Mount de Sales Academy 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: Mount De Sales Academy is one of those Catholic, all girls’ schools that teaches their students to be good Catholics and all that. In the 1940s, however, there was one girl who didn’t listen to all the rules and became pregnant. For the time, this was a terrible situation and the girl didn’t know what to do. She lived at the school on the top floor and eventually committed suicide instead of facing the trouble she would have been in. Ever since then, there have been reports in the school of doors opening and closing with no possible explanation and silhouettes seen in the windows when there should be no one at the school. The storyteller had not witnessed the strange happenings at the school but claimed to know someone who had seen the disturbances. As a performance, the telling of this story was very matter a fact and my friend did not self-aggrandize; the performance was quick, to the point, but not particularly dramatic. The storyteller told the legend as fact and was not melodramatic about her role as storyteller. While researching the story I was only able to find one specific reference to Mount de Sales and any ghostly presence there. However, at this online repository of lore relating to the State of Maryland, Mount de Sales Academy is mentioned along with “reports of doors open[ing] and clos[ing] while locked and…a bright blue silhouette walk[ing] by the windows” (Juliano and Carlson). Further research found no other reference to de Sales in any stories and no reference to any suicide or murder at the school. The additional tale found relating to the Catonsville school does reflect the story told to me. Both mention doors opening and closing without cause along with a ghostly silhouette; but there is no reference in the Internet source of the suicide of a pregnant girl.
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 “Gryphon” by Charles Baxter, a class of fourth grade students gets a substitute teacher. She is very eccentric but knowledgeable and tells the whole class a lot of myths and facts. It is up to the class to decide what is true or not.
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.”
The teller showed no unusual emotion while retelling this story to me. He was positive that it was not true. He told the story in a mocking tone; he sometimes finished his sentences with laughter or a smile.
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:
In ‘unreliable narration’ the narrator’s account is at odds with the implied reader's surmises about the story’s real intentions. The story und...
In this story we see many strange things taking place at a house on Harley Street in a town called Bly. We meet Mrs. Grose a housekeeper who is taking care of the house while the master is out of town. The governess, also the narrator and unnamed in this story, has more credentials than the housekeeper and is mainly in charge of caring for the children. Flora and Miles, two young children who are left in the care of these women until their uncle returns. Throughout the story the governess explains to Mrs. Grose that she is seeing two people staring at her. At first Mrs. Grose thinks what she is saying is ridiculous, but after careful examination she begins to agree with the governess. The governess explains in full detail what these people looked like and Mrs. Grose tells her it's the ghosts of Peter Quint (the previous butler) and Miss. Jessel (a previous maid).
tells the story as it should be told and comes under the utter annoyance of the
The unnamed narrator states that he is not expecting anyone to believe the extraordinarily strange story that he is about to recount; however, he proceeds to lay out the events as he saw them. Further into the story the reader finds out exactly why the narrator is not to be trusted – he is an alcoholic. The narrator begins fighting his inner demons a...
The story describes the house as being old and tended by an old man. The house is barely described other than it just being dark (paragraph 4). This adds to the creepy
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 setting for this ghost story was at Sturdivant Hall, in Selma, Alabama in the 1860’s.
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.
... dispel the myths but he only ends up amplifying the interest in the man. The man never intended for the story to be believable. He even tried to make it so farfetched that the people dismissed it on their own but they still believed. The character then must carry on with the story so that he does not look like a complete liar. The philosophical reasoning behind the story is that no one should lie in any sort of scenario because the results of the lie may end by blowing up in their face.
The Nelly Butler hauntings is referred to as the first recorded ghost story in American history (LiBrizzi 5), and possibly the most exciting hauntings to date as there are still many unsolved mysteries. The apparition appeared on more than 30 separate occasions to over 100 witnesses in Sullivan, Maine, just over fifteen years after the American Revolution (5-6). Although the Nelly Butler apparition is one of the most convincing ghosts of all time, it was subject to suspicions of fraud. These claims turn out to be groundless as the evidence reveals the ghost to be genuine.