The Haunted Elevators at the University of Maryland
The following story was told by a University of Maryland senior, told to her before moving into her dormitory freshman year. The girl, an Indian born and raised in Maryland, now twenty one years old, recounted the story in a coffee shop in a dimly lit corner over a cup of black coffee late at night.
I heard this story at orientation, when coming into Maryland. We were in Denton hall when the tour guide started telling us this story about a girl that used to live in Denton a long time ago. We were waiting for the elevators, because it was taking a long time. Out of three elevators, two were broken so we had to wait for the one. “You know there’s a reason that these elevators aren’t working,” the tour guide said. She told us there was a girl that lived there. One day this girl was going into the elevator to go downstairs and leave the building because these other people were making fun of her. She was crying, couldn’t see straight, and was so distraught that she was wiping tears off of her face, leaning forward, when her head got caught in the elevator doors. For some reason the doors didn’t open back up because of a freak malfunction, not completely uncommon when it comes to dorm elevators. It crushed her head and her brain juices somehow got into the electrical wiring of the elevators. Things were sparking, her arms were flailing wildly, and lights began to flicker. A combination of her rage and loneliness remained in the elevator wiring, and to this day the elevators in Denton still don’t work sometimes. When this happens, it’s her rage coming back to haunt the residents.
The story was told in a completely believable tone of voice. The narration was not s...
... middle of paper ...
...there is no specific evidence to support this story (other than the elevators breaking down), approximately 30 people die in elevator-related incidents annually in the United States. One death was an actual decapitation, suggesting that the accident depicted in the legend is rare but not impossible. These elements are what draw a complete picture of this story’s cultural symbolism. At the center of an entertaining urban legend are deeply rooted, yet easily accessible social implications and fears.
Works Cited
Mikkelson, Barbara. Urban Legends Reference Pages: Elevator Decapitation, Lift and Separate. Jan 18, 2007. Accessed at http://www.snopes.com/horrors/freakish/elevator.asp.
Schlossman, David, ed. "Metaphorically Haunted Elevators." University of Maryland Legends Collection. 2004. Accessed at http://www.wam.umd.edu/~dschloss/Legends/elevator.htm.
In Mary Downing Hahn’s “The Ghost of Crutchfield Hall,” Downing Hahn shows that sometimes the best of people who deserve the best end up getting the worst. In this companion book, you will see the difference between the two main characters; Sophia and Florence. You will also find out about the setting and what dangers can go on at Crutchfield Hall. You will see what something in the book symbolizes, including the cat and the mice, and the cold. I will show you Sophia’s mind and her thoughts, and what she is planning on doing, more about her death, and possibilities of what could’ve happened.
First, the elevator is presented as an alive object through Lila Mae’s interpretation and its narration. When she recalls her
“But we reservation Indians don’t get to realize our dreams. We don’t get those chances.” (p. 13) In The Absolutely True Diary of A Part Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie, Junior, the narrator, is an Indian teenage boy living on a reservation, where no one's dreams or ideas are heard. The Indians on the reservation feel hopeless because they are isolated and disenfranchised. Junior learns how to cope with his hopelessness and breaks through the hopeless reservation life to find his dreams. Examining his journey provides important examples for the reader.
The legend of the Ghost Children of San Antonio dates back to the first half of the 20th century, with the majority of accounts placing its origins within a period extending from the 1930’s to the 1950’s. The story is based on a supposed freak accident involving a school bus full of children. As the story goes, the school bus stalled over a set of train tracks and was subsequently hit by an oncoming freight train, killing everyone on board the bus. (Weiser) Not soon after this grisly event, it was said that, should anyone park their car on the very same train tracks and place the gears in neutral, the car will roll uphill (seemingly defying gravity) off of the train tracks to a safe distance away. According to legend, the ghosts of the dead children from the bus accident push one’s car to safety (seemingly uphill) so they may avoid a similar fate. (Mikkelson)
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian showed all of the problems that arose in Junior’s journey. From poverty and alcoholism to bulimic semi-girlfriends, he had so many excuses to stop, but the passion of his dreams pushed him forward. Like a hero, Junior continued, determined to do well and build a greater future for himself. An example that showed Junior’s passion for education and desire to achieve his goals was when he threw an old geometry textbook at his teacher: “My school and my tribe are so poor and sad that we have to study from the same dang books our parents studied from. That is absolutely the saddest thing in the world…My hopes and dreams floated up in a mushroom cloud” (Alexie, 31). Junior clearly understood his disadvantaged education and he was very upset about it. He longed for a better education. Junior was passionate about education, because it would allow him to achieve his goals and break the depressing pattern he was trapped in. Bravery and determination are caused by passion, and heroes are very passionate about their actions. Passion clearly drove Junior when he walked to school, since he said, “Getting to school was always an adventure…Three times I had to walk all the way home. Twenty-two miles. I got blisters each time” (Alexie, 87). Putting all of this effort into simply going to school, Junior must have had
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.
Given the title of this work, you may mistakenly believe (as did at least one prior owner of the book copy I had read from, if their annotations are any indication) that this is a literal investigation into all things paranormal and society’s investment of that which goes bump in the night. In “Ghostly Matters: Hauntings and the Sociological Imagination”, Avery F. Gordon offers academics and ethnographers – those whose profession it is to unearth the secreted relationships between the signifier and the signified, the subject and object, the real and unreal - a disturbing ghost story that should leave those of us in the field who came claim these titles with both the deepest of darkest chills and, through a new method of revealing and acknowledging the ghosts we feel, the hope for something akin to redemption. (In this way, perhaps, Gordon accomplishes many of the same feats as Stephen King and Edgar Allen Poe).
During the winter of 1928, in Montgomery, Alabama, a black girl who was only fifteen-year-old got on a city bus so she could go visit her sick grandmother. She was supposed to go to the “colored only” section, there were no seats so she went to seat up front, but just as the girl sat down, a white man boarded the bus and the bus driver yelled “I said move”. “This bus ain’t goin’ anywhere until you get on back there with your kind”.
In Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, the main character Arnold, also known as Junior, has many health issues, and notably stands out in the crowd. It does not help that he is a poor Indian boy that lives on a reservation, and that he decides to go to an all-white high school. Many of his experiences at school, and on the Reservation, impact his identity. Experience is the most influential factor in shaping a person’s identity because it helps gain confidence, it teaches new things, and it changes one’s outlook on the world.
My teammate originally heard this story from her classmates during her junior year in high school. My teammate had no problems remembering the story; she was more worried that I would think she thought it was true. There were pauses in her story telling as I wrote down what she said. She related the story with little emotion or suspense. The laughter in the background also affected the impact of the legend because it is difficult to be scared when there is laughter all around. My teammate also did not make a significant effort to enhance the effect of the story through hand motions or vocal tone inflections.
Urban legends are the supernatural folklore of our modern society. From one generation to the next, they orally travel throughout the world, constantly changing from one region to the next. Although cultural variations exist, the core of all these urban legends remains the same, to unveil the universally known individual and societal fears. “The Graveyard Wager” is a timeless urban legend told again and again, and the one of which I will explore more in depth.
Racism, stereotypes, and white privilege are all concepts that affect all of us, whether we believe it or not. If an adolescent of a minority can distinguish these concepts in his society, then we all should be aware of them. These concepts are all clearly demonstrated in “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian”. Anyone and everyone could clearly understand this novel, but the intended audience is middle school to college level students. The novel’s goal is to help white students understand the effects of white privilege in an easier, more understandable way.
a dull grey colour as if it had lost the will to live and stopped
Now, I don’t believe much in the extrasensory, but I distinctly remember having a bad, bad feeling when my mother traversed the last step. Whatever this premonition may have been, it had me at my feet and waiting at the bottom of the stairs for a scream I already knew was coming.
“You are about to discover what lies beyond the fifth dimension, beyond the deepest, darkest corner of the imagination, in the Tower of Terror.” The twilight zone’s: tower of terror was finished building July 22, 1994, and the queue lines have been booming ever since. With a ride this popular and constantly being run, there is bound to be malfunctions in the safety systems. Disney prevents such malfunctions from happening, fortunately. Even though there are low counts of injuries on this iconic ride, there can still be improvements to the safety protocols, because the history of the ride shows that change is possible, there are different safety features on other drop rides, and the safety protocols, at