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Ghost stories for an essay
A essay on ghost stories
A essay on ghost stories
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Sorority House Ghost Story I searched until I heard a story that gave me the chills. It comes from right around the block from where I live on campus, at one of the sorority houses at the University of Maryland. I collected this story the weekend of April 2nd, at my fraternity house. I asked my friend, a junior from Pikesville, if she knows any ghost stories. Her face lit up as if she was dying to tell me this story since the first time we ever met. She asked “you never heard the story of the ghost in the sorority house?” I replied no. The normally quiet woman demanded my attention away from the TV and went into her story. "Many years ago a bunch of girls in my house [supposedly] were drinking and celebrating a girl’s 21st birthday party.” She went on to explain that drinking in sorority houses is forbidden by the university, and that a sorority would get thrown out of their own house if the university or the police ever found out. My friend told this story very well. I felt like I should turn out the lights and give her a flashlight to hold up to her face. She went on to say that, according to the legend, everyone was very drunk and pushed the birthday girl to keep drinking. It is tradition that the birthday boy or girl takes 21 shots on his or her 21st birthday. Unfortunately for this young woman, she passed out before she made it to her benchmarked 21st shot. The women, terrified that if they brought her to a hospital they would get into trouble for drinking in their house, took the birthday girl to her bed and tried taking care of her themselves. Before midnight (when she would have turned 21), the young woman died of alcohol poisoning. Ever since that night, the sorority house has been haunted. The storyteller told me that a friend she knows once had her keyboard pulled out of her desk in the middle of the night and the keys mysteriously started moving on their own. She said that toilets inexplicably flush and the sinks in the house sometimes turn on without anybody touching them. The storyteller made the legend very believable in the way she described young women who I know who have had ghost encounters.
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 ...
The storyteller told me the story of the Goatman in a mutual friend’s dorm room at night. I had come to the dorm room to ask my friend if he knew any urban legends of ghost stories from around campus or the state of Maryland. The storyteller, a 21-year-old biology major, shouted excitedly from the couch that she knew one. She is from Beltsville, Maryland. Her mother is a lawyer and her father is a math professor. My friend and I sat down on the couch and listened intently as she told the story: The Goatman from Beltsville.
I was told a story about one of Cloudcroft's more famous ghosts when casually lounging in the undergraduate student physics lounge at the University of Maryland, College Park, with a group of students during a lunch break before class. This occurred during early April, 2005. I inquired whether anyone knew any ghost stories or folklore. A friend of mine volunteered that she knew several ghost stories from her travels. The storyteller was a 23-year-old Caucasian female from an upper-middle class family in Baltimore. She currently lives in Crofton, MD, and is a physics and astronomy major.
One of my personal favorites is the ghost of Wood Hall. This apparition takes on the image of a little boy. Numbers of Wood Hall girls have seen him. Erica Gray and roommate Ashli Webster deal with this ghost all the time. When asked about the paranormal occurrences in their room, Erica said, "Pretty much every night, he flicks the channels on the TV and turns the lights on and off. Every once in a while he types random shit on the computer... I don't care though as long as he doesn't try to rape me or something. [laughter]" They aren't the only ones who have seen this little boy. I've even had my own instances of cold chills in my 75-degree room, flickering lights, and even a quick glimpse of a child standing at the end of a dark hallway at 3 in the morning.
The Haunting of Hill House is a gothic horror novel written by Shirley Jackson. Supernatural occurrences take place within the house revolving around Eleanor. Eleanor is a thirty-two-year-old woman who never once has felt the sense of inclusion. Eleanor seems to never recall the feeling of delight in her adult years due to the fact that she was a caretaker for her now deceased Mother; who took away most of her freedom by being incredibly restrictive. Dr. Montague, a doctor that specializes in analysis of the supernatural rents Hill House, a supposedly haunted house. During the renting period, Dr. Montague begins an experiment inviting individuals who have had involvement in abnormal events
The particular story I collected takes place in Philadelphia, where ghost stories are plentiful. Philadelphia is an old city with a rich cultural heritage, and our founding fathers made history in the place that was once our nation’s capital (Eidmann). Many believe that their spirits and spirits of those from colonial times still lurk around. It is easy to feel like spirits are around when in a place where many people have lived and died before, and in a place that is filled with old buildings and landmarks. All of these factors make this city a perfect place for a ghost story.
She knows of the story after hearing it from fellow students at the University of Washington, where she went for her undergraduate studies. The story was told during a regular hangout, by a girl from a town near Port Townsend. The person I heard the story from doesn't really pay the myth and "ghost story" idea any attention because of its common presence in that area. Washington state is a region known as the "Haunted North West." Capitol Hill has so many "ghosts" that companies offer ghost tours year round.
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.
The storyteller was an eighteen-year old male attending the University. Currently a sophomore, he was raised as a Catholic in Maryland. Upon visiting me a couple of weeks ago on a Saturday night, we relaxed over some calzones in my dorm as we began to watch television and listen to music. Flipping through the channels, we came across the Sci-Fi network, sparking a sudden interest in both of us to talk about scary stories. We began to discuss the local urban legends, myths, and horror stories that we knew, and he began to tell a story that he heard from a friend down in South Carolina during his freshman year. It went like this.
In a cemetery in Baltimore there is an enormous black marble figure by the grave of a deceased general. It’s a magnificent statue of a grieving woman, cloaked in darkness, a black angel…named Black Aggie. During the day the statue’s arms mourn the tombstone [slight pause] but at nightfall, the statue eerily gazes on. If anyone were to return her terrifying stare, they would be struck blind! Supposedly during a full moon the ghosts of the dead would rise from their graves and meet at Black Aggie’s feet. My friend’s father’s fraternity wanted to scare all of their new members, and during one of the initiation nights, they ordered all the fresh candidates to spe...
We knocked on the door of the off-campus apartment, as it opened we were confronted with the heavy stench of alcohol. A young girl was passed out on the living room floor, a pile of empty beer cans filled the kitchen sink, and the deafening music rattled the window panes. A group of girls managed to stumble past us. They waved goodbye to the host, who was handing drinks to me and my sister. It was not my first time drinking. In fact, everyone there was quite experienced – after all, it’s college. Half of the guests were completely drunk, and I had no problem with it. That is, until later that night when my sister locked herself in a room with a guy she had met only a week before. This prompted me to seriously consider the effects of alcohol. Would my sister have been able to see the danger of the situation had she been sober? Would the absence of alcohol have prevented the events of that night from occurring? These questions, along with the vivid memory of that night, fueled my examination of the complex social problem of underage drinking.
The Nelly Butler hauntings is referred to as the first recorded ghost story in American history (LiBrizzi 5), and possibly the most exciting hauntings to date as there are still many unsolved mysteries. The apparition appeared on more than 30 separate occasions to over 100 witnesses in Sullivan, Maine, just over fifteen years after the American Revolution (5-6). Although the Nelly Butler apparition is one of the most convincing ghosts of all time, it was subject to suspicions of fraud. These claims turn out to be groundless as the evidence reveals the ghost to be genuine.
a dull grey colour as if it had lost the will to live and stopped