I know a parking lot doesn’t seem a likely place for a haunting, but in an abandoned neighborhood in North St. Louis there existed such a place. The parking lot was large enough to hold about eighty cars. Whatever business built the lot was long gone. There were several street lights in the parking lot, but oddly enough only one that was located in the rear still worked. The parking lot was easy to find since this lone street light was the only thing still working in the abandoned neighborhood. There was a bent basketball hoop attached to one of the street light poles. There were a few piles of trash composed mainly of building materials and old tires. The asphalt had grass and small trees growing up through cracks, and the lines that once marked the parking spots were barely noticeable. There was also a derelict red Ford pickup truck sitting in the far corner; it was completely stripped of everything of value. …show more content…
I remember the openness of this place gave me the feeling of being vulnerable. At night, the darkness of the abandoned neighborhood acted as a cloak against the brightness of this one working streetlight. I found this place one night while driving around North St. Louis looking for an abandoned building to UrbEx. The only light in the darkened neighborhood drew me in like a moth. My first thought when I came upon this place was; “Why is this street light still working?” Is someone still paying to keep this one light on, or was it simply forgotten about and the electric company didn’t see any point in turning it off? The light probably came on every night unnoticed for years in this void of abandonment. Every time I visited the lot, the place always gave me the creeps. The cloak of darkness always made me feel of vulnerable and like I was being watched. The constant buzzing sound of the street light just added to the
The author illustrates the “dim, rundown apartment complex,” she walks in, hand and hand with her girlfriend. Using the terms “dim,” and “rundown” portrays the apartment complex as an unsafe, unclean environment; such an environment augments the violence the author anticipates. Continuing to develop a perilous backdrop for the narrative, the author describes the night sky “as the perfect glow that surrounded [them] moments before faded into dark blues and blacks, silently watching.” Descriptions of the dark, watching sky expand upon the eerie setting of the apartment complex by using personification to give the sky a looming, ominous quality. Such a foreboding sky, as well as the dingy apartment complex portrayed by the author, amplify the narrator’s fear of violence due to her sexuality and drive her terror throughout the climax of the
Lewiston, Idaho, once an important port for miners traveling in search of gold, is now a town of about 30,000 people. Few of the people who live in the Lewis-Clark Valley speak of its over one hundred year history. However, there are still parts of the community where one can explore and see the age of the town. Downtown Lewiston is one of a few areas where people can go exploring. They wander the streets, admiring the buildings that stand proudly above them. One building in particular ties a unique history into the downtown area. Morgan’s Alley stands at the corner of Main Street and D Street, overlooking the cars and people passing by. On the outside, it looks like an ordinary, older building. On the inside, it holds secrets of the past and possibly a ghost.
"Investigation of the La Fonda Hotel" Southwest Ghost Hunters Association. 31 Oct 1998. Retrieved 5 Apr 2005 http://www.sgha.net/lafonda.html.
Another ghostly story of the town is one that dates back quite a while. There is a road in Canton known as the Magic Bus Road (actually named Sunflower RD) where many peculiar things have happened. Apparently there used to be a school bus on the right side of the gravel road before a bridge. On this road, many people have seen strange figures, bizarre lights, and even a phantom gate. Laurie Ericson, a long-time resident and college freshman at Culver, said, "It used to be a real party spot.
The 1946 novel, “The Street” by Ann Petry establishes a struggling relationship between the main character; Lutie Johnson, and her new surroundings. Lutie seeks, her overall objective in finding a safe refuge to live, however; the description of 116th street seems less than an ideal home. Petry uses decrepit imagery and forceful personification showing a battle between Lutie, the town, and the wind. The combination of the destructive town, and the winds haunting figure creates an overall feeling of caution within this gloomy road, making the goal seem near impossible.
There’s this really small highway town in New Mexico called Cimarron, and it’s small now but in the late 19th century it was a bustling crossroads for all sorts of people – gold speculators, ranchers, oilmen, and especially those vagrant characters, like Billy the Kid, seeking refuge from whatever lawman was on his tail. In Cimarron is this hotel, the Santa Fe Hotel, and they say that this place is the most haunted hotel still in operation, in the west. The lights flicker on and off, and people, visitors just say they encounter really weird things – like if you go in this one room, you might see a woman out of the corner of your eye, sitting on the windowsill and looking out for someone. And when you turn to face her, she disappears, but all of a sudden you smell a subtle waft of strawberry-scented perfume. Weird – yet you still not sure if this is true? Sounds sketchy, I know. Oh – I should say this hotel is haunted because 23 people have been shot to death in the hotel, either from a bar-fight or card-game or something. Well I went to stay at the hotel for a night, before I headed on to a nearby Boy Scout camp. I went with my troop, and we all got our own rooms. Guess what room I got – the strawbe...
There have been reports of lights turning on and off at will, doors flying open by themselves, and during a period of construction when the electricity was disconnected, the lights came on at night (Embassy). The last haunted place I’ll be talking about is the Duncan Chapel Methodist Church’s Children’s Graveyard. The cemetery is older than the church, which was built in the 1850s, with some gravestones dating back to the late 1700s (Children’s). People have said that they’ve seen unexplained lights, disembodied laughing, and running footsteps and 74% of people reported this place is as haunted as everyone says
Darkness is meant to conceal, light is meant to expose, and there is power intrinsically imbued in both of these. Murderers hide in the dark, waiting for their victims, and the atrocities of different countries are hidden in history and official memos and propaganda. At the same time, light exerts power because it illuminates, it discovers, it creates vulnerability on all it touches. These powers, however, do not simply exist; they are forged within every aspect of life, even the very structures that people live in. Low-income tenement apartments are built so that they are not seen, colored in a drab shade of gray or brick, build alongside one another so that they blend into the background. They have small lawns and even smaller windows so that people walking by cannot get a glimpse of the life inside; darkness is used to hide their sad reality. Victorian mansions, however, do not need to shroud themselves in darkness. Their almost treeless lawns, small front gardens, and large picture windows are meant to illuminate their wealth, showing it off for the entire world to see.
I could almost hear the sea lions. There were some people on the beach, but few were venturing "Uptown" to stroll the boards. We used to call it the Inlet, the new name must have been cooked up by the $30 million dollar Do AC marketing team, along with the Tourist Zone trash cans lining the Boardwalk. A few blocks up, the Boardwalk ended at Rhode Island Avenue, so I cut over to the lighthouse. The property off the Boardwalk is still available for $345 a square foot.There were a couple of people on Pacific Avenue waiting for a Jitney, and I passed a deli and food market. When I walked through this area 20 years ago, I rarely saw anyone on the street. I thought I was in the twilight zone, with new apartments and condos, cars parked in attached garages, but no
On 666 Lucifer Street is the perfect house for you.The exterior of this house will amaze you. The deep, dark, and misty woods will make you feel squeamish just as there are spiders crawling up and down your back. The vines that spring up and down the cement walls will grasp irregular visitors if you get too close. The heavy wooden door is rotted to pieces but that's exactly how you want it, right? The dark spots that you down from the windows smell delightful and really make the house irresistible to have. The board up windows show how that windows have been broken off and never replaced it's a wonderful thing because it makes the inside even more dark and frightening. This exterior is by far the best
In Evan’s definition, she explains that “People often carry out some sort of action to satisfy the haunting spirit or in some way to persuade it to relinquish its activities.” (Evans, 100). In the Gibbs Bridge legend, there are many different actions that one must carry out in order for a haunting to occur and the actions are usually specific to the story being told. In one story, the participant must first turn off their car, flash their headlights three times, and honk three times and an apparition will appear. Another story states that the participant must again turn off their car and drop their keys out of their right window and red eyes will appear in their review window. Yet another actually involves the participant to get out of the car and walk across the bridge. Although all of these actions have differences, there is one common element and that is the participant must park their car along or near the bridge
The story begins as the boy describes his neighborhood. Immediately feelings of isolation and hopelessness begin to set in. The street that the boy lives on is a dead end, right from the beginning he is trapped. In addition, he feels ignored by the houses on his street. Their brown imperturbable faces make him feel excluded from the decent lives within them. The street becomes a representation of the boy’s self, uninhabited and detached, with the houses personified, and arguably more alive than the residents (Gray). Every detail of his neighborhood seems designed to inflict him with the feeling of isolation. The boy's house, like the street he lives on, is filled with decay. It is suffocating and “musty from being long enclosed.” It is difficult for him to establish any sort of connection to it. Even the history of the house feels unkind. The house's previous tenant, a priest, had died while living there. He “left all his money to institutions and the furniture of the house to his sister (Norton Anthology 2236).” It was as if he was trying to insure the boy's boredom and solitude. The only thing of interest that the boy can find is a bicycle pump, which is rusty and rendered unfit to play with. Even the “wild” garden is gloomy and desolate, containing but a lone apple tree and a few straggling bushes. It is hardly the sort of yard that a young boy would want. Like most boys, he has no voice in choosing where he lives, yet his surroundings have a powerful effect on him.
street in Syracuse, New York (Winders, 2011). It will look at how the built environment of
The light from the sun reflects off the pure white wall, illuminating the room. The dust floats, undisturbed by the empty house. This is what I see as I launch myself out the door, into the hot summer air, into the sounds of playing children.