Ghost Story:

I was about 2 -years-old and we were living in Long Beach, California, in a little one-story story house. It had 3 bedrooms and was in kind of a sketchy neighborhood, it was a few streets over from the Compton area. We were having the house inspected and appraised because we were selling it to move. They put this huge device in the guest bedroom. It measured something in the house, I really wish I could remember what is was but I’m not sure. It was basically just a massive, heavy box. The people told us that it had to stay in the room untouched for the next 48-hours and not to touch it or go into the guest room. My mom told them that neither of them were strong enough to move it anyways. My dad was out of town, and it was just my mom and I. A few days later, they came back and asked if we had touched the box or done anything to it. My mom responded that they hadn’t disturbed the box or had anyone over that might have accidently gone into the room. The workers said that on record, the device showed that the box had been lifted up and flipped over 148 times. Like completely picked up and rotated 148 times. I’m not really sure what ended up happening, but I know that that room was known to be haunted. Alarms would go off, the lights would flicker at random hours of the night.

Did you know anything about previous residents of the house?

No I had no idea, I don’t remember much because I was also really young. I know that there was just a lot of crime in our area.

Did your mom ever feel scared in the house?

Yea, she just felt unsafe, mainly because of the neighborhood. She felt especially scared when my dad was gone.

Analysis

Sarah and I grew up in the same neighborhood in North Bend, Washington and continued to go to high school together. She has always been superstitious and easily frightened. When she was telling me her ghost story, she spoke of the events very nonchalantly, as though she had accepted what had happened despite having very few answers. The fact that she was so young when it happened could play a role, but she sounded like she was not affected by her experience at all. Although I know that she is very religious, I asked her how her experiences affected her religious beliefs and she couldn’t really explain it. It seemed as though she hadn’t even though that her belief in ghosts would influence her opinion of the afterlife. She seemed to not find a connection between the two at all. Once I asked her the question, she was very surprised and caught off guard that I would ask her a religious question, then she proceeded to brush it off. Sarah seemed to be scared when she said that her and her mom were alone in the house, and she made it very evident that her mom felt scared when her dad was out of town or at work. The fact that the box was placed in the ‘haunted’ guest room but her a lot on edge as well. Perhaps the fact that the room was for guests and did not really belong to anyone made it a prime location for a ghost to appear.