Storytelling, often done to educate, instill moral values, or simply as a form of entertainment, is often regarded as the most important tradition of not just any culture, but of human culture as a whole. It is a medium that not only helps build a culture but simultaneously defines it. Storytelling places the human voice in an atemporal state, yet also paradoxically stretches an individual’s voice for generations to be heard.
Humans have participated in storytelling since the dawn of age, as can be seen with cave paintings for example; and we are still practicing this form of cultural progression, now, more than ever, as can be seen with the countless social media voices that are forcibly heard. But, that’s not what this post will be about, no, with all this being said, there is only one real category, or genre, in storytelling that has always pulled me in… ghost stories.
(Well, not just ghost stories, anything unexplainable, yet also somehow impossibly personal). Now, before you make the argument that “ghost stories” don’t “really” suit the impression capable of the “conventional storytelling culture,” well, they do. Although these type of stories might have originated with the intent of keeping children out of dangerous places, for example, they now serve the purpose of mild entertainment (with the listeners creeping closer at every pause for air waiting for the final reveal of something they’ve anticipated yet somehow managed to surprise them) and the purpose of education (for the close listeners who use every pause for air to reflect on how this story is similar or different to those told to him by his/her family).
Although in today’s societies ghost stories primarily play the role of entertainment, it is still essential to the development of our culture at a human level. Because it means that as a culture we aren’t simply moving away from believing the superstitious (although it can be argued that this is mostly because everything is recorded), but it means that we are moving towards a more definitive communication culture. Because instead of saying, “don’t go there, ghost roams late at night,” we say, “don’t go there, it’s dangerous at night.”
Now, with the philosophy of storytelling out of the way, I’d like to do a little…well… storytelling of my own – a ghost one of course.
For those of you that don’t know, I’m Dominican. So during some of my breaks from school or what have you I visit Dominican Republic, and sometimes, it visits me. Some time ago, during the summer of 2007 or so, I did exactly this. Before I continue this story, I need to construct this house in your brain in order for you to accurately watch what I remember as you read it. Picture a one-story house, a triangle shaped top, square-shaped body, a garage to the right of the entrance door, and stairs that lead to the main entrance to the house. To the left of the first two steps is a flower garden, to the left of a couple more steps is the porch, to the left of the house is a vegetable garden, and to the right of the house is a grass field, not too big, but not too small – just an open field. In the back of the house is where our backyard is, and where my dog (a primary character in this story) used to love to spend most of his time. There is also a small, what I’d call a cleaning room, right beside the backyard, that is accompanied by a door that leads to a pathway parallel to the open field. Okay, now the story. During the middle of one of many chilly yet humid nights of Dominican Republic, something went bump in the night. No really, it did. During this particular night, my mom hosted her side of the family, and the last family members to leave were one of her cousins who was accompanied by his wife. As my brother and I were watching t.v. we heard what sounded like my mom calling her cousin. She was telling him to grab a flashlight and head to the backyard because as my mom and her cousin’s wife were working on something near the backyard, they continued to hear our dog barking towards the roof of the house while simultaneously having a fixed look, as she later described it. Her cousin did exactly that, he went into the guest room and grabbed a flashlight. As he makes his way to the backyard door, our dog’s bark begins gets more pronounced and more continuous. And this is where things get interesting. Everything that I’m about to write happened in the span of a minute – if not less. My cousin opened the backyard door, ran to the center of the yard, pointed the flashlight to the roof, simultaneously, almost as if the light carried the weight of a refrigerator, we heard a loud thump on the field of grass to the right of the house, my mom opened the door in the cleaning room that leads to the field and – we saw the nothing, heard nothing – the only sound we heard were small barks from our dog as he was trying to get into the house. We were dumbfounded. What. Just. Happened. What caused the sound. What was the dog barking at… and where did it go? We looked into the field for what seemed like forever, but of course, after seeing nothing we had to close the door. There was nothing there. Now, this is where things get fun. As we close the door, we see something, something in the crevice between the door and the wall. A frog. And this is when things get loud, this is when my cousin’s wife shouted “galipote!” It was my first time experiencing anything like this, and now someone was shouting a word that sounded completely alien to me. A second later she explained to us, in her frantic voice, that a galipote is a demonic being, a person capable of shapeshifting, able to take strides that cover numerous blocks at once – and she was certain with every fiber of her being, that this frog was exactly that – a galipote. With no hesitation, she grabbed a container, pushed the little critter into it, and threw everything into the field to the right. We closed the door… and… heard what sounded like… you being disappointed because nothing else happened after that, that’s how it all ended. But, we did spend the rest of the night sharing stories akin to what just happened, experiences that aren’t explainable.
Hope you enjoyed it!
~Richard Gonzalez
The Junction Journal 