Tag Archives: Superstition

A Long Lost Friend

Nationality: American

Age: 81

Occupation: Retired

Residence: Mill Valley, CA

Performance Date: December 1st, 2024

Primary Language: English

Language: English

MAIN DESCRIPTION: 

“All right, a few years ago, normal morning I just woke up. I was gonna get up and go to to the bathroom. when I felt like I couldn’t get out of the bed. 
I felt like something was like sitting on me right I mean, I could still breathe and all, but I just felt like I couldn’t get up and I was thinking, is this a heart attack or something? And then finally I did get up and I went to the bathroom. I came back, got in bed and there, I felt it again. 
It was just like somebody sitting on me and and when I started with maybe I picked up my phone and looked at the date and it was July 2 and I suddenly remembered that that was the birthday of my best friend Leonore, who had died of breast cancer years before, and I think it was the first time I ever forgot her birthday and I think she was pissed that I forgot it. So after that, I mean after that everything went away and it was just that weird experience of having this presence there who didn’t hurt me, but was making herself known.”

INFORMANT’S OPINION:

JS: What do you think this appearance means spiritually?

MB: “I felt it related to our friendship, which started in sixth grade and we were she was my closest friend through high school and then once I started going with my husband uh and she she she developed an interest in Spanish culture. And she ended up um taking a job in Mexico and marrying a Mexican person there, had children with him and then later divorced him and she got tired of him and Mexico. 
And she came back and met a really wonderful guy who she married and they lived right in the East Bay until she developed breast cancer. She was she died at 49. It was terrible, so anyway, I felt it was just her maybe disappointment and a little annoyance that I had that remembered her birthday. 
But I didn’t feel it was evil. I mean, she wasn’t trying to kill me. Yeah like, “hey, it’s my birthday.””

PERSONAL INTERPRETATION:

Who can say for sure what our human connections to the afterlife or spiritual realm might be? There have been so many examples of people having near death experiences and describing similar sensations of light and hovering. It’s not hard to believe that Lenore paid a visit to MB, if not to just say hello, maybe to nudge MB to not forget her existence or her presence, even if only in spiritual form when she “sat on” her chest on her birthday. 

What’s Behind the Curtain?

Nationality: American

Age: 21

Occupation: Vet tech

Residence: San Rafael, CA

Performance Date: December 2nd, 2024

Primary Language: English

Language: English

Main Description:

“So I was staying in Fort Bragg at my dad’s house and I was getting ready to take a shower and I think my dad was in town or something like he was going shopping like grocery shopping. and so the fan in the bathroom doesn’t work. So there’s there’s a door that goes to the outside because there’s an outdoor shower also. So we keep the door cracked when we shower inside just to let the moisture out. So, you know, it makes the shower curtain billow a little bit, so I get in the shower and the shower curtain is billowing because of the air flow. 
And um at one point, I lean against the shower curtain, and it’s as hard as a rock, like I push against it and it does not move. Um and so I take a step back and I look around the shower curtain. There’s nothing there. 
And the shower curtain is still like billowing a little bit. So I was just kind of left like what the hell was that? But I think it was a shower or not a shower. 
It was a bathroom ghost. Fort Bragg bathroom ghost, just I don’t know what he was doing. He was leaning against a shower curtain. 
That’s all.”

Informants Opinion:

JS: What do you think that ghost was doing there?

OG: “I think he’s stuck in the bathroom so he just hangs around and listens to people sing in the shower.”

Personal Opinion:

It’s hard to say what this could mean but to my assumption it would have to do with the previous owner of the house not wanting others using their shower or even living in their house. Or maybe it’s a more kind approach and they’re simply visiting their former home to see who’s living there.

The Women on the Road

Age: 54

Nationality: Guatemalan

Occupation: Nanny

Residence: Los Angeles, CA

Performance Date: November 28, 2024

Primary Language: Spanish

Language: English

Story

EG: “Has there been a time where you witnessed and unexplainable occruence?”

CDL: ” Hmm. not directly, but my dad has told me a couple stories. Well, here’s one of them… One night my dad and his friend decided to go out and party. Oh, and the pueblo we are from in Guatemala was a lot of open fields… so you can imagine how dark it would look at night. As they were heading there, they uh were driving through a lonely road… and suddenly they both see a woman on the side of the road. Umm they both tell each other: “Should we give her ride?”, and the quickly agreed. So… um they uh stop and ask her if she needs a ride, but she never says a word to them and just gets in the car and sits between the two. When she was in the car with them there was a point where they both got chills but ignored it. When the lady got off the car, she did not say a thing and they just saw here walk into an open field where at some point she uh disappeared. After the this they both started talking about it and my dad told his friend that he saw the women facing him the entire time, and uh my dad’s friend he saw the women facing my dad the entire ride. So… uh… both of them never saw her face.”

Informants Opinion

EG: “Do you think it was a women’s spirit that appeared that night?”

CDL: ” Oh yeah for sure… Uh I do think it was a ghost because they both never saw her face thinking that they both did. Things like this would happen commonly in my hometown because we lived in open fields, so there was always lot so of empty dark areas. I am not sure exactly what the motive of the spirit was, but I am glad she never harmed them.”

Final Thoughts

I can agree with the informant that this was a ghost. Being in lonely dark areas at night opens the opportunity that a ghost may appear. This story seems to be a common one because I have heard of people seeing women with long dark hair in a white dress in the middle of lonely roads, or just women in general asking for a ride. It is possible that this spirit may have died by the roads, and he spirit still isn’t at rest, yet which is why she appeared upon the informant’s father and friend.


Unlucky #4

Nationality: American

Chinese folklore considers the number 4 to be unlucky because the pronunciation of “four” in Chinese sounds like the pronunciation of the word “death”.

The informant is an American who previously lived in Shanghai for two years and attended an international school.

G explained that while living in Shanghai she noticed that some buildings didn’t have a fourth floor. After realizing this omission, she began to notice that the number four was avoided culturally if possible. She asked some school friends about it and they explained that in Chinese folklore it’s unlucky to use the number 4 because it sounds like the word death. G found this superstition to be interesting and continued to notice it, but she never believed in it herself.

Beware The Douen

Douen are mythical creatures with backwards feet that live in the forest and are supposedly the lost souls of children. If a Douen learns a child’s name they are able to call out to the child in their parents voices to lure them into the forest. The backwards footprints confuse both the children and anyone looking for the children. The children are never seen again.

The informant told me this story while we were talking about working in the entertainment industry. C told me that he loved the industry because of its diversity and community. I originally asked about the folklore of the industry but once I said the word “folklore” his face lit up and he told me this story. While working on the show “Saint X”, one of the Dominican crew members told him this legend of the Douen. It stuck with C because of the physical description of the creature, with the backwards feet.

The Douen, although not well known in America, is a piece of Caribbean folklore that seemingly resonated with C. The only physical description that my informant gave me was the backwards feet, implying the rest of the creature is fairly humanoid. I believe this resonated with my informant because of the common proverb in American culture “stranger danger”. The danger of the Douen is directed towards children, emphasizing their ability to be easily manipulated or tricked, which echos the same warning as “stranger danger”. The detail of the Douen needing to know the child’s name is interesting because it serves as a warning against sharing personal information with anyone/anything. It also could stem from magical folklore, where using or knowing someones name can be considered powerful.