Tag Archives: horror stories

The Ghost Family

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Title: The Ghost Family

Genere and Sub-Genre:

Verbal Folklore: Horror Story (Campfire Story)

Language: English

Country Where Story is From: United States

Informant Data:

Rachael Collins was born in Dallas, Texas and is 21 years old. She currently attends Cornell University but before that she transferred from Case Western Reserve University, where she was selected to be on student leadership panel.

Contextual Data:

Rachael often goes camping but she heard this story during her time at Case Western Reserve University, when she was chosen for a leadership expedition where she went with other students and camped for three days. She said that this story was traditionally told every year to all the students on the program, and that the area where they camped was extremely wooded and they listened to this story while roasting marshmallows and sitting around a campfire. It was told to her that a family disappeared around the area they were camping area by as well.

Item:

Transcript of Audio File:

“One day, one day a long long time ago, there was a whole group, a family who went camping. When they were camping and they were sitting around the campfire roasting marshmallows,  when some one screamed, but everyone in the family was with them. Who could be screaming? Slowly the father stood up and he walked, he was trying to find where the screaming came from. ‘Where are you?’ he asked ‘Are you okay?’

And there was a light whisper that said ‘were coming for you. That’ll be you.’ He kind of freaked out, he ran back to his family, but they were all gone. Where were they? He couldn’t find them. He ran back to the town as fast as he could. He got the cops, the police, involved anyone really who could help him look for his family.  But no one could find them.

But 10 years later, someone saw the family, sitting in the exact location, roasting marshmallows. But the only one who wasn’t there was the father.”

Informant’s Comments: Rachael said this was a campfire story she told people often, but that she often told it in different ways. She also formally apologizes for recording this with Holiday Music playing the background.

Collector’s Comments: I have not heard this story specifically, as I do not usually go to Ohio (where Case Western Reserve University is located), but I have heard variations of campfire stories where family members disappear.

Collector’s Name: Alexandra Collins

Knock Knock

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Title: Knock Knock

Genere and Sub-Genre:

Verbal Folklore: Horror Story (Campfire Story)

Language: English

Country of Story Origin: United States

Informant Data:

Melissa Dunham is originally from a town just outside of Chicago Illinois, before attending Dartmouth College she and her older sister would often tell each other scary stories.

Contextual Data:

The first time Mel heard this story was when she was home alone with her sister (much like the siblings in the story) and she and her sister were telling each other scary stories.

Item:

Transcript of Audio File:

“It’s called Knock Knock. There’s this family, a brother and a sister, and their parents are out of town for the weekend. They’re told not to answer the door under any circumstances, and that the neighbors are there and that if anything happened they could go over there and ask for help.

So while their parents were gone one night, they were watching TV and then they went to bed. But, while they were sleeping they were awakened by a knock at their front door, they ignored it like their parents told them to. But, when they heard it a second time, the sister decided to go downstairs and investigate.

However, after a little bit of time, she didn’t come back. So the brother got really really worried and went to the next door neighbors house. When he arrived there, they warned hum that there was a murder in the neighbor hood that had just murdered someone within a couple of blocks of their house, and to be careful. But then the brother told them that his sister was gone and missing-he didn’t know where she was. That worried the neighbors a lot so they grabbed a gun and went over to his house top investigate. When they got there they found his sister’s body on the floor and the knife that was used to kill her on his bed.”

Informant’s Comments: Mel commented that she heard this story from her older sister when she and her older sister were home along, and that she heard when she was younger from other kids as well.

Collector’s Comments: I have heard different variations of this story, where the brother and the neighbors see the murderer behind the door or standing over the sister’s body.

Collector’s Name: Alexandra Collins

Exaggeration on Resumes

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Genre and Sub Genre: Verbal Folklore, Horror Stories

Language: English

Country where Item is from: United States

Informant Data: Matthew Kang is a Dartmouth ’18 double majoring in Economics and Math. He’s from Tallahassee, Florida where his father is a chemist and his mother is a computer scientist; they both work for the Department of Environmental Protection. On campus, he is a staff writer and editor for the Dartmouth Business Journal, a member of Dartmouth Model United Nations, and a member of the Zeta Psi fraternity. After college, Matthew is interested in finance or potentially working for a startup.

Social Context: Matthew was interviewed one-on-one in a study room in McLaughlin. He participated in corporate recruiting during the Summer and Fall 2016 terms.

Cultural Context: Resume drops are a vital aspect of the corporate recruiting process and are standard for every job or internship. When submitting resumes, students implicitly agree to represent themselves fairly and accurately, but occasionally students exaggerate certain experiences or skills they have.

Item: Matthew recounted a story he heard regarding a fellow Dartmouth student’s on-campus interview. The student had taken some French courses at Dartmouth and on his resume had stated that he was fluent in French. During one of his interviews, the student got an interviewer who happened to be a native French speaker. The interviewer ended up asking him some of the interview questions in French and unfortunately his French wasn’t as good as he thought it was. He was unable to properly respond and ultimately did not get that internship offer.

Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):

Transcript of Associated File: “One of my friends actually put that they were proficient in French on their resume. And it turns out that the interviewer was a native French speaker, so they conducted some of the interview in French. It turned out that my friend’s French wasn’t as good as he thought it was, so it went south pretty fast.”

Informant’s Comments: N/A

Collector’s Comments: N/A

Collector’s Name: Sachin Vadodaria

Tags/Keywords: Verbal Lore, Horror Stories, Corporate Recruiting

Explain Investment Banking to a Child

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Title: Explain Investment Banking to a Child

General Information about Item:

  • Verbal Folklore, Horror Story
  • English
  • Country where Item is from: US

Informant Data:

  • Josh Alexakos is a Dartmouth senior government major from the outskirts of Boston, MA. His father is a banker and his mother, an anesthesiologist. He is involved on campus in the Christian Union, DREAM, club basketball, and his fraternity. After graduation, he is looking to go into finance. He became involved in the corporate recruiting process during his Sophomore Summer when he saw his friends “stressing out” over applying and felt the need to participate as well.

Contextual Data:

  • Cultural Context: Corporate recruiting has a stress-interview component, where candidates are expected to respond to difficult questions under stressful conditions to test how well people stand up to high-pressure environments. How these stressful conditions are created varies from interview to interview.

Item:

  • Josh heard this story from a friend, who was asked in an investment banking interview how he would explain investment banking to a five year old. The friend proceeded to answer the question, and once finished, asked the interviewer how he did with his explanation, only to be told that the response was not effective at all and actually made investment banking harder to understand for the interviewer, never-mind a five year old.

Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):

Transcript of Associated File:

  • “I had a friend who was in an investment banking interview how… by the interviewer, how he would explain investment banking to a five year old, which is kind of a rough question to be in. And he explained it in a way, probably about toys, and about merging toys… and afterwards, he asked, ‘does that make sense?’ And the interviewer said ‘no, that makes less sense. I understand investment banking less now.'”

Informant’s Comments:

  • Hearing this story from his friend made Josh more nervous about the interview, because he thought that if he had received a response like that, “I might have just cried, or like run out of the room because that is just not a fun reaction to get.” Thus, the tale made him prepare more for stress interviews afterwards to overcome his nervousness.

Collector’s Comments:

  • Josh’s reaction to hearing this story serves as an illustrative example of how corporate recruiting horror stories function. After initially wincing and laughing along to the story, Josh took the tale as a word of advice and prepared more for such stressful situations in interviews afterwards than he otherwise would have.

Collector’s Name: Aime Joo

Tags/Keywords:

  • Corporate Recruiting Folklore, Verbal Folklore, Horror Stories, Investment Banking

‘Stretching the Truth’ on Resumes

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Genre and Sub Genre: Verbal Folklore: Horror Stories

Language: English

Country where Item is from: United States of America

Informant Data: Ziqin Yuan is a government major in the class of 2018 at Dartmouth. She is from New Jersey, where her mom is a scientific researcher and her dad is a computer programmer. Ziqin participated in formal recruiting during her sophomore summer. She is planning to potentially work in education or the corporate/law world after college. Ziqin is a member of Kappa Delta sorority and is a student coordinator for OPAL.

Social/ Cultural Context: Ziqin was interviewed by Bridget, one-on-one, in a classroom at Dartmouth. Ziqin has gone through the process of formal corporate recruitng at Dartmouth once, and when interviewed was still in the midst of interviewing for winter positions. Resumes are vital to the recruitment process, and it is a big faux-pas to lie on resumes, and this can often lead to offers being rescinded or a candidate failing to advance in the interview process.

Item: During recruitment, every participant is required to construct a personal resume listing their achievement in order to be evaluated by firms. Generally, a resume paired with a cover letter is submitted for review by the “resume drop” deadline, and a week afterwards, candidates are notified which firms they received interviews from based on this submission. Resumes are based on an honor system, and often in interviews the interviewer will ask questions about the resume in order to ensure that it is all true. Ziqin had taken a computer science class that focused on a code called “python” so she listed “python” under her skills on her resume, but she could not recall all of the specifics of the code. Unfortunately, her interviewer asked her multiple questions about the code, and even though it was a phone interview and she was trying to research answers, she gave an incorrect response regarding the code. This would appear as a red flag to the interviewer because she was not able to back up the skills she claimed to have on her resume. Ziqin has shared this story with many friends in order to warn them about the consequences that come from lying on resume. Stories such as this have been passed between students undergoing the recruitment process in order to warn future students and keep them from making similar mistakes.

Associated file: 

Transcript of Associated File:

Do you have any anecdotes about your experience, or any horror stories? I had this awful interview… he like asked me questions such as, he really grilled me on my resume, so like I guess it was just like a personal story that really scared me. I put that I knew python on my resume ‘cause I took CS1, and he asked me about my favorite object, and I didn’t know what that was. So I was like googling, because it was a phone interview and I ended up saying was a “four loop,” which I asked Emma [CS major] about and apparently four loops aren’t objects. And I also described it wrong.

Informant’s Comments: Informant was able to laugh about this incident now, but definitely remembered this particular interview as being really unpleasant.

Collector’s Comments: Informant’s perspective is really fresh on corporate recruiting because she has done most of it, and is even still going through it.

Collector’s Name: Bridget Dougherty

Tags/Keywords: Horror Stories, Verbal Lore, Resume

 

Two-Faced Interviewer

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Title: Two-Faced Interviewer

General Information about Item:

  • Verbal Folklore
  • English
  • Country where Item is from: US

Informant Data:

  • Andrew Wolff is a junior at Dartmouth College and a Quantatative Social Science major from New Jersey. His mother is a  college advisor and his father a sales representative for medical journals. He is a brother in the Alpha Chi fraternity, is involved in TAMID, a Dartmouth consulting group for Israeli start-ups, and organized the Dartmouth Model UN Conference. He is currently planning on joining a consulting firm after graduation, and became involved in corporate recruiting during his Sophmore Summer after hearing about it from his brothers at Alpha Chi.

Contextual Data: 

  • Cultural Context: Corporate recruiting has a stress-interview component, where candidates are expected to respond to difficult questions under stressful conditions to test how well people stand up to high-pressure environments. How these stressful conditions are created varies from interview to interview.

Item:

  • This was a personal horror story that Andrew later shared with his fraternity brothers after the experience. In a first-round interview, the interviewer approached the candidates and seemed very kind and nice, but the minute the interview started, he did a complete about-face and became very argumentative and combative, picking apart every answer that Andrew gave. As a result of the bad interview experience, after the interview was over, Andrew reworked his company preference order to remove that company from his top position, only to find out later by the same inteviewer that Andrew did very well in the interview and would have been given the job if the priority order had been left alone.

Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):

Transcript of Associated File:

  • “In a first round, there was a guy who was really nice when he first walked in, and then we start the interview and he just got like really really mean, just like challenging everything I said, like making it seem like I wasn’t communicating my ideas effectively, like ‘I’m asking you about a time when you were challenged by a different opinion and you keep skipping over the difficult parts. I need you to go back and outline, you’re not giving me what we’re looking for.’ And during the case, he was really combative with my answers, he would just be like after everything I say, just be like ‘so, is that all? are you sure that’s what you want to do?’ And then as soon as the case was over, he just like switched again into this nice dude, and he actually rattled me enough that I, um, and I knew which office he was from that after that interview, and my second round interview, which went… my second first round interview, which went a lot better I switched the preferences of my office. But it turned out that the guy was the one who actually called me to give me the final round, and told me that he was sorry that I switched my preferences because you did a great job, and I was like you could have been a little bit nicer.”

Informant’s Comments:

  • This is one of Andrew’s main horror stories he shares with other people going through the corporate recruiting process.

Collector’s Comments:

  • The stress interview itself may not be folklore, since it is a formalized part of the actual interview process, but in Andrew’s telling this personal experience repeatedly to other people as both a funny horror story and a word of caution against too readily reacting to what you think was a bad interview, it becomes a part of the verbal folklore surrounding corporate recruiting.

Collector’s Name: Aime Joo

Tags/Keywords:

  • Corporate Recruiting Folklore, Stress Interviews, Verbal Folklore, Horror Stories

Cover Letter Initials

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Title: Cover Letter Initials

General Information about Item:

  • Verbal Folklore: horror stories
  • English
  • Recorded in the US

Informant Data:

  • Andrew Wolff is a junior at Dartmouth College and a Quantitative Social Science major from New Jersey. His mother is a  college advisor and his father a sales representative for medical journals. He is a brother in the Alpha Chi fraternity, is involved in TAMID, a Dartmouth consulting group for Israeli start-ups, and organized the Dartmouth Model UN Conference. He is currently planning on joining a consulting firm after graduation, and became involved in corporate recruiting during his Sophomore Summer after hearing about it from his brothers at Alpha Chi.

Contextual Data:

  • Social Context: This interview was recorded in an audiofile during a one-on-one, face-to-face interview during the Dartmouth Fall 2016 quarter.
  • Cultural Context: Corporate recruiting involves an initial documents phase where the candidate needs to submit typically a resume and cover letter before being considered for interviews. A cover letter needs to be specifically addressed to each company, detailing usually why one wants to work for that company, what one likes about the company, and what one thinks one can contribute to the company based on past individual experiences.

Item:

  • Andrew has a friend who named all the cover letters addressed to different companies that he was applying to according to the companies’ initials instead of their full names. Accordingly, because some companies shared the same initials, the friend accidentally submitted the wrong cover letters to several companies with identical initials.

Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):

  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTAf70kcAJc

Transcript of Associated File:

  • “I have a friend who had sent… who named all his cover letters by the initials of the company and a couple companies had the same initials and he accidentally sent the same cover letter to three different firms.”

Collector’s Comments:

  • Most corporate recruiting horror stories begin with statements of anonymity, like “I have a friend…” generalizing the experience and avoiding any conclusion on the listeners’ part that this embarrassment actually happened to the person retelling it.

Collector’s Name: Aime Joo

Tags/Keywords:

  • Corporate Recruiting Folklore; horror stories; verbal folklore; cover letter