Tag Archives: unexplained

Unexplained Events in Two Houses

Age: 19

Age: 19

Context:

This story was told to me by my roommate(PR) during a casual conversation in our living room while we were talking about ghost stories and unexplained experiences. The conversation was informal, and the informant shared these stories as personal experiences from their childhood and family life. The conversation began after I mentioned taking this GESM class and how I was interested in Ghost Stories.

The Story:

PR: “Basically, when I was in elementary school, we had just moved into this new house, and there was this period of time where really weird stuff started happening. Like, during the summer, we would walk into a room and see a glass of water flipped completely upside down, but the water would still be inside it. There wouldn’t be any water spilled anywhere, which made no sense.

PR: One time it happened on my brother’s desk. There was a glass flipped onto papers, and the ink from the papers soaked into the desk and ruined it. We had to get rid of it because it was permanently stained.

PR: This went on for a while, and then a few months later, we found out that the previous owner of the house had just died before we moved in. That’s when it started feeling a lot creepier.

PR: Also, my mom would hear footsteps at night, like someone walking up and down the hallway. Sometimes she would hear what sounded like us outside her door, and she’d be like, ‘Guys, just come in, don’t stand there.’ But then she’d open the door, and no one would be there.”

PR: “And then there’s my aunt’s house. That place was just… off. It was always super cold, especially in the basement, and I hated being there. I would just stay in my cousin’s room because the rest of the house felt weird.

PR: One morning before school, my cousin and I were alone in the house. We were in the basement and started hearing this creaking sound, like a door opening and closing. We went upstairs to check, but nothing was happening.

PR: Then we went back downstairs, and it started again. So we went back up and checked every door. When we got to one of the bedrooms, the door was literally creaking open and shut by itself, the same sound we heard.

PR: There was no one else in the house. And the dog started barking up the stairs like something was there. It was actually really scary.”

Informant’s Thoughts

PR: “I still don’t really know how to explain what happened, because none of it made sense at the time. Like, the water glasses thing especially. I wouldn’t say I 100% believe it was a ghost, but finding out that the previous owner had died definitely made it feel a lot creepier.”

PR: The stuff at my aunt’s house felt different though. That place just always had a weird vibe, even before anything actually happened. The door creaking by itself and the dog reacting made it feel way more real in the moment. It wasn’t just one thing, it was like everything together that made it scary. I still think about it sometimes because I can’t really come up with an explanation for it.”

Analysis:

This entry reflects common themes found in ghost stories, including unexplained physical disturbances, auditory phenomena, and an overall sense of unease tied to specific locations. The first part of the story includes a classic haunted house motif, where strange events, such as objects moving in impossible ways and unexplained footsteps, are later connected to the death of a previous occupant. This connection reinforces the idea of spirits lingering in places where they once lived. The second part of the story focuses more on atmosphere and perception. The informant describes a persistent feeling of discomfort in their aunt’s house even before any specific event occurred. This aligns with a common feature in folklore where environments themselves are described as “feeling haunted.” The creaking door and the reaction of the dog add to the tension, as animals are often believed to sense supernatural presences. Overall, the story demonstrates how personal experiences, environmental cues, and cultural beliefs about ghosts combine to create meaningful and memorable narratives. Even without clear evidence, the informant interprets these events through a supernatural lens, which is a key characteristic of folklore storytelling.

The Girl with the Red Thread

Age: 18

Context:

One evening, while walking on campus with my friend, we began sharing spooky stories. She suddenly recalled something that had haunted her for years — a strange experience she had as a child, which had blurred the lines between dream, memory, and legend. This is the story she told me.

The Story:

When she was around 7 or 8 years old, she lived in a home with a study room that had a bed but was rarely used. One night, after waking from a nightmare, she found herself in that very study — a place she never usually slept in. She remembered lying beside her mom, both of them facing the wall, and gently shaking her awake out of fear.

She asked her mom to tell her a story because she couldn’t sleep. Strangely, her mom — who was known to strictly avoid ghost stories or anything scary — agreed. What happened next would stay with her for life.

Still facing the wall, her mom began to tell a ghost story. In the story, a nurse was working the night shift at a hospital. One evening, while heading out from the first floor, she took the elevator — but somehow, the elevator inexplicably descended to the 4th basement level instead, a floor used as a morgue.

This floor had no button, no lights, and no one should have been able to access it. But the elevator stopped there, the doors opened, and the nurse saw a little girl standing silently in the dark. The girl got into the elevator with her.

As the nurse glanced over, she noticed a red thread tied around the girl’s wrist. In Chinese superstition, red thread on the wrist is sometimes associated with the dead. The nurse was so frightened she reportedly died on the spot.

What terrified my friend wasn’t just the story itself — it was the realization much later in life that this was a widely circulated urban legend. Many people she later met had heard it before. And yet, she had never heard it before that night, and neither had her mother — who later insisted, repeatedly and sincerely, that she had no memory of telling the story, or even of waking up that night.

My friend later searched the story online and found that it had indeed been turned into a movie, or at least referenced in popular media. This deepened the mystery: how could a widely known ghost story have been told to her by someone who had never heard it — someone who vehemently denied ever telling it?

To this day, my friend remains disturbed by this experience. She remembers it vividly. Her mother, however, insists it never happened.

The Informant’s Thoughts:

She finds this story creepy, not because of the ghost itself, but because of the contradiction between her clear memory and her mother’s absolute denial. She believes the most chilling part of the experience isn’t the plot, but the uncertainty of how she ever came to hear it.

Years later, when telling others the story of the girl with the red thread, people would say, “Oh, I’ve heard that one!” But she hadn’t. Not before that night. Not ever.

My Thoughts:

What makes this story so compelling is not just the content of the ghost story, but how it plays with memory, belief, and reality. The idea that a story could be “implanted” through a moment that no one else remembers adds an eerie, almost psychological horror element to the tale.

It made me question how many of our memories are truly our own — and how stories that seem personal might actually belong to something much larger, floating around in the cultural subconscious, waiting to find a host.

The repetition — her telling the story to others, retelling it to her mother, and hearing denials each time — builds a quiet but powerful kind of fear. Over time, the story’s scariness comes not from the ghost, but from the accumulated sense of being haunted by a memory no one else shares.

As a piece of folklore, it’s fascinating because it shows how legends can find their way into our lives, not just through media or hearsay, but through deeply personal and unexplainable experiences.