The Tale of the Banshee
On a dark and stormy night it happened. Not too far in the recent past, two teenaged girls were out camping in the woods. There, they sat in their tent while exchanging frightening ghost stories by the flickering candle-light. What began as a normal, cool, summer’s night, took an eerie turn for the worse when, in the middle of one particularly terrifying tale, an ominous howl rang out too close for comfort and a thunderous crash was heard.
As they scrambled to be near each other for warmth and security against the tingling feeling arising on the backs of their necks, and the fear of their impending doom, what jumped out at them was a horrifyingly great big... just kidding. This all started with two teenaged girls telling stories one night, but it was spring, not summer, in a dorm room, not at a camp site, and completely calm, not alarming in the least. For this assignment, I chose to ask a friend to tell me a story regarding ghosts, magic, or the supernatural, and what she came up with I considered to be very helpful for this project.
I collected a version of the Tale of the Banshee from my roommate here at the University of Maryland, who is also a college freshman. This young woman is a 19-year-old from Montgomery, New Jersey, with a very diverse and complex background. Her father is from Pakistan, her mother is a European-American Christian, and she herself is Muslim.
What she told me was told to her by older relatives when she was just a child, and accused of “screaming like a Banshee.” The curious little girl that she was, she asked what it meant; based on the explanation she received she never wanted to scream like that again. In her retelling she presented the story with a straigh...
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...fter an attack, the yowl could have been considered a warning cry.
All peoples across cultures and time need things to believe in and to trust. The people of ancient Ireland chose to believe in a deceased, friendly relative to warn them of tragedy. That is a much happier belief than the evil, menacing idea of Banshees that I had prior to this assignment, so I am happy for having learned more.
Works Cited
Ireland Now ©1997-2005 http://www.ireland-now.com/banshee.html
Irelandseye.com and contributors © 1999-2004 http://www.irelandseye.com/animation/explorer/banshee.html
Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd Copyright ©2000 - 2005 http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=229025
Morey, Eibhlin: Submitted on Thursday 17th of March 2005 http://www.constant-content.com/article/1788/The-Banshee/
Susan Sheppard http://magick.wirefire.com/newpage5.htm
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.”
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.
This story, although somewhat unique in its exact plot, contains many elements that make it a typical and traditional ghost story. These elements suggest common fears in today’s society of people in general, and children specifically.
The storyteller was an eighteen-year old male attending the University. Currently a sophomore, he was raised as a Catholic in Maryland. Upon visiting me a couple of weeks ago on a Saturday night, we relaxed over some calzones in my dorm as we began to watch television and listen to music. Flipping through the channels, we came across the Sci-Fi network, sparking a sudden interest in both of us to talk about scary stories. We began to discuss the local urban legends, myths, and horror stories that we knew, and he began to tell a story that he heard from a friend down in South Carolina during his freshman year. It went like this.
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:
I searched until I heard a story that gave me the chills. It comes from right around the block from where I live on campus, at one of the sorority houses at the University of Maryland. I collected this story the weekend of April 2nd, at my fraternity house. I asked my friend, a junior from Pikesville, if she knows any ghost stories. Her face lit up as if she was dying to tell me this story since the first time we ever met. She asked “you never heard the story of the ghost in the sorority house?” I replied no. The normally quiet woman demanded my attention away from the TV and went into her story.
The night was tempestuous and my emotions were subtle, like the flame upon a torch. They blew out at the same time that my sense of tranquility dispersed, as if the winds had simply come and gone. The shrill scream of a young girl ricocheted off the walls and for a few brief seconds, it was the only sound that I could hear. It was then that the waves of turmoil commenced to crash upon me. It seemed as though every last one of my senses were succumbed to disperse from my reach completely. As everything blurred, I could just barely make out the slam of a door from somewhere alongside me and soon, the only thing that was left in its place was an ominous silence.
The living room was dark and the only thing you could see was the brightness of the TV. Also, I could still hear many people talking from down stairs, fire truck siren going off, and the city lights that were still shining bright. At the age of seven, on a cold Friday night in Brooklyn; my mom, cousin, and I started watching some scary movies since it was around Halloween. There was this movie called “Child’s Play” and as a child, I didn’t like the movie at all due to the fact that there was an ugly doll that was moving and killing people. During, that weekend it was showing marathons all weekend long since it was the Halloween weekend. The bed was pulled out with all the warm blankets and snacks besides us waiting for the move to start.
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.
Fennel, T. (1993). Nightmare Tales. Retrieved from: Maclean's; 2/8/93, Vol. 106 Issue 6, p26, 2p, 2 Color Photographs.
I looked up at the black sky. I hadn't intended to be out this late. The sun had set, and the empty road ahead had no streetlights. I knew I was in for a dark journey home. I had decided that by traveling through the forest would be the quickest way home. Minutes passed, yet it seemed like hours and days. The farther I traveled into the forest, the darker it seemed to get. I was very had to even take a breath due to the stifling air. The only sound familiar to me was the quickening beat of my own heart, which felt as though it was about to come through my chest. I began to whistled to take my mind off the eerie noises I was hearing. In this kind of darkness I was in, it was hard for me to believe that I could be seeing these long finger shaped shadows that stretched out to me. I had this gut feeling as though something was following me, but I assured myself that I was the only one in the forest. At least I had hoped that I was.
The idea that she wasn’t enough. She wasn’t enough to help the one who had recently died.
It was dark that night, I was nervous that this dreadful day was going to get worse. Sunday, October 23, 1998 I wanted to start writing this to tell about the weird things i’m starting to see in this new neighborhood. Gradually I keep seeing pots and pans on the sink suddenly move to the floor. I would ask my sister but she is out with my mom and dad getting the Halloween costumes. When they got home I didn’t tell them what I saw because i've seen Halloween movies and I have to have dissimulation otherwise the ghost will come out and get me first. October 24, 1998 I think I got a little nervous yesterday with the whole ghost thing. 12:32pm, Went to eat lunch with the family today and I go to get my coat. I heard the words furious and madness,
Written literature wasn’t a familiarity to most of Africa until the later 16th century after visits from missionaries and explorers, but in its place were verbal fables and tales. These African tales “are used to...
Haunting Experiences: Ghosts in Contemporary Folklore. Ed. Diane E. Goldstein, Sylvia Ann Grider, and Jeannie Banks Thomas. Logan, UT: Utah State UP, 2007.