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Ghost stories for an essay
Ghost stories for an essay
Descriptive ghost story
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Hell House
In searching for an interesting and reliable ghost story, I began by asking upperclassmen that would probably have more experience and time to have heard the legends and lore of Maryland. After asking many students, one of my friends knew one from her hometown of Ellicott, Maryland. This friend is a twenty-year-old junior, majoring in finance and accounting. She was born in Virginia but moved around quite a bit during her early childhood. She is Indian, and moved to India at the age of five and lived there for seven years. When she was twelve, she moved to Maryland, and finally moved to Ellicott City, where she resides. She is an only child, possibly making her less susceptible to believing in ghost stories because she never had siblings around to tease and scare her. She speaks several Indian languages fluently, as well as French. She is Hindu, and very observant. Hinduism has a great deal of mythology including ghost stories and legends, which might allow her to believe more willingly in ghost stories. She was a good storyteller, and described to me a very interesting and revealing ghost legend about Ellicott City.
The teller began describing the legend of what she knows as “Hell House” in Old Ellicott City, Maryland. She told me that it was off of River Road and is currently abandoned and rundown. She had heard that it was a female institute or an asylum for crazy women. She gave me two important details about the history during the time that it was a “female institute.” According to legend, one of the girls staying there committed suicide by jumping off the top of the building. It is said that her ghost has haunted the grounds ever since. The other event during that time period was that—accord...
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... the world. Society’s belief in the supernatural is one reason for that and these stories can be so important to that culture because of its social and cultural relationships. This story is a great example because it exposes some of these relationships in an area filled with legends and ghost stories. The performance of the story is also important because it shows the teller’s views and beliefs and how the story affects them. Ghost stories and legends have existed for thousands of years and will continue to exist as long as we continue to believe in them.
Bibliography
Troy Taylor. Haunted Ellicott City The Patapsco Female Institute, http://www.prairieghosts.com/pfi.html (11 October 2004).
Robinson, Mark, and Ann Tabor. The Buildings, They Are Sleeping Now: The History of St. Mary’s College, http://ann.stubbornlights.org/stmarys (11 October 2004).
I was told a story about one of Cloudcroft's more famous ghosts when casually lounging in the undergraduate student physics lounge at the University of Maryland, College Park, with a group of students during a lunch break before class. This occurred during early April, 2005. I inquired whether anyone knew any ghost stories or folklore. A friend of mine volunteered that she knew several ghost stories from her travels. The storyteller was a 23-year-old Caucasian female from an upper-middle class family in Baltimore. She currently lives in Crofton, MD, and is a physics and astronomy major.
In April I sat down with a friend at my house and asked about any urban legends or ghost stories he had encountered. After a couple legends he had seen in movies, he mentioned a haunted bridge about ten minutes away from downtown. He is a twenty-one year-old White male; his father owns an appliance store and his mother helps out with the books. He first heard this story in the ninth grade from a couple of friends. Supposedly, they had heard from kids who had actually been to the bridge and heard strange things at night. The bridge is located off of Uniontown road, between a couple old farms. He has not encountered the bridge first hand but still remembers the story surrounding it:
The University of Maryland has a rich history dating back to its founding in 1856 as the Maryland Agricultural College. Built between 1804 and 1812, The Rossborough Inn is the oldest building on campus today (Ghost Tour, 2). With its history, it is no surprise that the Inn has been a hotspot for ghost activity. Knowing that there have been numerous reports of ghosts at Rossborough, I visited the Inn to ask current employees at the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism, located in Rossborough Inn, if they themselves had experienced anything bizarre or if they had known others who had. I entered the small office where three women were talking and with their permission asked about their experiences with ghosts at Rossborough. Upon asking my question, all three smiled, although shaking their head, they indicated they had not. However, they all had heard of the stories, and one of the women replied and told me to speak with the University Archivist. She told me that she has spoken with the archivist, and upon learning the stories, she said that she “got freaked out and really wanted to go home.”
This is Eleanor’s story. Another interesting point to make would be to address Eleanor’s obvious sexual orientation – and maybe the repressed identity is what causes the disturbances in the haunted house.
They live in the castle to keep it safe. The narrator is in the castle
Gilbert, Sandra M., and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic. Second ed. N.p.: Yale University Press, 2000. Print.
An interesting aspect of the story is that it incorporates an actual location and history into a ghost story: it is intriguing because the mysterious events occur in an accessible place that people can go and visit.
The narratives that we find in this story are always set in the most everyday reality, in a daily routine that apparently has nothing special. Until everything changes. Although we do not find in these stories supernatural elements or the characteristics of horror stories. Perhaps because it is responsible for teaching us the terrible
Ghost stories have been popular throughout the ages. During the nineteenth century, there was a sudden boom and ghost stories were made popular. Storytelling was the main source of entertainment as there weren't any films, TV's or computer games. People would gather around in groups telling or reading each other stories. The stories were made more real by the superstitions people kept and as the rooms were lit by dim candle light, it built a sense of atmosphere. Most ghost stories were written in the nineteenth century period, so people could imagine such things happening to them, in the places they lived. As storytelling was the main form of entertainment, people had nothing to compare it to, so it built tension, suspense and fear. In the nineteenth century there weren't many scientific advances. Everything was blamed on higher or supernatural forces, therefore, people believed the explanations given in ghost stories. I will be comparing and contrasting four ghost stories which were all written in the nineteenth century. They are ?The Old Nurse?s Story? by Elizabeth Gaskell, 1855 and ?The Ostler? by Wilkie Collins, 1855.
A 19-year old female from Harford County, Maryland, narrated the story of Black Aggie, the urban legend of an overnight stay in a cemetery. She grew up Christian, and still lives in one of the more rural areas of Maryland with her younger sister and parents, who own and work at an electrical contracting business. Accustomed to hearing many ghost stories and urban legends, she first heard the story of Black Aggie during a middle school slumber party. Late one Saturday night over pizza in our Hagerstown dorm, she was more than willing to share her favorite urban legend with me.
The Haunting of Hill House is a gothic horror novel written by Shirley Jackson. Supernatural occurrences take place within the house revolving around Eleanor. Eleanor is a thirty-two-year-old woman who never once has felt the sense of inclusion. Eleanor seems to never recall the feeling of delight in her adult years due to the fact that she was a caretaker for her now deceased Mother; who took away most of her freedom by being incredibly restrictive. Dr. Montague, a doctor that specializes in analysis of the supernatural rents Hill House, a supposedly haunted house. During the renting period, Dr. Montague begins an experiment inviting individuals who have had involvement in abnormal events
The teller is 24 years old, and works for the state department of education. Originally, he was from the Baltimore area where he attended an elementary Catholic school. He moved to Bell Air in second grade and grew up there. After his parents separated, he moved back to Baltimore to live with his grandparents, and has remained in Baltimore ever since. The sister he mentions in the story moved away to China years ago. A weekend or two ago, he, I, and a few other friends spent the evening in one of our favorite hang-out spots in Columbia, Pub Dog. It was there, sitting in our dimly lit booth, over some beers that I heard him tell this story from his childhood. He spoke in a strangely matter-of-fact tone, considering the weirdness of the story he was telling, and in a smooth, comfortable manner that seemed to indicate he had told the story many times before. Here is the story he told:
The Red Room and The Judge's House - Typical Nineteenth Century Ghost Stories? Nineteenth century ghost stories are typical of the Gothic genre. They are referred to as stereotypical, because in the period they were written in, it was the practice to include several distinctive elements which are now exclusively associated with this genre. ' The Red Room' by H. G. Wells (1894) and 'The Judge's House' by Bram Stoker (1891) will be discussed in this essay to assess them as distinctive examples of ghost stories. There are various elements which are distinctive characteristics of a nineteenth century ghost story.
The Demon Haunted World is a collection of scientific explanations written by Carl Sagan. Sagan is a famous astronomer who has written many books. Sagan is known for having very strong and pointed opinions that come across as offensive to some people. These strong opinions are very evident in his books. In his book the Demon Haunted World, he used his strong opinions to invalidate the most popular pseudoscience. This is one of the reasons that I choose to read this book . I believe in some pseudoscience, so I was interested in hearing the counterargument to these heavily debated topics.
a dull grey colour as if it had lost the will to live and stopped