Text:

“This story did not happen to me. The story was from their grandma. It was actually really scary when she told it to me, because it was like right before I went to sleep. She fully believed in this ghost in their cabin. 

 That house had been in the family for like centuries. Apparently, there was, like, this ghost like a young girl who would just appear [around the cabin]. She wouldn’t do anything good, or anything bad; she was just there. The grandma thought that it was real and she was telling me the story in the middle of the night. It would just appear next to people, but it was like a calming feeling like you would think it’d be scary, but it really wasn’t. She appeared to [my friend’s grandma] and her daughter, but my friend never saw it. 

They liked to think it was something to do with, like, nature since it was in Tahoe but they never seemed to know what exactly it was.”

Context:

The informant went on a trip to Tahoe with a family friend, and the story was recounted to her by her friend’s grandmother. 

Informant’s thoughts:

“I’m not, like, into the supernatural or religious at all so I never thought it was anything. My friend also said she had never seen it and I trust her.”

Analysis:

Set in the wilderness at a cabin, the story perpetuates fear of isolation and darkness that’s common in less civilized and populated places. The informant’s friend’s grandmother and family attempting to reason the ghosts existence to something natural overlaps American ghost beliefs with non-domestic ideas, like the embodiment of natural facets of our world in spirit form.