College Ghost Lore If one were to take the beltway to I-270 north, about an hour north of Washington, DC one would arrive at a town called Emmitsburg, Maryland. Is the town haunted? I collected several stories from a senior in college who is from Emmitsburg. This senior is a white female. The stories I collected, many of which have to do with the small Catholic college indicate a rich ghost lore in the town. There are several stories that this woman told me concerning her hometown. The first is one that most people who live in the town know. In the mid 1800s, a man by the name Larry was born. Larry was the son of a famous composer and musician and came to teach music at the college. His father wanted Larry to be a musician like himself; however Larry was not as skilled. Larry became popular with the college students who would come to his grocery store where he would sing songs for the pretty girls. In the late 1800s, his father died, and Larry was quite sad. The following Christmas, Larry took his flute and went to the cemetery at Mount Saint Mary’s College to play one of his father’s most famous pieces, “When the Glory Lit the Midnight Air”. The town folk thought he finally mastered the ability to play the flute to honor his father. So the town folk went up to the gravesite by the Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes on the campus. The event became a tradition, and Larry would lead the people up to the gravesite each Christmas to play the flute. In the 1920s Larry died. Older residents say that if you listen very carefully on Christmas Eve or Christmas morning you can still hear the ghostly strains of beautiful flute music coming from the cemetery. A little while later, the music is gone, not to be heard again for another year. Another story the storyteller told me is that about Father Brute. One of the earliest presidents of the school was Reverend Simon Brute. He died in the mid 1800s. Brute still glides about the campus wearing long black robes. People who have seen his ghost describe the same sunken cheeks and other particular features. He usually smiles and nods and moves on. In Brute Hall is the room that Brute once lived in. Room 252 is supposedly still haunted by his ghost.
Ghosts and goblins are lurking around every corner. Mysterious creatures are waiting to jump out of every shadow. The boogieman and his accomplices are posted under the bed and in the closet, counting the minutes until children go to sleep so that that can attack and scare the life out of them. We all grew up with these fears in the back of out heads. There is always at least one person and one building in every town, whether it be small or large, with a story... a history of mysterious, paranormal behavior. The little town of Canton, Missouri is no different.
The storyteller is a 65 year old Hispanic woman from Riverhead, New York. I collected the story over the phone on April 2, 2006. She started off by telling me that the story took place in 1988 on Long Island. Her landlord had told her about a wonderful restaurant that she just had to go to, so on a Friday night the storyteller and her husband decided to try it out. When stepping up to the Jamesport Manor Inn she had a creepy feeling just from looking at the old mansion. She claimed that it had an eerie sort of feel to it and obviously did not look like a typical restaurant.
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 ...
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.
One night, around 1:00 a.m., my roommates and I were sitting in the common room, and I asked the group if they knew of a compelling ghost story. My one roommate, a 20 year old from Pennsylvania, said she had heard a ghost story at the summer sleep-away camp she had attended when she was younger. She heard the story around a campfire in the woods of Camp Tonikanee, which is in Quakertown, Pennsylvania. She described her story as one that the counselors would tell the campers to convince them the camp was haunted.
There’s a haunted house in Dover, Delaware called the Governor’s Mansion, where all of the Governors of Delaware have lived. If you go to the house yourself, you might see or experience a couple different ghosts. One evening, a guest to the house passed an old man dressed in old-fashioned clothes while going down the stairs for dinner. Once at the table the guest asked the owners who the person was. The curious owners asked for a description of the man. The description that the visitor sent chills down the spines of the owners, as it was an exact description of the owner’s father who had been dead for many years, and nobody else was in the house. The father had also been known for getting drunk a lot, so to this day he can still be seen drinking any liquor left out in the open. The mansion is also known for being a part of the Underground Railroad, so lots of slaves were always coming and going through the house at night. One night the house got busted and one of the runaway slaves ran and hid in a big tree in the yard. The slave was up there for a while and was already tired from his journey to the house.
The particular story I collected takes place in Philadelphia, where ghost stories are plentiful. Philadelphia is an old city with a rich cultural heritage, and our founding fathers made history in the place that was once our nation’s capital (Eidmann). Many believe that their spirits and spirits of those from colonial times still lurk around. It is easy to feel like spirits are around when in a place where many people have lived and died before, and in a place that is filled with old buildings and landmarks. All of these factors make this city a perfect place for a ghost story.
The following ghost story involving a ghost named “Anna” was first told to me by a person who lives near the ghost site. A New Jersey native, this girl was an eighteen-year-old college student. She came from a middle-class, predominantly white, suburban neighborhood. This story about Anna’s ghost was told to a group of other college students and me while eating dinner at the campus diner. The storyteller, I, and our group of friends began to discuss the things we teenagers do to occupy ourselves on weekend nights when we’re bored. Another friend of ours mentioned that she and her friends would trespass into an old, abandoned house in her neighborhood just for thrills. The storyteller then announced that she knew of this road in her hometown of Totowa, New Jersey that is haunted by a teenage ghost named Anna who is dressed in a white gown and was killed by a car while on the road. The storyteller did not know the exact name of this road; she claims that it is now only referred to as Anna’s road. She also did not know when the accident occurred and had not been there herself, but she asserted that a friend of hers had seen the ghost and verified the story for her. She then proceeded to enlighten her audience:
Hauntings are sometimes believed to be a contributing factor of people acting insane. The spirits could control what the person's mind thinks and hear and make them appear to be crazy. Haunting may make people appear to be crazy but this presence is actually there. It is real and could interact with you. Physical evidence, and others who believe could help prove a ghost is there. In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” by Charlotte Perkins Stetson, Jane, the narrator, becomes infatuated with her yellow wallpaper. Jane is being haunted because of the things she saw in the wallpaper, like the dark figure, which becomes a woman and the fact that her husband John and Jennie, the housemade are well aware of the mysterious factors of
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...
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.
Do you know what the closet haunted places to you are? The closet haunted places are in Weyauwega, Marsh Road. There are actually two haunted roads by the name of Marsh Road in Weyauwega (Haunted Places in Wisconsin 29). There is one where I live stretching from highway 54 to White Lake Road, which is the road I live on, and there is one near highway ten just off of Evanswood road which is a dead end (Haunted Places in Wisconsin 29). Both of these roads are unmarked, which means that they don’t have any street signs. The first Marsh Road I am going to talk about is the one off of Evanswood Road (Haunted Places in Wisconsin 29). Legend says that in the 1960s and 1970s there was a “Make-out Couch”, and on the night after prom there was a couple that was on the couch late that night and it is said that a man, in which they call the Goatman, killed them and left there remains still on the couch (Haunted Places in Wisconsin 29). Also another myth is that if you stop your car on the bridge of marsh road that your car will not start back up. Many people have said that they have seen the couple’s ghosts. Other paranormal activities include orbs found in pictures from studies that have been conducted on the road (Haunted Places in Wisconsin 29). Also many people say...
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.
The sea breeze caresses Clive’s face as he sat at the edge of the pier. He casts his rod, shaking his head in disappointment. It’s been five hours and still no bites. What’s up with this fishing town? Clive closes his eyes and can hear his fathers voice in the wind, retelling him about the move to Poland. Out of all the towns, why does he decide on a town called Aldabert? Sounds lame.