Tale of the Haunted GPS Navigation System
The storyteller, who happens to be my cousin, currently works as a math teacher. He is 24 years old and lives at home with his mother and father. His mother, a talented artist, works for the United States Postal Service and his father, who is an electrician, installs security systems for homes and offices. Both of his parents are Korean and although his older brother was born in Korea, he was born in the United States. He is very athletic and enjoys skateboarding and snowboarding. When he was younger he was always the one most willing to take risks in the family. He is also a talented guitarist. He also has deep religious convictions as a devout Christian, when asked what he thinks of ghost stories in general he merely shrugged them off as stories meant for entertainment rather than anything of merit. When asked about the origins of the particular story he said that a friend mentioned it at a party several years ago.
The story was told during a snowboarding trip to Vermont this past spring. There were two members in the audience (including myself) and it was told in the room of the Red Oak Inn at around 11:30 PM. My cousin, who was seated on his bed, made eye contact with each audience member as he began his story.
A couple was interested in buying a navigation system so they visited several stores in search of the best deal. In most cases the prices were too expensive for them so they went on craigslist and found a great deal on a used GPS system. They received the unit in the mail and wanted to try it out right away. They installed their GPS unit [imitates placing a GPS unit in a car windshield with hands] in the car and turned it on. The wife, out of curiosity, hi...
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...of the motivating factors behind their purchase was the fact that the unit was cheap. There have been many cases where items posted on sites such as craigslist or ebay that have very attractive prices turn out to have serious defects or are fake. In this case the couple bought a haunted GPS unit that had killed the previous owner. The story reveals society’s general fear of things that are second-hand or things bought through websites where users, not companies, sell their wares.
The story of the haunted GPS unit served as a commentary on the consequences of over-reliance as well as blind trust in not only navigation units, but also technology in general. It also served as a warning against buying items that were at too good to be true prices from websites where the sellers are not reputable companies but users who have no desire to maintain a good reputation.
When asked, the storyteller elaborated that the old man was no longer outside the Wawa when his gym teacher went back outside. The teller had slight pauses in several places in his story, most notably before explaining that his gym teacher could see ghosts and after the elderly woman confirming it was her late husband.
When one usually thinks of a hearing a ghost story, the setting is dark with flickering light (such as around a campfire or in a basement with bad lighting) and, of course, it is nighttime. Needless to say, when I heard this story during the middle of the day on a Friday, I was a little taken aback. When prompted for any urban legends or ghost stories a white, female friend of mine immediately responded with, “Have you ever heard of de Sales Academy?” With my negative response, the nineteen year old student jumped into her story:
Since I come from the Eastern Shore of this state, I was surprised to hear a ghost story I was previously unaware of. The story takes place in a park in Salisbury. The person who told me the story is a 19-year-old sophomore at the University, and we spoke about it one evening after dinner. He believes it to be true, because one of his friend’s siblings has apparently experienced the ghost firsthand. I tape-recorded his narrative:
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:
This story was recounted to me by a 20 year old female student at my University. She is a Communications major, coming from an upper middle class family in the rural suburbs of New Jersey. I interviewed her in her apartment sometime in the late afternoon in an informal setting. Although she is skeptical about things such as urban legends and ghost tales, she explained to me that this story always unsettled her in an inexplicable way.
There was this rundown, old split-level on the edge of the town owned and inhabited by a young couple. This young couple did not have much money so they had to rent out the basement. The tenant that lived in the basement was a short, old man by the name of Louis. Louis lived there for about a year, but he NEVER came out of the basement. He NEVER answered the door during rent collection but just slid it through the mail slot. After a year, the couple was considering evicting Louis, mostly because they had a fear of Louis and his shady activities in the basement. Also, the couple was due for a baby in the upcoming year and they felt it was best for Louis to go. Louis did not respond well to the eviction however. So, when the couple was cleaning out the apartment, for another tenant, a skeleton fell out of the closet and landed on the floor with a loud CRASH! The couple ran out and called the police. After the whole thing with the police was sorted out, the couple moved out. More families would move in, but on the anniversary of the eviction, the Ghost of Louis would appear and haunt the inhabitants of the house, causing them to move out. The cycle continues today, and no one has seen Louis ever again, but rumor is he died after that eviction.
As I sat down with the narrator in his dorm on a Sunday afternoon—not the most appropriate time for ghost stories—he told me this well known ghost story from New Mexico. The storyteller is an 18-year-old male freshman majoring in international relations who is from Bethesda, Maryland. He is biracial with an American father and a Taiwanese mother. Born in California and raised in Colorado, the storyteller is a converted Christian. The teller was in the Boy Scouts, which is where this story comes from:
The story was told to me by one of my high-school classmates, who is a resident of the town of Atco. The nineteen year old young man is currently a sophomore at Clemson University and describes himself as being a Roman Catholic of half Italian-American and half Irish-American decent. The young man also noted that he is normally very socially conservative and a staunch Republican. His father is employed as a general contractor and his mother runs her own catering company. He describes himself as a “self proclaimed expert of all things related to the Atco Ghost.” He cannot remember the specific date when he first heard the story, but stated that he can remember knowing most of the details to the story for most of his life. He also claims to have attempted to see the ghost on only one occasion and after what he saw, he refuses to ever go back to that area of town at night. The following is an almost word for word account, which he checked to ensure its accuracy, of the lengthy story as he retold it to me ...
The telling of a ghost story entails more than the text itself. Lighting, environment, tone of voice, and many other factors affect how well a ghost story is told. As one can see by reading the following story, simply reading a ghost story on paper does not have the same effect as hearing it performed by the teller in a fitting atmosphere. The following story was told one night in a dark, shadowy room filled with five or six college guys. The teller used long pauses, emphasis on certain words, and body gestures to make the story all the more believable and chilling.
The story I collected entails a house in Maine that was experiencing strange occurrences with no reasonable explanation. The ostensible answer was a supernatural presence. The story was recounted by a family member trying to remember how the story went. It was told to her when she was younger, and she heard the story first hand from her relatives who experienced the phenomena. While telling me the story many years later, she remembered many details and events.
[6] Efrati, A., Fowler, G., “Google Glass is Watching – Now What?”, Wall Street Journall, 17 May 2013. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324767004578489503146013208.html .
Stories of ghosts have been told since ancient times, which contain historical figures such as royalty, politicians, and writers. Because of these prehistoric tales, societies began to perform
There was a time a person would use a roadmap to get from one location to another. Some also would stop and ask for directions. Today, you seldom see paper maps and people stopping at a local gas station for directions. Many vehicles come with a navigation system that provides a real-time map of the vehicle’s current location as well as systematic directions to requested destination.
GPS is a system of satellites radio-transmitters that orbit the planet in great numbers; their purpose is to be able to pinpoint the exact location of an individual or any type of vessel that is equipped with a receiver transmitter within a very small radius. GPS navigation has had a great impact upon society in general as well and its commercial and military applications. Global Positioning is made available at no cost to anyone who has a GPS receiver unit anywhere on the planet. A GPS unit is able to give the user longitude/latitude information as well as, altitude, traveling speed, distance traveled, distance remaining and time in any type of weather conditions imaginable.