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Native Americans the story of their culture
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It was February in the year 1991 when I had my experience with a ghost. I was 17 years old at the time. One Saturday evening in Phoenix, my high school was having a basketball game, and afterward my cousin and I left the school gymnasium at around 10 p.m.
My cousin is from Tohono O’dham, and I was going to spend the weekend with my aunt’s family. Like myself, my aunt is Yaqui. She married a Tohono O’dham man some years ago and had two kids. One is my cousin.
We got on Interstate 10 and then switched on to South Highway 15 for the drive to the town of Sells on the Tohono O’dham Reservation. About 40 minutes into our drive, we were deep in the desert.
Because my car needed new tires, I had to drive just below the speed limit. The treads were just about completely worn out. I guess I had the type of car that we Indians call an “Indian car.” It was a pretty beat-up looking car, but it got me where I wanted to go.
Anyway, there we were, driving in the middle of the desert with the CD player going, and the darkness all around. Suddenly, a large javelina crossed the road, and I hit that wild pig with a big old “bang!” I didn’t have time to think about stepping on the brakes, because one second there was just the road before us, and the next there was this javelina.
I knew we had some big trouble with the car, because the radiator began to hiss, and steam began pouring out. I immediately drove to the side of the road and stopped the car to check on the damage. Sure enough, that animal had hit the front grill head-on, and a piece of metal had punctured my car’s radiator.
Directly behind the car in the darkness e could hear the pig loudly squealing. It was a weird experience to be alone at night in the desert and to hear ...
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...e before dawn, we were awakened by a truck with two guys who were headed for Sells. They sure did give us a good scare when they knocked on the car’s window, but soon we were introducing ourselves, and they offered to take us home.
The guys told us they were artists driving from California. They were on a photography trip, taking pictures of the desert and Indians for an art project. We tied one end of a rope to the back of their truck and the other end to the front of our car, and they towed us home.
We never mentioned our experience with the ghost the night before. But when we did get home that morning, we told my aunt and her family everything. Everyone agreed that what we had experienced was the ghost of an Indian from the spirit world. Since my encounter with that ghost, I’ve decided, if at all possible, never to drive at night through the desert again.
I was told a story about one of Cloudcroft's more famous ghosts when casually lounging in the undergraduate student physics lounge at the University of Maryland, College Park, with a group of students during a lunch break before class. This occurred during early April, 2005. I inquired whether anyone knew any ghost stories or folklore. A friend of mine volunteered that she knew several ghost stories from her travels. The storyteller was a 23-year-old Caucasian female from an upper-middle class family in Baltimore. She currently lives in Crofton, MD, and is a physics and astronomy major.
The book, What’s So Super About the Supernatural tells of well known stories about poltergeists. A poltergeist is a noisy or high energy ghost who might perform violent activity. A young girl by the name of Tina Resch lived in Ohio and is known to be a poltergeist. “No ghost was ever seen or heard on camera; however when the camera was inadvertently left running, the tape showed Tina surreptitiously pulling over a lamp” (Gardner). The evidence was found after people were reporting the activity. Newspaper reporters went to the scene to check out the action only to find evidence of Tina throwing objects violently around the house. Another example of proof that ghosts exist goes back to a case involving a poltergeist in England. An eleven-year-old boy by the name of Matthew Manning performed several violent actions that his dad had noticed and reported. Gardner writes, “ On one occasion, Matthew’s bed was thrown about and left leaning at an angle against the wall” (Gardner). These examples are not the only reported cases regarding ghosts and paranormal activity. Many stories about the supernatural have been told and passed down for several generations. Spirits are even mentioned in well known religious books that have been passed down for hundreds of
As I sat down with the narrator in his dorm on a Sunday afternoon—not the most appropriate time for ghost stories—he told me this well known ghost story from New Mexico. The storyteller is an 18-year-old male freshman majoring in international relations who is from Bethesda, Maryland. He is biracial with an American father and a Taiwanese mother. Born in California and raised in Colorado, the storyteller is a converted Christian. The teller was in the Boy Scouts, which is where this story comes from:
The origin of ghost encounters has been dated back to the early times in history. According to the History Channel, “in the first century A.D. Pliny, the Younger recorded one of the first ghost
A ghost is a soul that appears as a dead person or is against a living person. Most people still believe in ghosts even though they have not seen one. The first sightings of ghosts date back to 856 A.D (Stories, 2014). Ghosts mostly make loud noises and disturbances to let people know that they are in the midst. In the first century A.D., the great Roman author and statesman Pliny the Younger recorded one of the first seen ghost stories in his letters, which became noticeable for their bright story of life during the peak of the Roman Empire. The world around us has become more technical with the findings and history of ghosts not cited correctly (Stories, 2014)). The place ghosts come from or occupy varies depending on their spiritual abilities. Ghosts feel more comfortable in a place that is unrestrained and enables them to move freely (Zamora, 2014).
First, it is important to include an in-depth description of the storyteller in order to fully analyze the meaning of the tale. My story was narrated by an 18-year-old woman. She was born in Poland, and at the age of eight moved to the Frederick. She is from an upper-middle class family; both her mother and father are chemists. The story was obtained late one night while working on homework and casually conversing. The topic of ghosts and the supernatural arose, and she informed me that she once saw a ghost firsthand. I inquired about her experience, and she willingly explained what had happened.
The story was told to me by one of my high-school classmates, who is a resident of the town of Atco. The nineteen year old young man is currently a sophomore at Clemson University and describes himself as being a Roman Catholic of half Italian-American and half Irish-American decent. The young man also noted that he is normally very socially conservative and a staunch Republican. His father is employed as a general contractor and his mother runs her own catering company. He describes himself as a “self proclaimed expert of all things related to the Atco Ghost.” He cannot remember the specific date when he first heard the story, but stated that he can remember knowing most of the details to the story for most of his life. He also claims to have attempted to see the ghost on only one occasion and after what he saw, he refuses to ever go back to that area of town at night. The following is an almost word for word account, which he checked to ensure its accuracy, of the lengthy story as he retold it to me ...
Paman, Alex G. "Asian Ghost Stories." Yolk 31 Dec. 2000. Ethnic NewsWatch. Web. 14 Dec. 2011. .
The particular story I collected takes place in Philadelphia, where ghost stories are plentiful. Philadelphia is an old city with a rich cultural heritage, and our founding fathers made history in the place that was once our nation’s capital (Eidmann). Many believe that their spirits and spirits of those from colonial times still lurk around. It is easy to feel like spirits are around when in a place where many people have lived and died before, and in a place that is filled with old buildings and landmarks. All of these factors make this city a perfect place for a ghost story.
My relatives who live in Maine had a ghost in their house. They started hearing foot-steps around their house and they think it was the previous owner of the house; I can’t remember his name, but he died. One of the stories was their younger daughter asks her mom, “who was that man who tucked me in last night”. They heard some foot falls in the attic. The daughter kept waking up in the middle of the night and the music box kept opening. Once, the wife was doing laundry in the middle of the night, felt something on her back and heard foot steps in the room and she freaked out. Often they would return home to new wood being put in the fireplace even though it was never used and behind locked doors. They eventually said out loud, “Please leave” and foot steps were heard walking out of the house and no other events occurred.
For years, ghosts and poltergeists have been a part of our popular lexicon. From stories told around the campfire, to motion pictures like The Haunting, to books like the Scary Story series, everyone has heard a good ghost story or two. Many people claim to have actually been party to a few supernatural experiences themselves. But for as long as we have told these frightful stories, science has been attempting to explain them beyond the typical bump in the dark.
a dull grey colour as if it had lost the will to live and stopped
Savannah is supposedly one of the most haunted cities in America, and later in the week on the same trip, we decided to go on one of Savannah's biggest tourist traps. A ghost tour. We walked around the city on a Wednesday night at ten PM for about two hours. We walked outside of buildings that may have had many deaths in and was supposed to be filled with paranormal activity, but we never went inside. We just got stories of people allegedly seeing ghosts through the window. It was terribly at the time but it was worth it to be
"Hey, be careful and don't do anything stupid," my dad said to me right before I hopped into Chase Miller's dark blue Chevy S-10 with a camper shell on the back. I looked at Chase and Tyler Becker and said, "Let's go camping." As Chase pushed down the gas pedal, a big cloud of black smoke shot out of the back of the truck and the smell of burning motor oil filled the cab.
Yeah that was my car, I was a brand new driver casually running into everything I seen. It was about 3 months into having my license. I was on my way to volunteer for parent teacher conference and I was extremely tired. There was a Dunkin Donuts right next to my school, so I decided to make a pit stop. Waiting in line, made me very restless and I was ready to leave and go to where I needed to be. As cars in front of me started to ease up I followed slightly behind. When I finally got to the front window to get my Caramel latte , I realized my car was too far over to the right for me to reach. I twisted my wheel all the way to the left to try to and get a little closer to receiving my drink. When I finally got my drink “ hurry up” the worker said to me. Mistakenly letting my foot hit the gas and I flew into the yellow pole my Brand new 2016 Volkswagen Beetle was dented up and yellow. “What am I going to tell my parents! This is a brand new car!” I was ready to run and hide and never tell them, but the car meant responsibility