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I’m from a little dot on the map called Lower Macungie Township. The township comprises a handful of towns, villages and a borough, but all that’s really there is basically my mom’s house, a diner and a cornfield (Ooh, we just got a Starbucks, too. Welcome to the 21st century, everyone). For some reason, our quiet little township has what seems to me a disproportionately high number of ghost stories and folk legends. I’m talking enough to fill a book.
Or at least a healthy chunk of one. Ghost Stories of the Lehigh Valley was published in 1993 – 
incidentally, the same year I moved to Macungie (Oooh, spooky coincidence! Boo!). The writing wasn’t great and the design was worse, but for a kid with some morbid curiosities, the book was a treasure. Macungie finally had something interesting going for it.
Among the ghosts that call my town home are…
Bucky
Bucky is the resident ghost at a building just down the street from a friend’s house. The Hensingerville Hotel has been variously been a hotel, a tavern and a private home for almost 200 years, and the whole time owners and guests have had run-ins with Bucky, a one-time owner who killed himself there. Bucky is said to be mostly helpful, and at least two people who’ve owned the place have said that they’ve come downstairs in the morning to find the ghost had started breakfast for them by heating up a frying pan for eggs or putting on a pot of coffee. But like many ghosts, Bucky liked to play tricks on the living, too. One owner claims that one night, the lights over the bar started spilling water, even though there was a bedroom directly above them and no pipes in the ceiling. The water didn’t cause any damage to the plaster, and the lights continued to function the whole time.
The ghost of Minesite Road
East Texas used to be a remote and rough-and-tumble place (which is how it got its name), but its proximity to iron mines opened it up to heavy traffic along Minesite Road. No one can say exactly when, but sometime in the late 1800s, a man hanged himself in a tree along the road and has haunted the surrounding area ever since. Over the years, horse riders, wagon drivers and even modern motorists have claimed to see strange lights in the woods, apparitions on the side of the road and inexplicable problems with their rides.
Charlie
Back when the Inn at Maple Grove was still the Maple Grove Hotel and a stagecoach stop in the mine country near Alburtis, a guest was murdered on the second floor and the angry locals lynched an Indian in front of the dining room fireplace. Before he died, the Indian vowed to remain in the hotel and prove his innocence. To this day, the Pennsylvania Dutch in the area regard the place as ‘hexed.” One of the owners interviewed in the book claimed the fireplace is the location of much of the unexplained activity. Some nights, the iron cooking crane in the hearth started to shake, just a twitch at first, and then continuing until the whole building was shaking. Other times, the owner would be closing up after the guests had left the dining room and would hear someone whistling tune by the fireplace. Stranger still, patrons claim to have seen a white dove materialize out of thin air, fly across the dining room and disappear.
* * * * *
So there you go, a place with a ghost to person ratio of 1:1. I know you flossers come to us from around the country, and surely your towns have some legends of their own. Here’s a chance to win a free t-shirt: Leave a comment recounting a ghost story from your hometown.
On Friday, I’ll pick the best story and announce the winner. Weirdness and scariness are key factors for me, and I’ll pay extra attention to anyone that’s gone ghost hunting and actually saw something with their own eyes.
Comments (49)
Comment
So, not from my hometown, but I have two personal experiences.
First, I lived in what my roommates and I considered a haunted house in East Lansing, MI. Typical stuff, lights turning on and off, toilets flushing on their own, sounds of boxes moving in the attic when no one was there. But the absolute freakiest moment was when most of us happened to be home (there were 6 or 8 of us living there). Someone stopped by to visit, and she and one of the roomies were standing in the foyer. It was a pretty summer day, no wind or anything. All of the sudden, the heavy wooden door slammed shut and every single one of the double hung windows went flying open. It was witnessed by all of us, and was quite unnerving.
There was another house I lived in (they must have followed me) just outside of Lansing that turned out to have a pretty bad past. My roommate and I had a few strange things happen, the worst probably being on a day when she left her hair dryer plugged in. She hung it over the towel rack, in a way it shouldn’t have fallen. When I got home, I heard an odd noise…the hair dryer was on the floor, turned all the way up. It was one of those where you needed to actually slide the button up or down, so the chances of it just falling and randomly turning on were pretty slim.
Anyway, shortly before my lease was up, I was telling this story to one of the security guys at work. It turned out that he was a former detective from that area, and had worked a murder IN MY HOUSE! A pregnant woman was stabbed to death by a crazy ex-lover in our side of the duplex.
posted by Jaime on 2-12-2008 at 12:53 pm
Hi, I live in Bedford Virginia. The entire town is creepy. I lived just a few blocks down from the Avenel in a house that we have reason to believe haunted by a boy named Jack.(but that is a long story) The Avenel house was actually the head of a huge plantation in civil war times. It is said to be haunted by many spirits. Slaves, sisters who died there,the master of the plantation,the lady in white.General Lee stayed there during the civil war.All of Bedford is full of haunted history. Bedford also was home of the”BEDFORD BOYS”. Who were all local residence and were all sent to battel in World War 2. Almost all of them never made it home. If ever you are looking for a nice historical town, Bedford is the place.
www.cafepress.com/Amys_World
posted by Amy on 2-12-2008 at 1:05 pm
Funny you should ask, just this past weekend I went on a tour of the world’s first penitentary, Eastern State Penitentary in Philadelphia. While I didn’t see any ghost I did snap a few pictures and well I’ll let the picture speak of itself. You tell me what is in my photograph.
posted by RobbVS on 2-12-2008 at 1:14 pm
Click on my name for a link to photo.
posted by Robbvs on 2-12-2008 at 1:16 pm
In Stevens Point, WI along Hwy 66 there is the story of the Bloody Bride. On the night of their wedding a bride was killed in an auto accident. It is said that when you travel down this road you can see the bloody bride still in her wedding dress. A police officer was driving down the road and saw the bride in the middle of the road and was not able to stop in time and hit the figure. he stopped and looked behind him to see if there was anything in the road and the bloody bride figure was sitting in the back seat of his vehicle.
posted by susan on 2-12-2008 at 1:16 pm
Thankfully, I’ve never experienced her haunting, but then again I avoid Hwy 66 at night.
posted by susan on 2-12-2008 at 1:19 pm
Metcalf, Georgia- About 30-45 minutes north of Tallahassee, Florida. I was rather small at the time that we lived there. Our house was haunted by a little girl that was killed on a rope swing that hung on a huge oak tree on the side of the house. Being so small at the time, I don’t remember ever coming into contact with the her. However, my parents, along with Aunts and Uncles that would come down from North Georgia to visit us have had several encounters. They range from hearing fiddle music coming from the walls, my rocking horse would start rocking by itself, rocks from the fireplace would get thrown across the room, and the lights would turn on and off by themselves. We were never harmed by the child. She did cause us not to have very much company.
Since then I have moved, but I still go back to that area to visit, and the house is still standing. Still in excellent condition. I just wonder if the latest group of tenants are enjoying her presence as much as we did.
posted by QuinO on 2-12-2008 at 1:24 pm
There’s a house in the country not far from Siler City, NC (where I’m from) that is reportedly haunted. We had heard about it for years growing up, but then my boyfriend had the chance to go inside and talk to the family one day. He said they didn’t tell him what to look for, just to check out the house. Soon, he began to hear a piano being played somewhere upstairs. Upon investigation, he found an old player piano in a bedroom. The mechanisms inside had been disabled, and he never could get it to play in front of him, but he said that throughout the day they would hear random notes being played. Naturally I thought it had to be someone just playing a c.d. or something, but he refuses to believe that, saying you can’t mistake the sound of music actually being played near you as opposed to listening to it from a stereo. And he said it was only his friend and the friend’s mom in the house, so it wasn’t like there was someone hiding upstairs messing with him. The owners seemed content yet bewildered enough to convince him that the house was in fact haunted. I guess it didn’t help that the house isn’t far from The Devil’s Tramping Ground, the site between Bennett and Bear Creek where the devil is said to wander, making circles in the woods where no plants will take seed. Spooky…
posted by BAS on 2-12-2008 at 1:29 pm
Hey neighbor! I’ve got a copy of the Berks County ghost stories, myself. ;)
Anywho, when I was going to college in Kutztown, I lived in a house on Main Street that was totally haunted. To this day I cross my heart and swear on it. Aside from random knocking sounds coming from the walls, we found a crawlspace that had a bunch of stuffed animals with their eyes ripped out, and in the downstairs closet there was a secret staircase that was sealed off at the top, with the word KILL spelled out in a water stain. I used to have to either take sleeping pills every night or drink ’til I passed out because I was too scared listening to the crazy noises to fall asleep.
posted by Stacey on 2-12-2008 at 1:45 pm
In Salem, Oregon, where I live now, is home to the Oregon State Hospital, aka, the loony bin. It’s the location for the filming of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” Now it’s virtually falling down, leaky, and unsafe, but there are still patients in there. There’s an underground labryinth of tunnels connecting the various buildings, and the whole thing was built on top of a former asylum cemetary. (Click my handle for a pic of the picturesque side of the building. The side facing the street is peeling brick, moss, barred windows, etc.)
There have been many accounts of doors opening and shutting on their own, footsteps in hallways and sounds of unhappy former mental patients roaming the halls late at night in hallways where there are no more patients.
There’s something about a haunted mental hospital that truly spooks me out.
posted by Jenny on 2-12-2008 at 1:50 pm
I went to school in Athens, Ohio, which is supposedly one of the most haunted places in America.
Athens was home to the Athens Lunatic Asylum (known to locals as “The Ridges”) where there are 5 cemeteries in a pentagram shape around the town, filled with unmarked graves of the asylum inmates.
The asylum closed in 1993, though many of the buildings were already vacant in the 1980s. Most of the buildings are still untouched, and the students in town like to visit The Ridges on Halloween, Friday the 13th, or any particularly spooky night. We would also break into some of the abandoned buildings to see how long we could stay inside before getting scared.
The most famous story is about a female inmate who disappeared in the 1970s, later to be found dead inside one of the buildings. When her body was removed, there was a red blood stain on the ground in the shape of her body. And no matter how much they tried, the asylum staff couldn’t wash the stain out. When people break into the building today, the stain is still there. Supposedly, people have touched the stain, only to commit suicide or befall some other terrible fate soon after. One story in particular involves a student touching the stain, then going to her dorm room where she killed herself and left a similar stain on her bedroom wall. The stain couldn’t be washed off, and it seeped through coats of paint. In the end, the room was boarded up and can still be seen today.
Needless to say, I have never touched the stain. Urban legend or no, my curiosity isn’t that persistent.
posted by Joe on 2-12-2008 at 1:57 pm
She’s not exactly from my hometown, but she’s a local legend. Back in the 1920’s a woman was murdered and her body thrown into Crescent Lake(or Lake Crescent depending on who’s telling the story) near my hometown of Port Angeles. The lake was formed by glacial melting, so the unique minerals in the water saponified her body before it was found in the 50’s. Her case was quickly solved, but locals sometimes say they see ‘the lady of the lake’ walking toward them on the water when they camp near the lake. Haven’t seen her myself, but a mother of a friend has.
posted by heather on 2-12-2008 at 2:05 pm
I live in San Antonio texas, and this is a very haunted city. There are supposed to ghost from the alamo and a crapload of other famous huanted sites, however the only thing to have happend to me was in Alamo Heights. Alamo Hieghts is an old city within a city. My father and I were painting a house for one of his regular customers. My job was to scrape the old paint off of the covered patio in the front. While I did this, I discovered,inside a hole at the top of one of the pillars, an old baby shoe and a bit of rolled wire. I picked up the wire thinking my father could probably find some use for it, however, when I picked up the babay shoe the front door(which was behind me)slammed very hard. I fell of the ladder I was on and into the dirt. I tried not to let that incedent (and the fact that the house was empty) bother me, and I continued to work. In the middle of scraping the door slmmed again. I ran and sat in the back yard for the rest of the day. About a year later my dad commissioned me once again to work at this house, at night , in the dark. I had no choice I had to go. In the house I heard all sorts of things. Footsteps coming form the kitchen to the dining room where we were working, banging from underneath the floor, creaking, groaning, terrifying stuff. I cried and clsoed my eyes shut the entire time. My dad did not care. He just calle me a pansy and kept on working. Loving parent that he is
posted by Gilbert on 2-12-2008 at 2:13 pm
i grew up in flower mound, tx. according to local lore, “the mound” is an ancient indian burial site and if you build anything on it, it will burn down overnight. “the mound” is appropriately fenced off.. and then mowed once a year for easter sunday services. in truth, there is an indian burial site in the area, but nobody is sure where. i’m pretty sure it’s around the part of town i lived in though. several times i was home alone and could hear my sisters playing in their bedroom (my older sister experienced the same phenomena). a neighbor had a shadowy figure that would appear at the foot or head of your bed and watch you sleep.
more recently, i lived in a house adjacent to an enormous cemetary. we had “passing” ghosts, and luckily none were ever violent. our permanent ghost was rather helpful. one one occasion he assisted me in eating a cinnabun by turning the plate for me. several times my parents spent days looking for a missing object (usually a holiday decoration) only to find it lying on their bed they day after they gave up the search. once my parent’s old clock radio turned on at max volume and couldn’t be turned off except to unplug it, once plugged back in it functioned normally. my mom and younger sisters have heard footsteps on at least 3 occassions going from one end of the second floor to the other (but you have to walk through 2 walls to move that direction).
oh, the history of that house is sad. it was an aging couple’s dream retirement home. about six months after they moved in the husband was working on the side of the house on a ladder, the ladder tipped and he fell backward into the neighbors yard (which is downhill) leaving him paralyzed. the wife took care of him for over a year before she suffered a debilitating stroke. their children moved in.. and the history gets confusing from there, but i know a baby belonging to somebody living in the house also died. once the original couple passed away the house was sold and that’s when we got it.
posted by tami on 2-12-2008 at 2:21 pm
The orginal House of Blue Lights - Indianapolis, Indiana
Long before the musical inference, there was the House of Blue Lights in Indianapolis.
Skiles E Test and his beloved wife, Josephine lived alone in Lawrence Township, just outside of Indianapolis. They had several acres and owned a large home with several out buildings. Mr Test had been a sucessful farmer and livestock buyer.
In the mid-1960’s rumors began to circulate around town….seems Mr Skiles was so distraught about his wife’s death, he refused to bury her and insistead placed her upright in a glass coffin in the front window; illuminated with lights in the evening and clearly visible to those daring enough to enter the grounds.
Supposedly, she was wearing her favorite blue dress, making for a eerie blue glow as seen from the overgrowth on the property. Apparently, blue holiday lights also adorned the house for much of the year.
Strange? Perhaps, but facts make it stranger: Skiles was born October 19th 1889 and died in March of 1964. Josephine was born on July 11th, 1891 and died in July of 1980, 16 years after her husband.
So then, was it Skiles that was propped up in a bright blue suit and not Josephine?
Shortly after Josephine’s death in 1980, the Lawrence Township Parks Department leveled the house and the surrounding grounds making it into a public recreation area. Absolutely nothing exists of it today.
No descendants and no evidence to challenge the local urban legend regarding the distraught spouse and the unburied dead. The House of Blue Lights and the rumors surrounding it are lost to the ages.
Of course, one wonders why the land was seized and the house bull-dozed so soon after the death of the last occupant in the House of Blue Lights.
posted by Dave on 2-12-2008 at 2:28 pm
I went to an all girl’s Catholic high school in Seattle, complete with nuns, crosses, uniforms, etc.
My school had a legend of a nun whom we students dubbed “Sister Satan” who was said to haunt the hall of our school. According to the legend handed down from senior to freshman for generations, Sister Satan was once a student at our school shortly before WWII. Back then, the highschool was a boarding school and a teacher’s training college, and she was training to be a teacher.
However, she met this young man and they fell very much in love. Then he got drafted and went to fight in the war in the pacific. She waited and waited for him. The war ended, and she kept waiting. Then one day she received a letter from him that simply read “I’m not coming home. Don’t wait for me anymore.”
Completely heartbroken, the girl decided to become a nun and join the order of sisters that taught at the school. She was a proficient musician, and part of her duties as a nun were to play the organ in the school chapel (my school has a beautiful chapel). The chapel was often rented out for weddings, and the young woman was forced to play for many ceremonies. In the choir loft (where i sang many times as a student) the organist sits with her back to the rest of the chapel, and normally uses a mirror to see over her shoulder and watch for the cues from the priest. This sister memorized the entire wedding service so she could play without looking, as the sight of happy couples enjoying what she could never have was too painful for her to watch.
One day, many years later, she decided it was time to stop being so melancholy. Her obsession with the man who had left her was interfering with her devotion to God and her new, contented religious life. So at the next wedding, and all the weddings after, she resolved to look in the mirror and be happy for the couples who had found good lives.
At the next wedding, she did watch the mirror, and everything was going well until it was time to play the exit march. Who should turn away from the altar than her former fiance, blissful in the arms of another woman.
THe sister couldn’t contain her grief, and fled the chapel, running up to the top of the school, which can be identified from all across Seattle by it’s enormous white dome-shaped roof. There, in the dome, the sister hung herself out of grief.
Legend has it that she continues to haunt the halls of the school. Determined that if she can’t experience happiness, than no one else will.
As a singer in the choir, I spent a lot of time in the chapel and let me tell you it is creepy and does actually have an old mirror on the organ. Lots of people report weird things going on there after dark (lights going out for no reason, doorbells ringing and no one being there, footsteps, doors opening and closing, etc.). There’s even supposed to be an actual noose in the dome, though students and nuns are never allowed up there anymore.
posted by Julia on 2-12-2008 at 2:47 pm
Alright, I have (2) stories for you:
So… I am from a small town in Michigan called Climax, and in Climax there is a house that was a part of the Underground Railroad that went through Kalamazoo and Battle Creek as well. The house itself is not haunted that I know of, but there are (2) trees out in a field several acres away from the house where it is believed that a few slaves were caught trying to escape and were hung. This is not a ghost story really, it is more a part of history. But the scary thing is the trees themselves. They are out in the middle of the field - by themselves, and they actually look sad. I have tried to take a few pictures of them to show others, but they never turn out, they are always a bit blurry. But if you ask anyone in our town about those trees they will tell you that they have always given them the “willies”
O.K. 2nd story. Here is they wierd part, this one takes place in the Climax-Scotts area as well, and it also involves someone being hung. My best friend and her family lived in an old farm house (her parents still live there). She told me how the farmer that originally built the house had hung himself in an old tree out back after his family had died of some illness. She said many people had heard him, but not many had seen him. One night I was up using the bathroom at her house, and it had one of those wierd old sliding doors instead of an actual door, and it never wanted to shut. So I just left it open because my friend and I were the only ones there anyway. I heard a noise down the hall in front of the kitchen, right were I was facing from the toilet. I looked up and saw the silhouette of a tall person walking past in the moonlight… right into the family room where my friend and I were camped out. It happened so quickly that at first I wasn’t even scared. But after a few minutes I started freaking out and my friend heard me making a ruckus and came out to see what was going on. I told her about what I had seen and she assured me that no-one was in the family room but her. That was when she said that it was probably their farmer ghost. Creepy.
posted by Jacqueline on 2-12-2008 at 2:53 pm
I live in a town called Hampton, and I was assured before I even moved here that the place was odd.
We used to have 4 railroads running through our town. As a result, some of the older houses (mine included) used to be hotels, or associated with the railroad companies.
One of the former hotels (know affectionately among my neighbors as a “bar and brawl”) is two houses away from me, and is now a private residence. Supposedly a prostitute hung herself in the basement of this house. The current owner is pretty reclusive, but supposedly there have been strange occurrences in this house–lights turning on by themselves, and strange footsteps.
Then there is another house on my block where a guy went crazy and murdered his wife and children before killing himself. I believe this happened in the late 1960s. I have talked to the owner of this house and his girlfriend. They both report hearing voices and seeing shadows in their house. The owner’s son is terrified to sleep in his own bedroom, saying he is not alone at night.
Finally, Hampton has worldwide notoriety for one big thing–supposedly the ashes of occultist Aleister Crowley are buried here. From my research, it seems that if Crowley is buried anywhere, it is in Changewater, a nearby town that would have shared the Hampton post office in the 1940s. When Crowley died, Karl Germer, a German man who was viewed as the successor to Crowley in the O.T.O. (Ordo Templi Orientis, a secret society a bit like the masons) supposedly took Crowley’s ashes with him to his home in “Hampton,” and buried them in his backyard underneath an oak tree. Some local contractors have identified the old Germer homestead in Changewater, but it is apparently on a private road and inaccessible. I’m still working with friends who have contacts in Changewater, that might allow me to actually see the property.
I’m not sure if the Changewater property is haunted, but that’s quite a claim to fame!
posted by Brigid on 2-12-2008 at 3:00 pm
I’ve always wanted to stay at the Hotel San Carlos downtown in my native Phoenix. It’s been around since 1927 and reportedly has a few different spirits haunting it, including that of a young actress who threw herself off the roof in the early 30s. There’s also a couple rooms in one corner of the building which no one is allowed to stay in, reportedly because of the evil cackling that can be heard late at night in that particular section of the hotel. My coworker rented one of the rooms with some friends for her bachelorette party and she said some weird things happened that night, such as her blanket being pulled off her in the middle of the night.
There used to be a Haunted Phoenix tour which commenced in the San Carlos, but when I called to sign up for it two years ago they told me they were being forced to cancel indefinitely because some guests of the hotel found out through advertisements for the tour that the place was haunted and were upset by it. Friggin’ scaredy cats!
posted by Jessica on 2-12-2008 at 3:15 pm
When I was a teenager, my sister and I got way too heavily involved with a Ouija board. Call it a game or not, but we tapped into “something” and experienced a slew of other-wordly events in the weeks following our experiments. I could tell those stories, but the one I am choosing to post is the night we decided we’d had enough.
We took the Ouija board outside into our driveway. We were going to burn it. We sawed it up into pieces and tossed some matches on it, but it didn’t light. We poured lighter fluid on it. Still wouldn’t light. We added vodka, next, followed by hairspray and went through book after book of matches, but nothing we could do would get it to burn. Finally our neighbor came over, he was a kid around our age that we were somewhat friendly with, but who had no involvement with our recent undertakings. We passed him the book of matches, and the whole mess ignited the second he dropped one on the pile.
We’re convinced whatever we “woke up” didn’t want to be put back to bed. Needed a third party’s intervention to leave us alone.
posted by Jill on 2-12-2008 at 3:40 pm
When I was 18 years old, I started working at the Melting Pot Restaurant in Littleton, Colorado. Every single Melting Pot Restaurant is located in a historical building. The one I worked at was originally a library, then it became the local court house and jail before becoming a series of restaurants. The restuarant has five levels and is full of stairs.
Folklore says that ghosts of a librarian, a prisoner and a judge are still known to haunt the building.
On my first night there, I had just finished my shift. I was looking for my manager and was standing on a landing, with my back to the wall, five steps up from the bottom, when I was pushed down the stairs. As I said, my back was to the wall and there was no one behind me.
According to the rest of the restaurant staff, the ghosts like to make their “presence” known to the staff within their first week.
About a year later, we had a ghost hunting program from the Discovery Channel come in to check out the place. I noticed that one of the Medium’s had taken off her shoes. When they started asking me and the other receptionist about our experiences, I told her about the ghost that pushed me and she said that she already knew. She said that one of the other ghosts has already warned her of the stairs and that was why she walked around the entire time barefoot.
posted by Bet on 2-12-2008 at 3:40 pm
I attended Gonzaga University in Spokane, WA. The main music building is an old mansion that is haunted. The Jesuit priests on campus did an exorcism of the mansion in the 1970s, but to no avail, as it is still haunted to this day.
There are different ideas as to which member of the Monaghan family (who used to live in the house) actually haunts the mansion. Is it Robert Monaghan, the first resident of Spokane to die in an armed conflict? He was killed in the Samoan Islands in 1899 and was given a mysterious funeral, which supposedly included an upside-down cross.
Is it the patriarch of the family, James Monaghan who was brutally murdered in the house?
My mom, who has lived in Spokane her whole life, even suggests it could be Mrs. Monaghan who was supposedly broke her neck and died after being thrown down the stairs.
All I know is that students report strange noises and happenings every year!
posted by Missy on 2-12-2008 at 3:58 pm
I live on the island of Oahu in lovely Hawaii and we have a lot of ghost stories related to Hawaiian royalty, battles, gods, etc. One of the most famous ghost stories is that of Pele (the goddess of fire). Legend has it that she will stand on the side of the road in a muumuu and if you see her, you must stop to pick her up. My mom used to live on Kauai with her parents and she told me that one night she was in the car with her brothers and her mom when they saw an old Hawaiian lady wearing a muumuu on the side of the street. My grandma pulled over for her but when she opened the door, the lady was gone. I’ve never had any ghostly experiences but Hawaii is known for having a lot of spiritual activity. *shiver* I don’t like to mess with that stuff. I’m still very scared of the dark.
posted by Leah Y. on 2-12-2008 at 4:15 pm
I’m from St. Louis, MO. The Lemp Mansion one of the most famous haunted locations in the country. I caught a guy in a gray suit watching me while was video taping, but the table he was sitting at was empty.
posted by Ken on 2-12-2008 at 4:16 pm
I’m from a tiny town named Bedminster, PA (just south of Quakertown)and the house that I grew up in is so haunted it’s retarded.
A little history on the house, then on to the stories…
The main part of the house, the living room and my bedroom, was built roughly 250 years ago, bar far one of the oldest, still standing, structures in the area. At one point in it’s history it served as a brothel and during that time there was a man shot and killed in my bedroom. The bullet hole was still in the window up until my parents replaced it a couple of years ago (sure, wait till I leave, thanks). With that in mind, these are the abridged stories of my life on Elephant Rd…
My Experiences:
I seemed to be the one that the “ghost” had the most fun with. My experiences began when I was approaching adolescence (seems to be the MO for most spirit activity, apparently we can be “emotional” ha!). I was laying in bed awake (as I have spent most of my life, not much for sleeping) and I heard on the floor next to me a tap followed by a couple of seconds of silence…then another tap…then another…so BRILLIANT me decides to lean over my bed to see what the heck it was (I should mention that the house is hard wood floors throughout, the only carpet being occasional throw rugs). Well, much to my chagrin what I found was a pencil I had left on the floor earlier lifting itself off the ground about 3 inches and then dropping to the floor…then lifting and dropping…lifting and dropping. So, as would become common practice for me over the next several years, I dove under the blankets for protection. The tapping continued for a minute (or 3 hours) and when it stopped I immediately heard the damned writing instrument roll beneath my bed directly under me. So as to avoid the inevitable pencil-through-mattress stabbing I was sure to incur I jumped off my bed and ran screaming into my paren’ts room.
Another nite a few months later I was laying in bed, minding my own business, when a sudden PRESSURE surrounded me and I quickly realized that it felt like someone substantially larger than I had decided to cuddle up on me. Not so rad for an 11 year old. The creepiest(!) part was when said pressure decided to start RUBBING HIS WISKERED FACE ON MINE. I’d had quite enough of the molestation, so I flung my arm around and “hit” whatever was there, screaming “No!” and just like that it was gone.
Another nite, my step-mom and I were up in her bedroom with my baby brother waiting for my Dad to come home. Attached to their bedroom was my brothers nursery and from those windows we had a clear shot of the driveway. Our dog was up in the bedroom with us so all possible inhabitants were in the bedroom. Our Front door consists of a thick (about 5 inches) wooden door and a smaller wooden door with windows that rattled pretty fiercely when the door would be closed. Soooo, Sher (stepmom) and I were upstairs and we heard the RATLLE/CRASH! (small door) BAM! (big door) and then heavy footprints in the dining room. I jumped off the bed to run downstairs, but thankfully Sher was looking out the window and saw that my Dad’s car was NOT in the driveway. She stopped me and “locked” (tricky old farm house locks) the bedroom door. A couple of seconds later we heard the same RATTLE/CRASH!! and BAM!! followed by heavy footsteps below us again. Accompanying these noises was the shaking of the house that can only be felt in a house like this (accidentally stumbling in one part of the house brings a wall down in another). This continued every couple of minutes for about an hour until my Dad FINALLY arrived home. Sher and I were frazzled, to say the least.
To legitimize(?) my story here are a couple of things that happened to my parents…
My parents(Dad and Stepmom) were sitting on our sofa in the living room facing each other, reading, when they heard a scraping sound. My father looked up and told Sher “Do NOT turn around” (Sher says that my Dad’s face was sheet white). So of course, she does, and what she saw was just a bit unnerving. On the wall were two pictures, one of myself and one of my brother Ryan, and they were both spinning around on the wall. My parents said they made 2 full rotations before the picture of my came crashing to the ground, shattering the glass. Clearly, I was not liked.
This occurred during a sunny afternoon in the spring…
My parents were sitting at the dining room table doing whatever parents do when they heard a little girls laughter, sort of faintly. As my brother and I were at my parents house and this was pre-baby brothers they assumed that it was my neighbors popping in for a visit (neighbors in country terms means their farm bumped up against ours but their house is a mile away). So they waited for them to come to the door. A minute or 2 later they heard the laughter again, but this time it was in the living room. The laughter continued, little girl giggly laughter and then was followed by little kid running throught the living room (hard wood floors). When the noise seemed to reach the doorway between the living room and dining room it stopped. Silence. No neighbors, no nothing.
SCARIEST!!!
My Dad was laying in bed (he sleeps as well as I do) when he said the room became ice cold (cliché, I know) and he heard a voice, a deep male voice, say “Would you like to speak to the dead?”…my Dad’s reply? “Um, no thanks” to which the voice replied “Are you sure?” (I guess the voice understood the scarcity of these sorts of opportunities and wanted to give my Dad a chance to think it over. How nice!). My Dad, again declined, and all was returned to “normal”.
Besides these specific occurrences there was the almost daily regiment of disembodies footsteps, particularly around my bed at nite; doors opening and closing by themselves (our bathroom door was the rolly kind and would slide back and forth for hours during the nite); if ever there were toys left on the dining room table I would invariably have them tossed at me when I walked by(I was a huge enforcer of the little kids cleaning up after themselves once that happened a couple of times); Lights and Tv’s turned off and on by themselves, etc etc.
There are a million other tales I have but I tried to narrow it down to the most interesting.
Last thing, my Dad, in his research where he found out about the murder and brothel, noticed that no one had lived in the house for more than 7 years over the course of the last 150 years or so (which I guess was when they first had real records). My family is tough, though. My parents only just now have put the house for sale.
Any takers?
posted by Jessica on 2-12-2008 at 4:34 pm
Sorry for the super loing post, just so much to tell!
posted by Jessica on 2-12-2008 at 4:35 pm
Coming from Pennsyltucky (Monroe County) I find this quite reminiscent. I was lost in the woods one day, and stumbled on a tiny cottage with a book opened on the couch and a burning fire, but no one answered when I knocked. A week later, I found the cottage again, and realized it had been abandoned for decades. Still creeps me out when I think of it.
posted by dwindle on 2-12-2008 at 5:46 pm
I was living in Georgetown (coincidentally around the corner from the famous stone steps from “The Exorcist”) and I went jogging one day along the banks of the muddy Potomac River. I was sprinting along the rocky shore when I noticed a set of rocks jutting out of the water led up to three giant rocks, almost in the middle of the river.
For some unknown reason, I thought it’d be a brilliant idea to try to hop the path of stones to make it to the 3 bigger rocks. I never made it - I slipped and broke my right foot.
As I hobbled home later than night, my roommate asked me what happened. I told him the story and he turned white. He ran upstairs and grabbed a book of Washington, D.C. ghost stories and flipped to the story of the Three Sisters.
The photo in the book showed the exact three rocks where I slipped and broke my foot.
The legend goes that three Indian sisters died at that exact spot trying to cross the river, and that anytime someone tries to cross the river at that point, they get struck down.
posted by Stacey on 2-12-2008 at 7:02 pm
I would TOTALLY buy your house
posted by Mandie on 2-12-2008 at 8:09 pm
Well I’m from the good old town of Waco, Texas. So the ghost story I will use is from the Branch Davidian Compound. A few years back me and a few other paranormal investigators went out to take pictures of the ruins and the new church they are building on the site. Let us just begin with the utterly sad and angry feeling that came over our once happy and placid group. This site still holds the emotion was the some 80 people who lost their lives there. I have no urban legend or folk tale about this area. Just personal experience. This was not a happy place. while the current Davidian inhabitants were more then willing to allow us on the property and to photograph the area. There was most definatly a feeling of dread in the air. I wish I still had the photographs from that day, but they were lost in a fire. (And as for Robbvs, the picture is a very clear example In my opinion of an orb. I draw this by the fact that if it were dust, then more then likely it would not be alone. Also if you look closely you can see the concentric rings which give it a look of it almost vibrating.) Thanks for your time and have a good evening.
posted by Jeremy on 2-12-2008 at 8:26 pm
Back home in Va there is a spot that just gives you massive chills when you get to it. On a back road in the wonderful country of Fauquier County there is a one lane bridge that crosses into Rappahannock County. Some say it’s the ghosts of soldiers from the civil war, as that area was very involved. There are so many different stories about why it’s haunted but that doesn’t matter once you are on the bridge at night. I looked out the window once going over it and i don’t think i ever saw anything but it scared the shit out of me. And anyone else i’ve ever known who has gone over it. And when i was the driver i couldn’t get across the bridge fast enough. We stopped in the middle of it one night and i swear i could’ve had a heart attack had we stayed one second longer. That’s just the way it makes you feel. The creepiest feelings i’ve ever had were at that bridge. You could almost feel death and you could definitely feel terror. Wow i’m a little chilly from thinking about it. I may have to pay it a visit next time i’m visiting! If you’re ever in the area, find it and experience it for yourself.
posted by stef on 2-12-2008 at 9:03 pm
Also, Fauquier Co and Warrenton are ripe with ghosts and haunted areas, you just have to know the area pretty well. God i love that place!
posted by stef on 2-12-2008 at 9:05 pm
I had a couple incidents when I was visiting my Aunt in California a few years back. My aunt decided that we needed to go to Alcatraz and a little place called the Moss Beach Distillery. I knew nothing about either location, but I’m a big fan of local lore and such when I go on vacation, so I always pick up several books about the history about the place and state (Heard the Pele stories that way, also learned about ‘chicken skin’) :].
The first stop was Alcatraz. We got audio tours and began our tour of the island. When we reached the cells for solitary confinement, the audio tour invited you to step into one. As I reached the threshold of one, a quick blast of cold air hit me in the face, and I found no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t step in, yet stepped into others just fine. Afterwards I was reading one of my books and discovered a prisoner had been placed in that cell with the lights out (The cells are made of concrete walls with a single bulb inside). He began screaming about glowing red eyes for several days. Once the screaming ceased, the guards went in to find the prisoner was dead with angry red marks resembling hands on his throat. A few days later, the guards were performing a head count and found they had one extra. To their dismay the dead prisoner stood among his companions, then faded away as they all watched.
The second was the Distillery where my aunt decided to go for drinks. As soon as I stepped inside the restaurant, I couldn’t breathe right. It felt as though I had just stepped into a heavy cotton ball with a huge pressure against my chest. I moved as quickly as I could to the outdoor patio and once I stepped back in, I was fine. Again, it was only afterwards that I learned the legend of the Blue Lady.
posted by Casey on 2-12-2008 at 9:37 pm
I have never had an opinion on whether ghosts existed or not, but I am now a believer.
I’ve worked in my office for six years and this started about three years in.
I go into the restroom (I know, of all the places…), and when I’m washing my hands, my back is toward the stalls and there is a large mirror lining the wall I face. While I’m washing my hands, I hear someone open the door, then footsteps, and in my peripheral vision in the mirror, I see a small strawberry-blonde woman walk into the stall directly behind me. The stall door is very squeaky and I hear it close. When I turn around, the stall is open and no one else is in the restroom with me!
This has happened three times and each time, I am taken completely by surprise because I really do see and hear the person. It’s truly amazing.
posted by JRD on 2-12-2008 at 9:52 pm
My grandmother used to work as a housekeeper at the parish rectory and told me this story of an experience she had. The house was/is an old Victorian-era house. Some years before my grandmother started working there, one of the parish priests died in his bedroom “under mysterious circumstances” (Grandma’s euphemism for suicide), although she didn’t find that out until years after she had been working there.
When Grandma first started working as the housekeeper, she often felt very uncomfortable when cleaning that particular bedroom and the bathroom next to it. She said she felt like someone was watching her and even heard footsteps, but whenever she turned around, there was never anyone there.
Several years later, the current priest was going on retreat for a weekend and asked my grandmother to stay overnight to take care of his pet birds (the parish was down to one resident priest by then). Grandma agreed. She stayed in one of the bedrooms that shared “the” bathroom. She was completely alone in the house, except for the birds downstairs.
Some time during the night, Grandma said she got up to visit the bathroom. She had entered and turned on the light, when she heard a gurgling sound coming from the toilet. She went over to investigate, and as she leaned over slightly to look, Grandma said she felt a hand grab the back of her head and try to force her down into the water. She somehow struggled free and ran back to her bedroom, and spent the rest of the night wide awake, but nothing else happened.
She didn’t tell the priest what happened to her, but I guess he noticed that she was very apprehensive about approaching that area of the house from then on. When he finally asked about it, she just told him it made her very uncomfortable to be in those rooms. The priest then told her about the former occupant. I heard this story from her years later, after she had retired.
posted by Lisa on 2-13-2008 at 6:56 am
I have a personal experience to relay that occurred in my dorm room during my freshman year in college. It began one night with a flash of light. My roommate and I were asleep, I was oriented towards the windows on the top bunk and she was facing towards the door and mirrors on the bottom. I remember sensing a flash of light; I simply assumed it was the headlights of a car leaving the parking lot that was next to our dorm. So I rolled over and went back to sleep. A few moments later I heard my roommate grab her glasses, get out of bed, unlock the door, and leave the room. In the morning when she and I were getting ready for classes she relayed to me what she saw that caused her to sleep in a friend’s room that night: the flash of light resulted in the appearance of a blue orb that she saw in the mirror, it moved from it’s point of origin to hover above my head. (Thanks to her for leaving me to it’s mercy.)
In the days following that, our microwave, alarm clocks, and radio would all turn on and off on their own. These minor occurences continued all throughout the remainder of the school term. This was so unsettling to me one day that I unplugged the appliances only to have the microwave turn on a few moments later once I went back to my studies.
We also had a fan situated on top of one of the big wooden closets to block out the noise from the hall and cool the room (since it was a very old college with poor dorm structuring). While my roommate was at the photo lab late one night, I had finally decided to call it quits on studying and get some rest. Just as I was falling asleep I heard what sounded like something being dragged across a surface followed by a loud crash. I followed my instinctual reaction. I snuggled closer to the wall and pulled the covers tighter. When my roommate returned she turned the lights on and woke me to ask why I had taken the fan down. It was sitting perfectly upright in the middle of the room, on the floor, with the cord wrapped around it.
My final experience in that dorm room: I was asleep while my roommate was out somewhere and I woke up from a dream. I did not start awake like one would when they have the sensation of falling; I simply opened my eyes. (I’m a very deep sleeper. I routinely sleep through tornados and earthquakes.) When I rolled over towards the middle of the room and looked down there was a young boy and a slightly older girl staring up at me. What’s interesting about this is that I have very bad eyesight, my prescription is a negative eight in both eyes. I do not sleep with my contacts in and my glasses were on the nightstand. The surrounding room was blurry but the faces of these two children were crystal clear. I silently rolled over to hug the wall and pulled the covers tighter.
The college, an old Catholic college with it’s beginnings in the late 1800’s which will remain anonymous, is well known for several buildings being haunted. I have had more experiences on that campus but none more unsettling than those described above.
posted by Ann on 2-13-2008 at 7:43 am
I don’t live in a haunted house and I have never been ‘haunted’ (although my recently deceased mother supposedly haunted all of my brothers and sisters, making her presence know by a strong odor of cigarettes), but I did have two unexplainable experiences recently that might have been hauntings. I had a friend that was a decorator that died of lung disease a few years back. I had purchased a lot of his stuff including a Christmas wreath done in ‘tropical’ style. I no longer wanted it as it was, so I removed all of the decorations leaving just the lights, and hung it with my outdoor decorations. First night, I found it unplugged. It had been plugged into an extension cord that was 9 feet off the ground and could not be accessed without a ladder, and there was no way the plug could have fallen out or been accidentally pulled out of the extension cord. The next night, half of the lights didn’t work. I gave up, but the next night all of the lights worked, and continued to work for the next 4 weeks! I think my friend may have been upset that I ‘undecorated’ his wreath!
posted by Greg Steinmayer on 2-13-2008 at 7:59 am
My family runs a bed and breakfast. It was originally built as a retreat for the state highway patrolmen after one of their own was killed by an escaped convict while on duty. This officer (George) supposedly haunts the B&B, and some guests swear up and down to have seen him or experienced a supernatural event while staying there. I have my doubts, however, after working there for many years and not witnessing a single event that cannot be explained. Maybe George just doesn’t like me. He is a good scapegoat, though, for things like broken glasses, things going missing, or spills!
posted by LorinJuliet on 2-13-2008 at 8:09 am
I don’t think I can say that I’ve ever lived in a haunted house, but I think I can say that I’ve been haunted.
When I was younger, my family and I lived in a house that had been built in a partly-cleared pine forest. The area always seemed to be shadowed, at least to me. Anyway, when I was around 8 years old, I was sleeping in my room in the double bed I was forced to share with my younger sister. Nothing in the world can wake her up, but I wake up all the time, generally for no reason. Very aggravating.
On this particular night, I snapped awake as I usually do, but something was different. I glanced around and noticed an odd shape at the end of my bed. It looked like a woman with no face sitting on the bed of my bed. I knew she was looking at me, even though I couldn’t see her face. When I realized that, her dress suddenly seemed gray, her hair black, but still no face. I turned on the lamp and cowered under the covers until morning. When I looked at the end of the bed the next day, there was a black smudge on the comforter. It never washed off.
A year or so later, I saw the same woman standing in the middle of my floor, watching me. She still had no face, but I could make out her long gray dress and black hair. My father, loving man that he is, told me she was a demon. I was glad to move to my mom’s when my parents got divorced, except it seemed that the thing followed me.
My sister and brother began seeing it, too. This time it was a dark shadow that moved across the ceiling. It hung in the corner over my bed, then migrated across the middle of the ceiling, turned and halted over my sister’s corner. My younger brother heard breathing in his room, coming from under his bed and my dog would growl at nothing. We tried to ignore it, but things kept happening until we moved just last year. Maybe they’ve stopped for good.
posted by bryn on 2-13-2008 at 8:40 am
Well,living in Emmaus, there’s not much i can tell you about hauntings in this area that you don’t already know. However, when i was younger, i held a job at a hotel in another state. Not a particularly old building, however there had been a handful of deaths over the years.
In one room, a man had hung himself in the bathroom. I was working alone one night and got a frantic phonecall from a guest staying in that room, telling me that her 4 year old daughter had locked herself in the bathroom. Only problem with that was that there were no locks on the bathroom doors. I had to help this mother break the door down to get her child out.
Another night, also working alone, i went to the indoor pool room to close down for the night. The lights in the room operate the same way gymnasium lights do: a slot in the wall where one can insert a key to turn the lights off. I walked to the back of the room to check the bathrooms, and when i looked into the men’s room there was blood splattered on the floor. At the same instant i processed what i was seeing, the lights all went out. We didn’t lose power, the lights were on everywhere else in the hotel. Just turned off in that room.
I sure hated doing night time walk-throughs!
posted by thirty7 on 2-13-2008 at 9:21 am
Jessica - how on earth did you stay in that house?! You say it’s for sale… I’d love to see the listing for it! Your story’s probably one of the best I’ve heard. Chilling!
posted by Jill on 2-13-2008 at 10:12 am
How Strange! I was just in Lower Macungie with my fiance’ (we’re moving to Emmaus which is near by). We visited the library. He’s moved up there already so maybe I’ll ask him to look for that book in the library.
posted by Rachel on 2-13-2008 at 10:13 am
A building owned by the town of Westford MA is allegedly haunted by a lady in gray. The sports teams at Westford Academy, the town’s high school, are called the Gray Ghosts.
A friend of mine used to work in a daycare in that building and experienced something, but didn’t tell me the details. She did say no one will go in that room alone. Apparently she doesn’t show up if there are multiple ppl in the room.
I don’t think the town’s history has any dead ladies in gray stories to account for this.
posted by little gator on 2-13-2008 at 1:30 pm
I went to school at Norwich University in Vermont. It is a small military school with a very long history and many ghost stories. What happened to me was not in any story I had heard before. In my freshman year I was not allowed to leave my dorm at night, but my best friend Joe and I never paid much attention to the rules, so we regularly went out and caused mischief (I know it is silly to think that leaving your room at night is not allowed, but at military school what is allowed becomes very restrictive). So Joe and I would go out and smoke cigarettes or spy on upperclassmen or just goof off before going back to our separate dorms. One Tuesday night I snuck out of my room and left the building, walking down towards the hockey rink where we usually met, and waited for Joe to arrive. After 20 minutes I figured he had fallen asleep and began to slowly make my way back to Goodyear Hall. Going back up the fire road behind the other buildings was the best way to stay unnoticed, so that’s what I did, but I couldn’t help but feel a strange presence behind me. I turned around at one point and saw a cadet officer in full ‘Class A’ uniform standing about 50 feet behind me, staring in my direction. It wasn’t strange for an upperclassmen to be dressed in his best uniform on Tuesdays because we had inspection, but nobody wore them after dinner, let alone midnight. Now I thought I was screwed because I had been caught sneaking out, so I stopped where I was, stood at attention, saluted, and shouted “Good evening sir” (which is how freshmen greeted officers). He didn’t move after I said this, or even acknowledge me. He just stared from his distance. Even in the dark I could see him well; grey tunic, grey pants, black dress shoes, white gloves and sheathed saber. I stood there for a minute but after nothing happened I awkwardly walked away. I didn’t turn around again until I reached the side door of my dorm, and he was still standing behind me, only now about 20 feet away. I was so scared I could barely breathe. He wasn’t looking at me, but through me. A nonexpressive, cold, stone face. The kind of sober determination you only see in soldiers. I stared back at him for a moment and had an eternity’s worth of time to notice every detail about his character and dress. The feeling that rushed over me was completely unnatural and I knew I’ve never been so scared of anything. It’s not that anything happened, but the way he choked the life out of the clean mountain air. I think about that night and the feelings I had all the time. Sometimes I dream about it. Just writing this gives me chills.
posted by Steve on 2-13-2008 at 2:01 pm
I live in Cincinnati and I have always, always sworn that the Cincinnati art museum was haunted. As a child I went there often with my parents and HATED the rooms with Spanish rennaisance art. One room holds a giant tripdich depicting the crucifixion. Everytime I went in there, I felt watched. I don’t know how, but I knew it was a tall, thin hooded figure in black and that it was NOT a good “thing”. Years later, I was reading one of the “Haunted Ohio” books that told of the exact figure that I always felt being seen in the same place I felt it by security guards! My mom is still skeptical but I know it’s there. The Museum is in Eden Park, which is also haunted. An old Gazebo in the park is haunted by the spirit of a woman who was murdered there by her abusive husband. Another famously haunted place in Cincinnati is the 20th Century Theater, built in the 20s as a movie-house. My great-aunt had a house in a Cincinnati neighborhood of Reading that was haunted by a poltergeist and the ghost of a murdered native american man. One room always stayed cold and had a blood stain in the floor that refused to disappear, no matter the scrubbing. Things would fly off the walls and the lights and TV turned on and off by themselves. Apparently the famous ghost hunter Hans Holzer himself investigated the goings-on with the help of a psychic (who identified the native american man). Later, bones were found in the dirt floor basement. My dad also had an apartment in reading and claimed to hear footsteps and other mysterious sounds when no one else was in the whole building (it was a small four-family building occupied by my dad, uncle, and some friends).
My grandmother seems to attract a certain amount of ethereal attention also, but she resides in Burnside, KY. She told me of an early September morning, before the sun rose, when everything became still and silent and then she heard the sounds of horses and Indians whooping down the dirt road that runs behind her house. Later that week, her neighbor down the road mentioned the incident to her (not knowing what she had experienced). More personally, my grandfather was murdered my senior year of highschool just before Christmas. On New Year’s Day following, my grandmother received a call from my deceased grandfather. He told her “It’s OK” and she felt better. While helping out after the funeral and helping to get all the affairs in order, I was falling asleep one night and felt my grandfather holding my hand. I knew it was him and felt comforted.
My mother was very close to her grandfather and when he passed away (natural causes), he too visited her to help her. She said she was choking in her sleep and he said “Wake up, Donna” and saved her. I guess my family attracts the paranormal.
posted by Lea on 2-13-2008 at 4:30 pm
I am gonna have hard time going to sleep tonight!!
posted by septer on 2-13-2008 at 5:26 pm
In my hometown, the local legend goes like this: Back in the 1800’s, a young girl named Sally Carter went to her sister’s house for a visit. While she was there, she took sick and died. She was buried in the family cemetery at her sister’s estate. Years and years later, a party was held at the estate. Several party-goes stayed overnight at the house. During the night a terrible thunderstorm blew up with lots of thunder, lightning, and wind. One young man woke during the night to see a young lady standing at the foot of his bed. She said “my tombstone has been knocked over.” Upon investigation the next morning, it was found that the storm had indeed blown Sally’s tombstone over.
I am an avid ghost-hunter! While I have not witnessed any ghosts first-hand, I did have an interesting thing show up on my digital camera. I took a series of 3 photos of an antebellum house. In the second photo, an apparition appears in the left-hand corner of a window! It’s a small boy — you can clearly see his head, hair, eyes, and mouth!!! The first and third pictures in the trio show no apparition.
posted by Leigh on 2-13-2008 at 7:25 pm
I live in Asheville, NC which also seems to have an extraordinarily high ghost-to-resident ratio. The city took into the 1980s to repay its debt from the depression so there are still a ton of buildings from the 1920s and earlier, which I think is part of why so many older inhabitants have hung around.
The Grove Park Inn is a resort hotel that was built in 1912, and home to The Pink Lady. A young woman fell off an indoor balcony, fell to her death, and never left the property. Several employees have seen her (she wears a pink nightgown) and there have been reports of strange feelings and sounds in the room she occupied. One woman even called the front desk to thank the hotel profusely because her young son had been lost wandering the halls and a nice ‘employee’ in a pink dress had led him back to his room safe and sound. An old mansion now owned by the inn is also haunted by Alice, a servant who died there. She tends to turn lights off and on, slam doors, and move things around while people are setting up for banquets. Alice has been seen walking towards the actual inn, and apparently hangs out with the Pink Lady on the golf course at night.
The Biltmore Estate is probably Asheville’s most famous attraction: a huge mansion the George W. Vanderbilt occupied. After his death, his wife used to stay up all night and talk to him in front of a huge marble fireplace (the servants thought she was crazy). You can still hear the two of them talking quietly at night. The swimming pool in the basement is also haunted; workers have heard maniacal laughter coming from the pool drain, and the whole floor of the building fills with the sounds of people swimming at night.
One of the local high schools is built on an old cemetery, and many janitors have claimed that the spirits of the dead are present but refuse to say exactly what happens.
A woman named Helen who lost her young child in a fire hanged herself from the beaucatcher mountain bridge. Many many people now report totally inexplicable car trouble when on or near the bridge.
There are also a few ghosts of bankers and businessmen who killed themselves during the depression. They now haunt the offices of the businesses which have moved in since.
There are literally dozens more haunted sites in and around town, but those are the ones I’m most familiar with. Pretty crazy for a city with under 80,000 living residents!
posted by lauren on 2-14-2008 at 11:45 am
I went to college in San Antonio, Texas. There’s a place outside of San Antonio called the “ghost tracks.” Supposedly a school bus stalled on the railroad tracks, a train hit the bus, and all the kids died.
As you drive out to the tracks, all the streets are named after the kids who died in the bus crash. It’s one of those things that kind of sneaks up on you. All of a sudden you look up and see “Timmy Street” and “Susie Lane” and “Alice Avenue,” and you know you’re getting close.
Here’s the way it works. The road rises slightly toward the tracks, and then the tracks themselves are sort of raised, so as you’re driving across the tracks there’s a bump in the road. It’s steep enough that you wouldn’t want to go over it too fast.
So you park about 50 feet away from the tracks, and put your car in neutral. I suggest turning off your engine to heighten the dramatic tension.
And ever so slowly, the car begins to move. But it doesn’t move downhill. The car begins to roll uphill, toward the tracks. You slowly pick up speed — while rolling uphill — and then you roll over the bump and railroad tracks themselves. Once you’re past the railroad tracks, your car comes to a stop.
The story is that the kids’ ghosts hang around the railroad tracks to make sure no one ever gets hit by another train, so they push cars past the tracks. And supposedly, if you put talcum powder on your trunk and bumper, when the kids are finished pushing you over the tracks, there will be tiny hand prints left in the powder.
posted by MattM on 2-14-2008 at 1:45 pm