ancestors are honored by being “brought in” through an open door and allowed to dine on the food first before the family that prepared it. Once it is time for the meal to be eaten by the family, the prepared foods are cooked again, but only this time, properly seasoned with garlic.

Background:

The informant is my mother who is the youngest child on her side of the family and the only one who has regular contact with her mother/my grandmother as our family is the only one among our extended family living in the United States with them. Because of this, most of my grandmother’s teachings and culinary knowledge have been passed down to her. Despite many of the commemoration ceremonies being done in the honor of my father’s side of the family, my mother dutifully carries out the traditional cooking required for the occasion. While not highly religious, my mother still holds out on traditional beliefs of karma and good deeds eventually being rewarded so perhaps she follows these traditional rules so closely as to hope for better for her children.

Context:

The ceremony for the commemoration of ancestors or other traditional events usually falls between brunch or dinner-times so most of the family does not eat until then. Because everyone gets hungry, I asked my mother why she needed to cook the food again when everything was prepared, the ceremony was finished, and all that was left was to eat. She replied that the food needed to be cooked again properly since she left out the seasoning, particularly the garlic. When I asked why, she said that garlic wards off spirits. I asked why this was and my brother chimed in to explain to me that one of the creation myths of Korea involved a bear turning into a human by eating nothing but gloves of garlic and mugworts for 100 days, giving garlic in particular some level of spiritual power.

My Thoughts:

Garlic being such a powerful supernatural warding tool surprised me as I thought it was specifically targeted towards vampires from Western legends. Garlic is an incredibly common ingredient found in Korean cuisine so it never properly registered to me as it could have any sort of special meaning beyond a universal ingredient. If garlic was so regularly consumed, why were there even ghost stories to begin with? Was superstition just that prevalent that it may have influenced every-day cooking to ward off malevolent and clingy spirits? There are some accounts where eating garlic wards off tigers and eating pickled garlic in particular being a procedure that was recommended to those traveling through mountains as to not encounter a tiger on their journey. As an avid fan of putting garlic as seasoning for most things, it made me question if garlic was used so extensively for its supernatural benefits, its taste, or the simple convenience of both tasting good and warding off evil. Interesting to note how garlic’s effects are indiscriminate to spirits in general as the spirits that are relevant in this context are “good” spirits who are honored to give blessings to their descendants but they are still affected by its effects.