Ghosts in White by Dylan Quitoriano of Clovis, California
Ghosts in White
by Dylan Quitoriano
Clovis, California
I have been replaying my favorite game of all time: Red Dead Redemption 2. From everything about the hyper-realistic game mechanics and being set in the late 1890s where outlaws are being outmatched by the booming industrialization of the world; even two years after its release, it is still possible to discover something new about about the game. There are many side quests and easter eggs throughout the game that could relate to someone or some event that actually happened. It seems almost impossible to find everything that is hidden in this game even for myself, who has logged about 50 hours in total game time playing the story multiple times.
I gave the explanation above why I love Red Dead Redemption 2 so much to show why reading “The Women in the White (Taotaomo’na)” by Gianna Fernandez resonates with me. Throughout the whole map of the game there are many random events that can occur; accompanied with other random encounters that have multiple parts to them. In the swamp area named Lagras, which in the real world is based in the southern United States near New Orleans, LA, there is a chain of random encounters that can only occur in game time between one to four in the morning. During this game time period you can see a ghostly white woman in a dress. When I first experienced this, I did not know that there were multiple sections. I didn’t explore why the Woman in White would show up in the game because her appearance would freak me out. The reason for that being—I hate ghost stories! I get scared easy. I was seeing her consistently though as I was usually playing the game at three in the morning.
The story for what seems her random appearance starts with a woman named Agnes Dowd. As the story goes, Agnes Dowd, was developing a relationship with a married man. She came from a very wealthy family and the man she’d fallen for, came from a very middle-class family. Her parents did not approve of the relationship, so sh and her lover would meet under a certain tree in the swamps where her ghost now can be seen wearing a white dress.
During the course of their affair she got pregnant and asked the man to leave his wife and start a new family with her. The man refused saying that he would not leave his wife even though he was the father of Ms. Dowd’s baby, so he broke up with her. For long days and weeks, she would go to the same tree where they once met. She feared that no other man would want her because she got pregnant out of a wedlock. Agnes’ parents would always insult the man for leaving her and though she was heartbroken, she still defended him. As time went on, she gave birth to their baby. She abandoned the baby and her family so she could win her lover back. This angered her father when he found out she abandoned the newly born child. The father brought his gun to the man’s house and they got into a big fight. Her father ended up shooting her lover and this made her go insane. In the heat of the moment Agnes killed her own father. She had a mental breakdown then she eventually hanged herself on the same tree that she and her lover would meet at.
This reminds me of the Taotaomo’na in Gianna’s story. I recall one of the people in her story saying that if you die in a horrible way on the sacred grounds that your spirit would stay back on the land and that you might connect and interact with them. With the story of Agnes Dowd in Red Dead Redemption 2, her spirit remains on Earth and roams the swamps where the main character, Arthur Morgan, can interact and hear her tell the story of her tragic life. Another way both resonate with me is the sort of spiritual connection with the person and the spirit. In “The Woman in the White (Taotaomona)” one of the characters, Cooper, recalls that while picking flowers for his mother, he saw the woman in the white. After seeing her nightmares and visions of her ensued.
My experience is not as haunting. My grandpa passed about 5 years ago now, and in the Filipino culture (at least mine), we keep a piece of clothing from the person who passed to stay in touch with them. So now if I open the drawer that the shirt is in, I feel a weird spiritual feeling come over me. Also, if we visit his house and I walk by the hallway I have the same feeling. This reminds me of where Cooper mentions that the ghostly spirit is connected to the pink and purple flowers. I understood it as a hard feeling to explain; but if I were to try, I’d say it is like my grandpa’s spirit passing through me saying hello. It feels like a gateway opening where I can interact with him as if he were still physically here. Like in the closing line of Giana’s story, “We are not alone, and they are always with us.”
Works Cited
Red Dead Redemption 2, Rockstar Games, 2018
Fernandez, Gianna. “The Woman in the White (Taotaomona)” Hallow-Zine 2019.
https://menlocollege.
The Tree as I mentioned.
The Woman in the White
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