Haunted Apartment, Bloomington, Indiana

An ex-girlfriend once contacted me to let me know that she believed her apartment to be haunted. She was, at the time, a graduate student at Indiana University, Bloomington, and lived in an apartment complex near, but not on, the university campus (I believe it was the Regency Court Apartments, but I can not remember with any certainty). Knowing my interest in ghost stories, she sent me an email describing her experience (which I no longer have, this was nearly ten years ago, so I can't directly quote from it).

She stated that the events started one night when she was in bed, and the door to the bedroom slammed shut. Over the next few days doors left open would shut violently on their own, and she heard a shouting voice in the room with her on a few occasions, a voice that seemed to be berating her, though she never told me what it said. As quickly as it began, it apparently ended, as she did not ever mention it again, even though we corresponded by email occasionally over the next several years. A few months after this experience, she left that apartment and moved in with her boyfriend in another part of town, never finding out what caused her experience.

Commentary: I have little to say about the alleged haunting itself - I could provide all manner of explanations for what was described to me, but I have no way of knowing if any of my explanations are valid. What is a bit more interesting to me is the conditions under which I learned of the story.

This ex-girlfriend and I broke up in a way that was not particularly good for either of us, but was especially bad for me. Although I did not know it at the time, she later told me that she felt guilty over the matter. We had been friends for years before anything romantic happened between us, and we both tried, with varying amounts of effort at different times, to maintain a friendship post-breakup. It is in this context that I received the email telling me about the ghost story. I didn't know what to make of it - did she actually have a weird experience that she couldn't explain, and knowing my interest in such things decide that I should know of it? Was she trying to find a way to relate to me post-breakup and, from what she later told me, feeling some guilt, and decide to make up a story that she thought I would enjoy? The way she told the story dropped hints without ever saying that she was seeing someone new, so was she telling me this story as a way of stealthily telling me about her new relationship status without flat-out saying it? I don't know, and that information is in the dust of the past now.

Still, if nothing else, it's a good short ghost story for anyone now living in Bloomington.


Source: Personal Account

A Small Town Haunted House in Indiana

When I was a kid, there was an old house near the farm where I lived. It was abandoned, and had been for a long time. One day, a friend and I decided to investigate. We found a way in, and looked around the place. There was furniture there, and various stuff that belonged to whoever had lived there, but it was all dusty and kind of messed up.

We had this creepy feeling the entire time we were there, as if we were being watched, and it really creeped us out. After a little while, we got pretty scared and had to leave. As we left, we looked back at the house, and in the window on the top floor, we saw an old woman looking at us, watching us go. She looked angry.

I know what you are thinking, but nobody could have gotten into the place while we were in there. She hadn't been there before, and had to have been a ghost.

Commentary: This story is a personal account from an ex-girlfriend of mine. She grew up in a small town in rural Indiana, and like the kids from every town I know of, they had their local haunted house*. In this case it was a an abandoned, or assumed abandoned, farmhouse.

These locations are often the object of legend trippers, usually kids or adolescents, either looking for a thrill, to impress their peers, or on a dare. Typically these excursions are harmless, though they may result in property damage if the legend trippers are of a malicious bent. However, if the location is not as abandoned as it is thought, the legend trippers may find themselves running afoul of trespassing laws.



*In my home town, the local "haunted house" was actually a church that had fallen into disrepair. It was eventually restored and became a community fixture, which makes me wonder what the current "haunted house" in the neighborhood is. Maybe I should ask my nephews.

Sources: Personal Account

A Haunted House in New Albany, Indiana

I was living in a house in New Albany, Indiana. I had rented a room in the basement, and my room only had one light source. Despite the fact that I had only one light source, and could clearly see if there was anything in front of it, I would frequently see unexplained shadows moving across the walls. I always felt kind of creeped out at that place.

Eventually, a man who had been a healer in the Creek tribe came to live in the house. One day he approached me and said "hey, man, we need to talk."

"Talk about what?" I asked.

"About the things flying through the air."

Right about then, the shadows began moving on the wall. "You mean those?" I asked.

"Yep. Those."

............

On another occasion, I was in the bathroom shaving, using an adjustable mirror, when I saw a girl, probably a teenager, leaning against the doorway to the bathroom. I tried talking to her, and she just vanished.

..............

Eventually I asked the other people in the house about these happenings, and they all had stories. One person regularly saw people who appeared and vanished. One woman would leave the house having turned her computer off, only to return and find the computer turned on, and weird, cryptic messages typed on the screen.

Commentary: In many ways, this is a typical haunted house story - the house is host to many different repetitive events, none of which appear to be connected to each other, but all of which are found in the same location. Unlike many other haunted house stories, the events appear to have happened to each person uniquely - nobody experiencing anyone else's weirdness - although there was the shared experience of the shadows on the walls.

Regardless, the odd personal stories instead of a single communal story or single theme for the stories is interesting. What it means, if anything, is unclear.


Sources: Personal Account