Prophetic Dreams of the Motel Murders This particular ghost story was told to me by one of the members of my gymnastics troupe. We had become friends over the course of the season, and she was telling me this story in an informal setting in my dorm room on a Friday night. She is twenty years old and grew up in a very conservative Catholic family in New Jersey. Later on, as I attempted to find more people who would have heard a similar story, I ran into another friend who had heard a variation of the same plot. This was a Jewish Caucasian male, nineteen years old, who grew up in North Carolina. He told me this story as we were eating lunch at a sandwich place in College Park: Back home, a couple of students from some other school came to Rowan [University] to visit some friends from high school or just party. Two of the people that came were dating and they got in a big fight. They didn’t want to have to sleep together at their friend’s dorm, so the guy went to stay at a local hotel to think things over. In the middle of the night, the girl had this horrible dream that her boyfriend was crying out for help because the owner of the hotel was trying to kill him. The dream was really horrifying so the girl woke up in sweat but then realized it was just a dream and went back to bed. But then she saw another dream where her boyfriend was yelling at her to call the police because he had just been killed by the owner and his body is hidden in white van. So the girl got her friends together and went over to the hotel to see what was going on. She didn’t find him in the room he checked into, so she called the cops, and when they came she pointed out the only van in the parking lot. Sure enough the guy’s body was in there all bloody. And this is a variation of the same story: A couple of guys from some frat back home were traveling away to some Greek chapter meeting. They were all supposed to stay at the same motel, but they didn’t coordinate it very well and two guys had to stay at a different motel than the rest of the frat. So then one guy had this dream that the two in a different motel were being chased by the manager and he was trying to kill them.
When one usually thinks of a hearing a ghost story, the setting is dark with flickering light (such as around a campfire or in a basement with bad lighting) and, of course, it is nighttime. Needless to say, when I heard this story during the middle of the day on a Friday, I was a little taken aback. When prompted for any urban legends or ghost stories a white, female friend of mine immediately responded with, “Have you ever heard of de Sales Academy?” With my negative response, the nineteen year old student jumped into her story:
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 ...
* Duncan, Vinny, and Wayne are all friends working - or wasting time - the summer before senior year in high school. Duncan is the soul, Vinny the brains, and Wayne the muscle. At the end of the previous summer, Duncan tried to save a drowning girl and failed. Not being a hero has really affected his life, particularly his relationship with his girlfriend Kim. Also, he is now terrified of swimming, especially when the nightmares come back. Duncan's summer job is with the public transit lost and found. While trying to make the hours go faster, Duncan looks through the items, especially the books and golf clubs. One day he discovers an unmarked journal with no name, which depicts sadistic animal torture experiments, boasts of arson fires, and the planning for the serial killings of three women. Duncan decides to make amends for his failure last summer by tracking down the owner of the journal by using clues left hidden in the diary. After talking with his friend Vinny, Duncan decides to turn the journal over to the police, but they do not take him seriously, so he decides to get help from Vinny, do some research at the local library, and find out where the killer works and lives so they can prove to the police the diary is for real. But in the process when Duncan finds the house of the serial killer, he decides to take a look in it but unfortunately at that very time the serial killer appears and chases Duncan to the subway station. They get into fight there and they both fell on the subway tracks in the station where they get hit by the train. Duncan luckily survives but the serial killer dies.
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.
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.
I have lived in Baltimore for quite some time now, and it is impossible to live in the area and not know that there is a ghost story associated with the Admiral Fell Inn at Fell Point (a section of Baltimore located right on the harbor). The man who told me this story is a very well educated, 61 year old credit union CEO. He told me the story over dinner, with me trying to shush the rest of the guests because they all wanted to tell their own versions. I have included his version of the Ghost of Admiral Fell below, excluding only names and comments from others:
When Tyler 17 and TJ were running in the woods, they were trying not to hit anything weird like 18 snakes in the trees. When Tyler and TJ got to Lauren, there was someone chasing 19 her in the distance. So the three decided to go towards it. When the three got closer 20 they could make out what it was and it was a human figure. The figure got right up 21 to them and then they knew they were in trouble. It was Jason from Friday The 13th. 22 Tyler and TJ were smart they ran when they recognized him. Lauren stood there in 23 complete shock and shaking, but she wasn’t shaking much longer that’s because 24 Jason rose his chainsaw and cut her head right off. Now, he was off to find Tyler and 25 TJ, but little did he know Tyler and TJ saw the whole murder. They stood behind him 26 as he rose his headless body to look in the distance to find the two. Tyler and TJ 27 tackled Jason down to the ground punching and kicking Jason until he was knocked 28 out. The two boys tried to find help and were able to locate two chinese police 29 officer. When they got back to where they knocked out Jason, he was not there. The 30 four were looking around and all of sudden they heard a branch break. They got 31 scared and were freaking out. Then they heard a chainsaw start up. They knew 32 they were going to die now because no one could see where he was at and they 33 heard more branches
The book, What’s So Super About the Supernatural tells of well known stories about poltergeists. A poltergeist is a noisy or high energy ghost who might perform violent activity. A young girl by the name of Tina Resch lived in Ohio and is known to be a poltergeist. “No ghost was ever seen or heard on camera; however when the camera was inadvertently left running, the tape showed Tina surreptitiously pulling over a lamp” (Gardner). The evidence was found after people were reporting the activity. Newspaper reporters went to the scene to check out the action only to find evidence of Tina throwing objects violently around the house. Another example of proof that ghosts exist goes back to a case involving a poltergeist in England. An eleven-year-old boy by the name of Matthew Manning performed several violent actions that his dad had noticed and reported. Gardner writes, “ On one occasion, Matthew’s bed was thrown about and left leaning at an angle against the wall” (Gardner). These examples are not the only reported cases regarding ghosts and paranormal activity. Many stories about the supernatural have been told and passed down for several generations. Spirits are even mentioned in well known religious books that have been passed down for hundreds of
This tale was told by a twenty-year-old Caucasian male from Boonton, New Jersey, who was very excited to share his paranormal experiences. According to the narrator, Split Rock Road runs through a nice residential neighborhood. However, at one point the pavement stops and turns to gravel. At this point, there are no lights on the road, which is surrounded by woods. As you continue down the road, you come to a bridge on top of a dam and an abandoned guard tower. Legend has it that if you turn off your headlights and stop the car while on the bridge, everyone in the car dies. The narrator attempted this once with his friends late at night. He managed to turn off the headlights and stop the car, but all of his friends started screaming and begging him to go back, so he left very quickly. He said that it was one of the scariest experiences of his life. Additionally, there is rumored to be a ghost that wanders on Split Rock Road, a young girl in a white sundress. However, the narrator had never personally seen this ghost.
The victim is nineteen year old Khadijah Stewart. Stewart had grown up in the south side of Richmond, Virginia (a high crime area) where she met a boy named Tommie. Both were in middle school but Tommie soon got arrested for robberies and gun charges, he was sentenced to life as a juvenile. As time goes on Stewart forms a history of dating bad boys. The main on and off again boyfriend throughout her high school years was a young man named Lionel. In High school Stewart is skipping school to hang out Lionel and his gang members. Afraid how the streets could impact Stewart, the mother moves the family to Chesterfield County, a successful middle class suburbs, to create new life. As her life is changing for the better her heart longs to maintain
As I sat down with the narrator in his dorm on a Sunday afternoon—not the most appropriate time for ghost stories—he told me this well known ghost story from New Mexico. The storyteller is an 18-year-old male freshman majoring in international relations who is from Bethesda, Maryland. He is biracial with an American father and a Taiwanese mother. Born in California and raised in Colorado, the storyteller is a converted Christian. The teller was in the Boy Scouts, which is where this story comes from:
I heard this from my friend about two girls at some college. I think they were like freshmen or something. But they lived together, I think in a dorm room together and one of them left the room, and the other one was sleeping. The girl who left, had left their door unlocked, and the lights off, and when she came back from the party she went straight to sleep in the dark. (Thinks to himself.) When she woke up, her friend was murdered and there was blood everywhere. I think later on they said t...
Curtis experiences a vast amount of different tragedies in his nightmares. In his first dream that he endured, a storm came and the rain was thick, black and resembled motor oil. In Curtis’s second dream, his dog turns on him when the storm makes the dog go crazy and attack him. When Curtis wakes up his arm is in pain throughout the day from where his dog supposedly attacked him. The third dream Curtis and his daughter Hannah are driving through the storm and the rain is so thick that he can barely see out of his windshield. Someone is standing in the middle of the road and when Curtis swerves off the road to avoid hitting them, him and Hannah wreck and someone breaks open the window of the truck and steals Hannah away. Curtis tries to fight back but is unsuccessful when one of the figures in his dream begins choking him. In the fourth dream, Curtis walks into the living room where Hannah is staring out the window, he looks and someone is standing there looking in and then tries to break into the house. Curtis and Hannah hide behind the furniture and the furniture begins to float and Curtis loses oxygen and can no longer breathe. The fifth dream Curtis’s wife Samantha wakes up to Curtis struggling, seizing, and bleeding from his mouth. Curtis explains that his dream was about his good friend Dewart attacking him with a pickaxe. Curtis’s sixth dream he walks into the kitchen where Samantha is standing looking