This reflection essay recounts a supernatural camping experience at Laguna Mountain in California that challenges the narrator's understanding of cultural identity and belonging. After relocating from Texas to San Diego, the narrator and five ethnically diverse friends—with backgrounds spanning the Philippines, Japan, Cuba, New England, and Ireland—witness apparitions that each person perceives differently according to their cultural heritage. The essay uses this fantastical encounter to explore themes of multiculturalism, the social adjustment to a new environment, and how identity fundamentally shapes human perception and experience.
I have always prided myself on being a true-blue Midwesterner, having been born and raised in Amarillo, Texas. My parents are typical white-collar workers whose careers have remained stable since their graduation. These professions provided them security—until two years ago, when the economic turmoil of the recession forced significant changes. As a result of my parents being laid off, we had to relocate to San Diego, California, where my father was able to secure a decent job. However, this relocation is not the main story. Rather, the heart of this account is an unforgettable weekend when I went camping with my newfound friends in Mount Laguna, an experience that fundamentally challenged my understanding of identity and perception.
Like any new student in a new city, I had to endure the social and cultural shock of leaving Texas for California. The major differences between the two states struck me immediately. Where I came from, there were flatlands everywhere and hardly any significant water sources. The closest natural water structure I was accustomed to in Amarillo was Lake Meredith National Park. Here in San Diego, water and mountains are everywhere, and there are places where I can stand and actually see the mountains meeting the sea.
We lived in a nice neighborhood, and if I thought Amarillo was multicultural, San Diego surpassed it significantly. The streets were filled with people of Chinese, Vietnamese, Filipino, Thai, German, Italian, French, Haitian, Cuban, and numerous other ethnic origins. Walking down our street block gave one the feeling of being at the United Nations, such was the melting pot of races and cultures present. The diversity extended far beyond our neighborhood; it was woven into the fabric of the entire city.
The high school I attended was also a true global village, with students representing several more nationalities. At first, I felt somewhat out of place because I was one of the few "rednecks" with the whitest skin—despite my exposure to the hot Texas sun—and the reddest hair. Nonetheless, I was grateful that my new schoolmates were "color-blind," so to speak, and issues of race, color, religion, or creed were never topics of concern, except perhaps in history, geography, and civics lessons.
Before long, I belonged to my own "crew" of six, and we personified the United Nations. Of course, everyone was American-born and raised, but our ethnic origins differed significantly. I was the token American from the Midwest, and Annie was a New Englander from Connecticut whose family had moved to the East Coast years ago. There was Mike, who is Filipino in origin, and Mariko, a second-generation Japanese American who looked like a Japanese anime character coming to life. Juancho was our typical Latino, with his family having originated in Cuba, while Paddy was your good old Irish-American lad. Our friendship bonds grew stronger with each passing week.
One long weekend in the spring, we decided to go camping. The nearest destination was Laguna Mountain, an hour's drive east of San Diego. We were so excited that Saturday morning, and Juancho's parents volunteered to drive us to the campsite. The drive went smoothly, and when we arrived, we happily took possession of our two-bedroom cabin. Mariko and Annie sequestered one bedroom while Mike and Juancho took the other. Paddy and I decided to sleep in the living room because it was near the fireplace and seemed cozier than being stuck in a bedroom.
Paddy was the only one among us who had been to Laguna Mountain several times before. However, during our first night, he admitted that he had never liked going to this place because of the horror stories he had heard. We initially thought Paddy was just trying to scare us, but our experience that night made us believe that there are indeed powerful forces beyond the ordinary world. Paddy explained that there is a story going around that Laguna Mountain is cursed by evil spirits. However, the manifestation of these evil spirits is not the typical white lady, headless man, or crying baby found in American folklore. Instead, the evil spirits haunt people based on their beliefs and cultural backgrounds. An Englishman would not see a typical American ghost but rather a ghoul straight out of an English horror film. Paddy himself would not see a normal ghost but a Celtic-looking apparition. I, on the other hand, would probably see the regular ghosts told to American children.
We were understandably scared by Paddy's revelation, and suddenly everyone was in the living room with Paddy and me. They claimed they were not scared but simply wanted the coziness of the fireplace—yeah, right. It was almost midnight when we all fell asleep, but five minutes after midnight, we were awakened by a loud rustling noise outside our cabin. At first, we thought it was the wind, but it was a warm and windless night. Juancho and Mike said they would look outside to see what was happening. Immediately after stepping out, they screamed unlike anything we had ever heard and ran back inside. When we asked what was wrong, they were both trembling and speaking nonsense. Mike was saying, "Kapre, kapre, kapre," while Juancho was yelling, "Encanto diablo, encanto diablo."
Paddy and I went to them and shook them until they calmed down a bit. Mike was the first to speak, explaining that he had seen a "kapre"—a creature from Philippine folklore described as a ghoul smoking cigars and victimizing innocents. Juancho, meanwhile, had seen a Spanish devil fairy out to suck the life from him. When we asked them to describe where they saw these creatures, they both pointed in the same direction. Mariko and Anne peeped through the window and looked where Mike and Juancho had indicated. The moment they took a peek, both girls screeched and turned white with fear. I went to them and looked outside in the same direction, and to my horror, I saw a headless horseman typical of the tales from Sleepy Hollow.
When Anne was able to speak, she said she had seen a white lady that she only knew about from New England ghost stories. Mariko, on the other hand, had seen a "yurei"—a misty creature from Japanese legend that drives mortals to madness when they encounter it. When I had calmed down a bit, I asked Paddy what was happening, and he explained what he knew. According to local legend, there have been incidents at certain places in Laguna Mountain where hauntings occur by ghosts and evil spirits. What happens is that the ghost or evil spirit each person sees belongs to their cultural or ethnic background. Paddy shared that during his last visit to Laguna Mountain with his parents, he thought he was having a bad dream when he saw Irish ghosts and goblins trying to rip him apart. Thus, Mike saw a kapre because it is the Philippine equivalent of an evil spirit, and Mariko saw a yurei because it is the Japanese equivalent.
Paddy further explained that the hauntings at Laguna Mountain did not always occur. They began when a group of foreign tourists—about forty of them—died when their bus fell off one of the cliffs. Since then, people visiting the mountain have reported seeing all sorts of apparitions. However, there is something remarkable: if two or three people look at the same apparition at the same time and place, they will describe something completely different. This was exactly what was happening to us that night. We could all look in the same direction or place in the woods and see something, but we would each describe what we saw differently.
This was truly a new experience and new knowledge about the "other world" because it takes the form of who you are and where you come from. Paddy mentioned having heard the forest ranger discuss this mystery, describing how the woods play tricks on people and show something or someone based on who you are and where you are from. Since all five of us had been able to see different apparitions at the same location, we asked Paddy to do the same and look at the direction where we each saw our manifestations. He refused, saying, "No way!" He had endured enough the last time he was here. The only reason he had joined us, despite knowing the ghostly tale, was to prove to himself that his previous experience had been just a bad dream. Now that he had seen his own friends suffering the same fate he had experienced before, he knew that the ghosts of Laguna Mountain are real. There had to be a logical explanation for why each person sees something different based on their heritage.
Well, needless to say, we could not sleep that night, but we decided to huddle together until the morning. Once we saw the sunshine, we called Juancho's parents and asked them to pick us up. We told them we were all right, but we preferred to get back to the city and tell them our horror stories. When they heard what happened, they said they would call our parents and ask them to join us to see how real these apparitions are. Thus, later in the morning, our parents arrived, and we began preparing for the scary night that lay ahead. The only difference was that we now had our parents to hold on to once the mystery of the apparition of who you are and where you are from appeared again. This experience taught us that cultural identity is not merely an abstract concept or a demographic category. It is the fundamental lens through which we perceive and interpret reality itself.
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