This is a simple, rather charming ghost story.
In 1895, a grocer by the name of Thomas LeCount decided to move from the south side of Gardner Lake to the east side. Now, where as slackers such as you or I would decide to simply build or purchase a house in the new location, a go-getter such as Thomas LeCount figured that he already had the house he wanted, and he had the ambition necessary to simply move the house from one spot to the other. He figured it would be easy, as the lake was frozen, and....
...well, you probably have already figured out where this is going.
The two-story house was raised and placed on sleds. LeCount and company go about 300 feet onto the lake when the ice began to crack. After attempting to pull the house back, the moving crew decided to stop at nightfall and complete their work the next day. The problem is that the local mill drained some water out to use it to generate power, resulting in the ice no longer having water to rest on top of. The ice finished breaking, and the house pitched over into the water.
The house did remain in place until the spring thaw, until sinking into the lake, coming to rest on the bottom 15 feet below the surface.
The thing is, portions of the second story remained above the water line (come versions of the story claim that the house floated for several years which seems unlikely at best, but the second story and/or attic remaining above the waterline? That's actually pretty likely). The second story remained visible for years, and locals would fish off of it in the summers, and ice skate through it in winters. By 2005, the house had rotted away, and I suspect (though I cannot confirm) that the top floor was gone long before that.
But nobody died, and the situation was more comic than frightening. So, where does the ghost story come in?
Well, locals have long held that, at night, piano music could be heard coming from the lake. The house did, in fact, have a piano (as well as some other furniture) in it at the time that it sank. Allegedly, scuba divers in the lake have reported that portions of the house, including the piano, are still present underneath the water. And, on quiet nights, music can be heard coming from the spot on the lake where the house came to rest.
Commentary: First off, this is a delightful story. It is whimsical in a way that ghost stories so rarely are. That said, it is difficult to fathom the "ghost's" alleged origins - most ghost stories either have an origin as part of the story, or imply some sort of weird or dark doings that caused the place in question to be haunted. But not this one. It is just a rather odd and funny story about a house move gone bad, with ghostly music tacked on as almost an afterthought.
My guess - having the second story of a house peeking out from a lake is pretty odd, and it sounds as if it became a local landmark. That being the case, it seems likely that kids and local raconteurs began circulating the story in order to creep out each other or others. The house sticking up out of the water was probably sufficiently weird to give the story staying power, and now it's just part of the local lore.
Regardless, it's a fun story and I am glad that I encountered it.
Sources: iO9, Wikipedia, Damned Connecticut
Showing posts with label Campfire Stories. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Campfire Stories. Show all posts
Sunday, June 28, 2015
Monday, August 22, 2011
Ghostly Blood at Camp Sylvester
Camp Sylvester seems like a quiet, idyllic spot in California's Sierra Nevadas. It is used as a get-away for groups ranging from schools to corporate team-builders, and also serves vacationers renting cabins for a mountain getaway.
Most of the time it seems as if there is nothing at all sinister or disturbing about the place. But this changes when it rains.
When rainwater pours over the roads, red liquid begins to appear, and the roads can quite literally be said to run red with blood. In this case, it is the blood of Chinese immigrants, forced to work for low-wages in near slave-like conditions when building California's railroads and working in the mining camps that once dotted the Sierra Nevadas. They are gone now, and unable to tell their stories, but their blood still runs when it rains at Camp Sylvester.
Commentary: When I was a kid, my school sponsored a yearly trip to "science camp" for the 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students at Camp Sylvester in Pinecrest, California. The goal of the week-long trip was, I presume, to teach kids about biology, ecology, and the natural sciences, but for the students it usually became an excuse to engage in all manner of behavior that, while usually safe, they couldn't get away with at home or on the school's grounds. My own experiences at the camp were abysmal (owing to a combination of my various childhood social problems and two camp counselors who thought that getting younger kids to beat each other up was fun), while my older sister greatly enjoyed it and eventually became a counselor there herself (leading to at least one impressionable 12-year old boy developing a lifelong crush on her due to her ability to recite the alphabet while belching...a strange thing to hear from someone who runs into you by chance 15 years later, I can assure you).
As often happens when a group of pre-teen and early teen kids get together in an isolated place with minimal adult supervision, much of the social activity between the kids at the camp revolved around scaring the crap out of each other. One night, I recall a group of girls engaging in a "Bloody Mary" ritual in the girl's restroom, resulting in one of them in hysterics (the adult chaperon's had to be brought out to deal with the situation, and there was serious talk of sending the girl home because of her rather excited state), and there were, of course, many ghost stories, most of them told by the camp counselors around the campfires at night, or in the dining hall during dinner.
This particular story was a favorite, and stuck in our minds I suspect largely because most of us had only recently been learning about the use of Chinese labor in building the railroads and in mining. Those of us who were around when it rained thought of this when the red fluid washed over the roads.
Of course, there was nothing supernatural about the red. Like much of the Sierra Nevada, this location was covered in high-iron clays, and the red was due to nothing more sinister than the water moving these sediments across the road during and immediately following a rainstorm. Anyone who looked closely enough would even see that it was more of an orange than a red.
Still, for a bunch of pre-teens stuck inside on a rainy day, the blood of wronged laborers made for an evocative image.
Sources: Local Folklore
Most of the time it seems as if there is nothing at all sinister or disturbing about the place. But this changes when it rains.
When rainwater pours over the roads, red liquid begins to appear, and the roads can quite literally be said to run red with blood. In this case, it is the blood of Chinese immigrants, forced to work for low-wages in near slave-like conditions when building California's railroads and working in the mining camps that once dotted the Sierra Nevadas. They are gone now, and unable to tell their stories, but their blood still runs when it rains at Camp Sylvester.
Commentary: When I was a kid, my school sponsored a yearly trip to "science camp" for the 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students at Camp Sylvester in Pinecrest, California. The goal of the week-long trip was, I presume, to teach kids about biology, ecology, and the natural sciences, but for the students it usually became an excuse to engage in all manner of behavior that, while usually safe, they couldn't get away with at home or on the school's grounds. My own experiences at the camp were abysmal (owing to a combination of my various childhood social problems and two camp counselors who thought that getting younger kids to beat each other up was fun), while my older sister greatly enjoyed it and eventually became a counselor there herself (leading to at least one impressionable 12-year old boy developing a lifelong crush on her due to her ability to recite the alphabet while belching...a strange thing to hear from someone who runs into you by chance 15 years later, I can assure you).
As often happens when a group of pre-teen and early teen kids get together in an isolated place with minimal adult supervision, much of the social activity between the kids at the camp revolved around scaring the crap out of each other. One night, I recall a group of girls engaging in a "Bloody Mary" ritual in the girl's restroom, resulting in one of them in hysterics (the adult chaperon's had to be brought out to deal with the situation, and there was serious talk of sending the girl home because of her rather excited state), and there were, of course, many ghost stories, most of them told by the camp counselors around the campfires at night, or in the dining hall during dinner.
This particular story was a favorite, and stuck in our minds I suspect largely because most of us had only recently been learning about the use of Chinese labor in building the railroads and in mining. Those of us who were around when it rained thought of this when the red fluid washed over the roads.
Of course, there was nothing supernatural about the red. Like much of the Sierra Nevada, this location was covered in high-iron clays, and the red was due to nothing more sinister than the water moving these sediments across the road during and immediately following a rainstorm. Anyone who looked closely enough would even see that it was more of an orange than a red.
Still, for a bunch of pre-teens stuck inside on a rainy day, the blood of wronged laborers made for an evocative image.
Sources: Local Folklore
Friday, August 12, 2011
Highway 246, Santa Ynez Valley
The stretch of Highway 246 that runs between the towns of Buellton and Santa Ynez in the Santa Ynez Valley in Santa Barabara County is said to be haunted by a few odd apparitions.
The first is a ghostly horse-drawn carriage, often said to be a hearse, that traverses the road late at night. Some versions of the story update this to an automobile. The hearse continues down the road, headed to the west, unimpeded by any physical object that blocks its way, some say carrying the souls of the recently dead to the afterlife. Some locals have interpreted the hearse as being part of the Santa Ynez Chumash belief that the spirits of the dead must travel westward in order to reach Point Conception, the gateway to the afterlife. A more sinister version of the tale holds that the hearse is bearing the souls of the damned to Hell.
The second story concerns a black, spectral dog that people have reported running along the road at night. Though nobody claims to have been attacked by it, it is said to be a terrifying sight to behold. It is often claimed to not be a ghost, but rather a demon, wandering the road looking to do harm.
Interestingly, the third story concerns the ghost of a young boy that is said to appear on the side of the road. He seems to be lost and frightened, but will accept a ride from any motorist kind enough to stop for him. When the driver reaches the place that the boy asks to be dropped off, he has simply vanished. It is said that this spirit is the ghost of a young boy who was killed in a car accident while his mother was driving. The mother survived, but the boy was dead at the scene, and now wanders the highway trying to get home.
Commentary: The ghost stories of Highway 246 are interesting for a few reasons. The first, related to the story of the ghostly hearse, is the desire to connect the ghost story to the beliefs of the native peoples of the area. The popular view of Chumash folklore holds that Point Conception was thought to be the gateway to the afterlife, but when I have spoken with people knowledgeable about the ethnographic record of the area, it comes out that the Chumash view of how one reaches the afterlife may not be so clear-cut. There was no centralized church that kept the religious canon in order, and so it is entirely possible that some people did think there was a physical gateway, while others did not, and the precise location may have varied by person telling the ethnographers of it.
In fact, the story of the ghostly hearse is a relatively common motif in European ghost stories, and so this is likely an old campfire story that has been adapted to a California setting, and later had a veneer of faux-antiquity added by the reference ot Chumash religion.
Similarly, the ghostly dog is common in European folklore (and served as the inspiration for the Sherlock Holmes novel The Hound of the Baskervilles), and is likely also a transplant. Demonic black dogs show up in Medieval and Renaissance stories, and remain a popular aspect of many European haunted outdoor spots to this day. The connection between these dogs and demonic forces may be tied to earlier pre-Christian folklore, though that is of little direct importance as the story of this dog likely was brought by Christian Europeans.
The vanishing hitchhiker story is interesting because it has all of the common elements - strange, frightened person who will accept a ride, vanishes when you get them to their destination, etc. etc. - but changes the age and gender of the hitchhiker. These stories are normally about young women - between the age of 16 and 25 - and not pre-adolescent children. This has an interesting effect: While one might feel sorry for the young women who are doomed to hitchhike for the rest of time, the stories nonetheless remain creepy. The young boy, though, is simply a sad and lonely character, with very little creep factor to him. It changes the story from creepy but sad to just plain depressing.
Sources: Published Book, Internet, Local Folklore
The first is a ghostly horse-drawn carriage, often said to be a hearse, that traverses the road late at night. Some versions of the story update this to an automobile. The hearse continues down the road, headed to the west, unimpeded by any physical object that blocks its way, some say carrying the souls of the recently dead to the afterlife. Some locals have interpreted the hearse as being part of the Santa Ynez Chumash belief that the spirits of the dead must travel westward in order to reach Point Conception, the gateway to the afterlife. A more sinister version of the tale holds that the hearse is bearing the souls of the damned to Hell.
The second story concerns a black, spectral dog that people have reported running along the road at night. Though nobody claims to have been attacked by it, it is said to be a terrifying sight to behold. It is often claimed to not be a ghost, but rather a demon, wandering the road looking to do harm.
Interestingly, the third story concerns the ghost of a young boy that is said to appear on the side of the road. He seems to be lost and frightened, but will accept a ride from any motorist kind enough to stop for him. When the driver reaches the place that the boy asks to be dropped off, he has simply vanished. It is said that this spirit is the ghost of a young boy who was killed in a car accident while his mother was driving. The mother survived, but the boy was dead at the scene, and now wanders the highway trying to get home.
Commentary: The ghost stories of Highway 246 are interesting for a few reasons. The first, related to the story of the ghostly hearse, is the desire to connect the ghost story to the beliefs of the native peoples of the area. The popular view of Chumash folklore holds that Point Conception was thought to be the gateway to the afterlife, but when I have spoken with people knowledgeable about the ethnographic record of the area, it comes out that the Chumash view of how one reaches the afterlife may not be so clear-cut. There was no centralized church that kept the religious canon in order, and so it is entirely possible that some people did think there was a physical gateway, while others did not, and the precise location may have varied by person telling the ethnographers of it.
In fact, the story of the ghostly hearse is a relatively common motif in European ghost stories, and so this is likely an old campfire story that has been adapted to a California setting, and later had a veneer of faux-antiquity added by the reference ot Chumash religion.
Similarly, the ghostly dog is common in European folklore (and served as the inspiration for the Sherlock Holmes novel The Hound of the Baskervilles), and is likely also a transplant. Demonic black dogs show up in Medieval and Renaissance stories, and remain a popular aspect of many European haunted outdoor spots to this day. The connection between these dogs and demonic forces may be tied to earlier pre-Christian folklore, though that is of little direct importance as the story of this dog likely was brought by Christian Europeans.
The vanishing hitchhiker story is interesting because it has all of the common elements - strange, frightened person who will accept a ride, vanishes when you get them to their destination, etc. etc. - but changes the age and gender of the hitchhiker. These stories are normally about young women - between the age of 16 and 25 - and not pre-adolescent children. This has an interesting effect: While one might feel sorry for the young women who are doomed to hitchhike for the rest of time, the stories nonetheless remain creepy. The young boy, though, is simply a sad and lonely character, with very little creep factor to him. It changes the story from creepy but sad to just plain depressing.
Sources: Published Book, Internet, Local Folklore
Friday, February 19, 2010
The Child Ghost of Ripon, California
When I lived in Ripon, I had a neighbor who lived in a haunted house. We would be out in the yard and see a shape that looked like a child, but without features, run into the space between the houses. When we would go to take a look, there was nobody and nothing there. Sometimes we'd hear kids playing when there was nobody around.
One night, my neighbor opened up a closet that had been closed ever since she bought the house. Inside of the closet, she found a box. Inside of the box was a small dress, like one that a very young girl would wear. As soon as she saw the dress, she was frightened, but didn't know how to react. When her husband came home from work, they talked about it and about the child-like figure that they had seen around the house, and both became more and more frightened as the evening went on.
Finally, they decided to burn the dress. They started a fire, and threw the dress in. As soon as the dress hit the flames, they heard a baby crying, and the crying continued until the dress was completely gone.
Commentary: This is another of the stories that I grew up with. One of the women in my neighborhood would tell this story, or some variation on it (it was always changing) to us kids. She loved to spin ghost stories for us, mostly because she seemed to like to entertain children, but also partially because ghost stories seemed to reinforce her particular religious view of the world.
As a kid, I bought this story, and asked for it many times. However, as I got older, the inconsistencies started to bug me, and I saw the stories of the neighbor for what they were: fun entertainments told by a genuinely warm and caring person who simply wanted to provide the children with fun in a safe environment, but not factual accounts.
I still love her stories. She told me the most memorable version of the Ouija Board Urban Legend that I have ever heard. And I have very fond memories of her as a neighbor and community member. So, in the end, her stories have done her credit, and I think that she would be happy to know that.
I was unsure how to classify this story. It clearly is a campfire story - a story told to entertain with a scare - based on the fact that the details were constantly changing and she didn't seem to much care how coherent the story was most of the time. It is centered around both a house and an object, so should it be considered a haunted house or a haunted object story?
To the haunted house story, I say no. It was always linked to some generic house, with no identifying details given, and the house seemed to be more a setting than an integral part of the story. A haunted object? Well, yes. The dress is certainly important to the story, and is clealry supposed to be the focus of the haunting.
Sources: Personal Account
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
The Underground of Old Town Sacramento
Sacramento, like San Francisco, was a city born of the 1849 Gold Rush. Located along the primary river route, it served as a lifeline for supplies to the gold fields of the Sierra Nevada. The original waterfront of the town, part of which has been preserved as the Old Town Sacramento district, does not sit at ground level. Floods from the Sacramento River damaged the goods and properties of the people working and living in this area, prompting them to construct an upper level to which most businesses and homes were moved. To the casual observer, the upper level appeared to be the ground level.
The lower level did not vanish, however, it simply became invisible to those who lacked access to the tunnels via the former-first floors (now basements) and various tunnel entrances. While the tunnels were likely used for numerous legitimate activities (storage, lodging, etc.), they likely also served the (now literally) underground economy as a home to prostitution and opium dens. The tunnels are no longer readily accessible - you have to have access to a property with a connecting basement to get into them - but are still there and can be entered by those who know a way in (mostly owners of buildings with connecting basements, although some other folks find access as well). Much like similar tunnels in Portland, Oregon, these tunnels eventually gained a reputation for being the dwellings of unnatural horrors.
Rumors abound of strange lights and unexplained shadows in the tunnels. Property owners (and those who work in the area) with access to the tunnels are rumored to report a strong sense of malice directed at them when they enter the tunnels. One rumor holds that even transients won't sleep in the tunnels due to constant feelings of being threatened by some unseen force.
Although there are likely more specific hauntings known for the area, these are hard to find through research. It's the ambiguous lighting and feelings of menace that one finds mention of when looking for information on the tunnels.
Commentary: Abandoned places attract ghost stories like Paulie Shore attracts loathing, and a place that is not only abandoned, but hidden? Well, that's a recipe for stories of hauntings. So, the fact that the subterranean portion of Old Sacramento is reputed to be haunted is not surprising.
What is surprising is how little information is in any way specific. While I have no doubt that had I the time to go and interview people who have spent time in the tunnels I would have heard at least a few specific stories (a particular location where lights are seen, a ghostly voice that calls out, an apparition of a person or animal, etc.), in trying to research this remotely online, all I can find are rumors, references to vague feelings of dread or evil, and announcements that some people refuse to enter the tunnels.
It's a bit anti-climactic.
So, in the end, the idea of a town buried under your feet is a bit creepy to begin with, and the fact that this town is reputed to be haunted amps up the spookiness level. But if you look too deep, you tend to find no meat to sink your story-collecting teeth into. It's frustrating.
Oh well, at least it's still a cool location.
Extra Stuff: A series of photos of exposed underground locations can be found here.
Sources: Internet, Internet, The Illustrious Internet, Internet
The lower level did not vanish, however, it simply became invisible to those who lacked access to the tunnels via the former-first floors (now basements) and various tunnel entrances. While the tunnels were likely used for numerous legitimate activities (storage, lodging, etc.), they likely also served the (now literally) underground economy as a home to prostitution and opium dens. The tunnels are no longer readily accessible - you have to have access to a property with a connecting basement to get into them - but are still there and can be entered by those who know a way in (mostly owners of buildings with connecting basements, although some other folks find access as well). Much like similar tunnels in Portland, Oregon, these tunnels eventually gained a reputation for being the dwellings of unnatural horrors.
Rumors abound of strange lights and unexplained shadows in the tunnels. Property owners (and those who work in the area) with access to the tunnels are rumored to report a strong sense of malice directed at them when they enter the tunnels. One rumor holds that even transients won't sleep in the tunnels due to constant feelings of being threatened by some unseen force.
Although there are likely more specific hauntings known for the area, these are hard to find through research. It's the ambiguous lighting and feelings of menace that one finds mention of when looking for information on the tunnels.
Commentary: Abandoned places attract ghost stories like Paulie Shore attracts loathing, and a place that is not only abandoned, but hidden? Well, that's a recipe for stories of hauntings. So, the fact that the subterranean portion of Old Sacramento is reputed to be haunted is not surprising.
What is surprising is how little information is in any way specific. While I have no doubt that had I the time to go and interview people who have spent time in the tunnels I would have heard at least a few specific stories (a particular location where lights are seen, a ghostly voice that calls out, an apparition of a person or animal, etc.), in trying to research this remotely online, all I can find are rumors, references to vague feelings of dread or evil, and announcements that some people refuse to enter the tunnels.
It's a bit anti-climactic.
So, in the end, the idea of a town buried under your feet is a bit creepy to begin with, and the fact that this town is reputed to be haunted amps up the spookiness level. But if you look too deep, you tend to find no meat to sink your story-collecting teeth into. It's frustrating.
Oh well, at least it's still a cool location.
Extra Stuff: A series of photos of exposed underground locations can be found here.
Sources: Internet, Internet, The Illustrious Internet, Internet
Saturday, October 31, 2009
The Bandage Man of Cannon Beach
On the roads outside of Cannon Beach, Oregon, and especially an old, now bypassed, section of Highway 101, a strange and disturbing creature stalks the night. Drivers have long reported seeing a man, clad from head-to-toe in bandages stained with blood and other less identifiable fluids. Those who have come close enough report that the ersatz mummy smells horribly, as if he is rotting. And those who slow down, or who are unlucky enough to be walking when the creature comes out towards the road, have been savagely attacked. Sometimes it is claimed that the bandage man can simply appear in passing vehicles, without any obvious entry. Oddly, the bandage man is also said to eat dogs. Sometimes the bandage man leaves behind bits of putrescent bandages that fell off during attacks.
Stories of the origins of this being are variable, some holding that this is the ghost or re-animated corpse of a logger who had been severely injured in a sawmill, and died while in bandages. Others hold that this is a vengeful spirit of no earthly origin. Whatever the story, the bandage man is said to be violent, malevolent, and to be avoided.
Commentary: Now that I am back home after seven months on a time-consuming project for work, Halloween seems like a great day to begin posting stories on this blog.
This is a beautiful urban legend, complete with claims of physical evidence left behind (the bandages are often said to mark the scenes of his attacks, much like the hook left behind by a serial killer in one popular urban legend. The story is pretty damn creepy (although the part about eating dogs, while probably intended to be horrifying, simply sounds rather silly), and as someone who has driven on California's forested coastal highways late at night, I can attest that it is easy to let one's imagination run away and start seeing all manner of evil creature out of the corner of your eyes. In addition, the presence of a specific location allows legend tripping for the youth of the Cannon Beach area. It is also delightful to note that one of the sources listed below even contains a "friend-of-a-friend" story that fits the urban legend perfectly.
What is somewhat unique is that, as far as I have been able to determine, the bandage man is a one-of-a-kind, location-specific urban legend. Although elements of the story are common in many wide-spread urban legends, I have not been able to find anything quite like the bandage man anywhere outside of Cannon Beach, Oregon. And that makes this a story worth remembering.
Sources: Published Book, Internet, Internet, Internet
Stories of the origins of this being are variable, some holding that this is the ghost or re-animated corpse of a logger who had been severely injured in a sawmill, and died while in bandages. Others hold that this is a vengeful spirit of no earthly origin. Whatever the story, the bandage man is said to be violent, malevolent, and to be avoided.
Commentary: Now that I am back home after seven months on a time-consuming project for work, Halloween seems like a great day to begin posting stories on this blog.
This is a beautiful urban legend, complete with claims of physical evidence left behind (the bandages are often said to mark the scenes of his attacks, much like the hook left behind by a serial killer in one popular urban legend. The story is pretty damn creepy (although the part about eating dogs, while probably intended to be horrifying, simply sounds rather silly), and as someone who has driven on California's forested coastal highways late at night, I can attest that it is easy to let one's imagination run away and start seeing all manner of evil creature out of the corner of your eyes. In addition, the presence of a specific location allows legend tripping for the youth of the Cannon Beach area. It is also delightful to note that one of the sources listed below even contains a "friend-of-a-friend" story that fits the urban legend perfectly.
What is somewhat unique is that, as far as I have been able to determine, the bandage man is a one-of-a-kind, location-specific urban legend. Although elements of the story are common in many wide-spread urban legends, I have not been able to find anything quite like the bandage man anywhere outside of Cannon Beach, Oregon. And that makes this a story worth remembering.
Sources: Published Book, Internet, Internet, Internet
Friday, June 26, 2009
Amy of Lick Road, Hamilton, Ohio
Edit 12-7-12: A commentor suggested that this story is in Hamilton, Ohio, and not Cincinatti, as originally stated. I have looked it up, and believe that she is correct, and have edited the entry accordingly.
Amy was murdered by her boyfriend. Some say that she was murdered on Kemp Road, others that she was murdered in a nearby park, and some say that she was murdered in a nearby cul-de-sac, but what everyone agrees on is that here body was found on Lick Road, just outside of Hamilton, Ohio.
Since her death, a number of weird things have been said to occur on Lick Road. If you drive your car to the end of the road, the windows will fog up and the word "HELP" will be written in the fog (some versions of the story say that you have to flash your lights three times before this happens). If you flash your lights at the stop sign as you turn onto Lick Road, the word "STOP" will be replaced by the word "AMY." People have reported seeing a woman dressed in white wandering the countryside near Lick Road. And it is said that if you follow a trail leading down to a wooden bridge, you will hear a mysterious "clunk" sound, perhaps the sound of a body hitting the planks of the bridge?
Commentary: This is classic urban legend stuff. We have a creepy story based on tragedy, many variations of that story, and specific instructions to follow in order to experience ghostly happenings. This is typical of legend tripping, and is a delightful example of it.
Many people who visit the location claim to have experienced odd events, even if not those mentioned in the stories. Do strange things happen here? Maybe, but remember that people who go to Lick Road looking for ghosts may interpret anything that happens as evidence of a ghost without looking further into it.
Nonetheless, it's a great story, and I highly recommend that anyone who lives in Butler County take the opportunity to check the place out - after all, it's not often that you can experience a ghost story in a public (and hence not-likely-to-get-you-arrested-for-trespassing) place.
Sources: Newspaper, Internet, Ohio Exploration Society
Amy was murdered by her boyfriend. Some say that she was murdered on Kemp Road, others that she was murdered in a nearby park, and some say that she was murdered in a nearby cul-de-sac, but what everyone agrees on is that here body was found on Lick Road, just outside of Hamilton, Ohio.
Since her death, a number of weird things have been said to occur on Lick Road. If you drive your car to the end of the road, the windows will fog up and the word "HELP" will be written in the fog (some versions of the story say that you have to flash your lights three times before this happens). If you flash your lights at the stop sign as you turn onto Lick Road, the word "STOP" will be replaced by the word "AMY." People have reported seeing a woman dressed in white wandering the countryside near Lick Road. And it is said that if you follow a trail leading down to a wooden bridge, you will hear a mysterious "clunk" sound, perhaps the sound of a body hitting the planks of the bridge?
Commentary: This is classic urban legend stuff. We have a creepy story based on tragedy, many variations of that story, and specific instructions to follow in order to experience ghostly happenings. This is typical of legend tripping, and is a delightful example of it.
Many people who visit the location claim to have experienced odd events, even if not those mentioned in the stories. Do strange things happen here? Maybe, but remember that people who go to Lick Road looking for ghosts may interpret anything that happens as evidence of a ghost without looking further into it.
Nonetheless, it's a great story, and I highly recommend that anyone who lives in Butler County take the opportunity to check the place out - after all, it's not often that you can experience a ghost story in a public (and hence not-likely-to-get-you-arrested-for-trespassing) place.
Sources: Newspaper, Internet, Ohio Exploration Society
Thursday, May 14, 2009
The Curse of SLC-6
Vandenberg Air Force Base is located just north of the California Bight - the point where the California coast turns from a north-south course to an east-west course. The Chumash, the native people of the region, considered Point Conception and the surrounding area to be the gateway to the afterlife*. When Camp Cook was established in the first half of the 20th century, and later expanded as Vandenberg air Force Base, this upset members of the Chumash community still present in Santa Barbara County. To make matters worse, when the Air Force built Space Launch Complex 6 (SLC-6, AKA "slick" 6) during the 1960s, it is said that the construction disturbed an archaeological site containing human remains. Whether due to the disturbance of the human remains, or the actions of a shaman, the site became cursed (or did it...be sure to read the commentary below).
The project became embroiled in political problems and government blunders. The SLC was originally developed for the Manned Orbiting Laboratory, but this project was shut down after construction. The SLC was then to be the site of space shuttle launches, but these were cancelled after the Challenger exploded in 1986 (an event that some people lay at the feet of the curse). Several rocket launches were attempted, and all failed.
The construction of the complex was also not without problems - bad welds, exhaust ducts trapping gases, extremely bad winds (which, in truth, is normal for this area), and cost over-runs all plagued the project.
Finally, the contractor running the facility on behalf of the air force contacted a shaman, who performed a ceremony to lift the curse. Ever since then, the facility has run smoothly.
Commentary: Okay, alot going on here. Let's start with the "dry facts" and then get into the interesting stuff. First off, this is a classic "built on an Indian burial ground" story. In this case, as in most other such stories, there was in fact no archaeological site at the location of SLC-6, and therefore no burials.
Also, the initiation and cancellation of programs related to SLC-6 makes perfect sense in the context of the nature of and changes to military spending throughout the 1960s and 1970s, so you don't really need a curse to explain that. Likewise, the construction problems are rather typical of the sub-rate contractors who sometimes manage to wrangle their way onto military bases, as well as unique elements of the weather and environment on the base that make construction difficult to begin with.
In other words, you don't need a curse to explain what happened.
Which leads to an interesting question - why did the story of the curse arise to begin with, and why does it persist?
In order to understand that, you have to understand when the story originated. And that would be the 1970's.
As Dwayne Day points out, the story began in the 1970's, during a time of social change and ethnic empowerment movements. The Native American movement resulted in the organization of tribes into politically vocal (and eventually effective) groups that began to protest the treatment of Native American archaeological sites as well as the mis-treatment of Native American individuals and groups. In the midst of this, the development of Point Conception became a hotspot for protests, and, to a lesser degree, so did the development of southern Vandenberg.
Day argues that the curse story began as a way to place blame for the problems at the expensive complex. There may be some validity to this argument, but I think that the explanation may be simpler. The stories probably began as jokes, engineers talking about how the place was "cursed". But regardless of how they started, the stories probably spread for two reasons: A) everyone loves a good spook story, and will tend to share it whenever possible, and B) alot of people hold to the, frankly racist, belief that Native American sites are filled with, for lack of a better term "bad mojo" - which is why the old "built on an Indian burial ground" trope gets tossed around whenever weird things happen at a particular location.
Regardless, the story annoys and offends many of the local Chumash (although I have met a few who think that its funny). This is understandable - how would the average baptist feel if they heard that a place was haunted because their church's pastor had cursed it? Also, beliefs such as this reinforce the "mystical red man" stereotype that has, unfortunately, helped to keep many racist beliefs about the native peoples of the Americas alive.
For this reason, when the contractor hired a shaman to "lift" the curse, this upset the locals, and resulted in the Air Force brass having to do some fast work to try to mend the damage to an improving relationship with the Chumash community.
Wackiness: When I was an intern in the environmental conservation office at Vandenberg, we had, in our library, a paper that had been written by a student at the local community college about the curse. The paper, filled with all manner of hokey pseudo-intellectual silliness, demonstrated that the author was overly-reliant on spell check - the paper constantly made reference to "viscous underworld beings."
So, if the site is cursed, it's okay, the underworld beings who haunt it move reeeeeaaaaalllllll slow, so you can make your getaway without breaking a sweat.
Sources: Personal Accounts, Local Folklore, Internet, Internet, Internet
*Or so it is typically believed, the truth is a little messier, and there are alot of different stories concerning the afterlife and how to get there. The Chumash were not a single monolithic group, but were comprised of numerous different autonomous villages who all shared a language family and material culture. There were probably alot of different beliefs concerning the afterlife, and the confusion regarding whether or not Point Conception was important to it probably comes from the conflation of alot of different stories from alot of different groups.
The project became embroiled in political problems and government blunders. The SLC was originally developed for the Manned Orbiting Laboratory, but this project was shut down after construction. The SLC was then to be the site of space shuttle launches, but these were cancelled after the Challenger exploded in 1986 (an event that some people lay at the feet of the curse). Several rocket launches were attempted, and all failed.
The construction of the complex was also not without problems - bad welds, exhaust ducts trapping gases, extremely bad winds (which, in truth, is normal for this area), and cost over-runs all plagued the project.
Finally, the contractor running the facility on behalf of the air force contacted a shaman, who performed a ceremony to lift the curse. Ever since then, the facility has run smoothly.
Commentary: Okay, alot going on here. Let's start with the "dry facts" and then get into the interesting stuff. First off, this is a classic "built on an Indian burial ground" story. In this case, as in most other such stories, there was in fact no archaeological site at the location of SLC-6, and therefore no burials.
Also, the initiation and cancellation of programs related to SLC-6 makes perfect sense in the context of the nature of and changes to military spending throughout the 1960s and 1970s, so you don't really need a curse to explain that. Likewise, the construction problems are rather typical of the sub-rate contractors who sometimes manage to wrangle their way onto military bases, as well as unique elements of the weather and environment on the base that make construction difficult to begin with.
In other words, you don't need a curse to explain what happened.
Which leads to an interesting question - why did the story of the curse arise to begin with, and why does it persist?
In order to understand that, you have to understand when the story originated. And that would be the 1970's.
As Dwayne Day points out, the story began in the 1970's, during a time of social change and ethnic empowerment movements. The Native American movement resulted in the organization of tribes into politically vocal (and eventually effective) groups that began to protest the treatment of Native American archaeological sites as well as the mis-treatment of Native American individuals and groups. In the midst of this, the development of Point Conception became a hotspot for protests, and, to a lesser degree, so did the development of southern Vandenberg.
Day argues that the curse story began as a way to place blame for the problems at the expensive complex. There may be some validity to this argument, but I think that the explanation may be simpler. The stories probably began as jokes, engineers talking about how the place was "cursed". But regardless of how they started, the stories probably spread for two reasons: A) everyone loves a good spook story, and will tend to share it whenever possible, and B) alot of people hold to the, frankly racist, belief that Native American sites are filled with, for lack of a better term "bad mojo" - which is why the old "built on an Indian burial ground" trope gets tossed around whenever weird things happen at a particular location.
Regardless, the story annoys and offends many of the local Chumash (although I have met a few who think that its funny). This is understandable - how would the average baptist feel if they heard that a place was haunted because their church's pastor had cursed it? Also, beliefs such as this reinforce the "mystical red man" stereotype that has, unfortunately, helped to keep many racist beliefs about the native peoples of the Americas alive.
For this reason, when the contractor hired a shaman to "lift" the curse, this upset the locals, and resulted in the Air Force brass having to do some fast work to try to mend the damage to an improving relationship with the Chumash community.
Wackiness: When I was an intern in the environmental conservation office at Vandenberg, we had, in our library, a paper that had been written by a student at the local community college about the curse. The paper, filled with all manner of hokey pseudo-intellectual silliness, demonstrated that the author was overly-reliant on spell check - the paper constantly made reference to "viscous underworld beings."
So, if the site is cursed, it's okay, the underworld beings who haunt it move reeeeeaaaaalllllll slow, so you can make your getaway without breaking a sweat.
Sources: Personal Accounts, Local Folklore, Internet, Internet, Internet
*Or so it is typically believed, the truth is a little messier, and there are alot of different stories concerning the afterlife and how to get there. The Chumash were not a single monolithic group, but were comprised of numerous different autonomous villages who all shared a language family and material culture. There were probably alot of different beliefs concerning the afterlife, and the confusion regarding whether or not Point Conception was important to it probably comes from the conflation of alot of different stories from alot of different groups.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Porter College, University of California, Santa Cruz
The Santa Cruz campus of the University of California is divided into multiple residential colleges - individual semi-autonomous units where the students live and where administrative duties relevant to the students are taken care of. Each college has a specialty, and Porter College, on the western side of the campus, is primarily dedicated to the arts.
Porter is also home to some of the most ominous-looking buildings on the UCSC campus - grim concrete structures that loom more than stand. The residential halls (AKA the dorms) have basements in which students are allowed to live (or were allowed to live as of the time I graduated in 1998), an unusual feature for student housing buildings in California in general and Santa Cruz in particular.
Most of the stories concerning this place involve two buildings - Residence Hall A (aka Building A) and Residence Hall B (AKA Building B). In late 1998, a student killed himself in Building A. The suicide took place at a time and place that resulted in a large number of his fellow students witnessing his death - whether that was intentional or not I have not been able to determine. Since then, people have reported seeing this student wandering Building A, dressed as he was on the day that he killed himself.
Building B hosts two different stories. The first concerns a trio of rooms on the first floor known collectively as "the Bermuda Triangle." Reports from these rooms include objects moving on their own (sometimes as if they are being thrown violently), strange noises, and voices from unseen sources. All of this is accompanied by a general feeling of dread that permeates the rooms and their surroundings.
The other story for Building B concerns the third floor, where people report waking up and feeling as if they are being strangled and/or held down on the bed.
The Meadow - a large...well...meadow located in Porter College is also home to a ghost named Lily, the spirit of a transient woman who stayed there during the 1970s. She is usually seen dressed in rags or completely naked which, well, wouldn't really have differentiated her from many of the students at UCSC back when I was there.
I have heard these stories, and many others concerning generic feelings of dread, strange voices, briefly glimpsed apparitions, and the like from many of the Porter residents that I knew when I was a student at Crown College, across the Campus. Most of these stories were either clearly being told for entertainment purposes, or were told by rather overly-dramatic people who wanted solely to be the center of attention, and as such I was interested in the stories purely as entertainment and thought little else of them.
However, there is one exception. A woman who attended Porter, and has , eleven years later, become one of my closest friends, had some rather odd experiences. She is generally level-headed, and not given to fantasy-prone episodes, and so her stories are weightier to my mind than most of the others that I heard about Porter College.
She told me of numerous different happenings, most of them subtle, and most of them based either on perceived objects moving or sounds, or on general feelings of fear or malevolence experienced when in the residence halls. On one occasion, she opened the door to her room, and was left with a feeling that she describes as "being as if I had walked in on something, like a wolf had been breathing heavily, but suddenly became silent when the door opened and prey appeared."
On another occasion, she reports waking up in her bed with her arms stretched straight at her sides, and a general rigor-mortis-type feeling throughout her body.
Commentary: As stated above, Porter College is primarily dedicated to the arts, and as such it has the expected assortment of legitimate and talented young artists mixed in with overly-dramatic wannabes. Colleges in general are breeding grounds for ghost stories, and a place such as this even more so.
Porter's ghost stories are unusual in that the most famous undead resident, the student who killed himself, was a real person and not simply a fictitious construct. Stories of suicides-turned-ghosts are as common as college dormitory buildings, and usually are based on nothing but imagination. However, in this case, there really was a suicide, and it really was as public and disturbing as is usually described. Whether this occasioned new stories, or was simply meshed with previous stories of the ghost of a suicidal student, I do not know.
The experiences of my friend are somewhat difficult to explain. On the one hand, if I did not know the person, I would be quick to dismiss it as an overactive imagination. Certainly, some of the experiences she described to me (only two of many are described above) are consistent with well-known phenomenon such as sleep paralysis and waking dreams. Others, though, are more difficult to explain. Which is not to say that they can't be explained, but rather that I personally have not been able to do so, nor has anyone else provided a suitable explanation insofar as I know.
Porter is also host to many non-supernatural legends. It is rumored that the architect who designed had as his primary occupation the design of prisons, thus explaining the concrete blocks that stand-in for buildings at the college. This is, in fact, not true. The architect was attempting (and failing) to imitate traditional Japanese architecture, but did so using materials that resulted on one butt-ugly set of structures.
Also, it is rumored that Porter college was nearly named after Alfred Hitchcock, who had a home in Santa Cruz during the 1970s, but this is probably not true.
Also, general to UCSC and not just Porter, it is rumored that UCSC's non-centralized design (the various colleges are spread throughout a set of ridges in the forest) was intended to prevent student gatherings such as those at UC Berkeley. Given that the University was planned and built throughout the 1960s and 1970s, this seems reasonable. However, as someone who has gone through alot of the founding documents because of a job that I had while a student, I can tell you that there is no real truth to this rumor, and that the campus was designed as it is primarily for aesthetic reasons. Also, I can tell you from experience that the design of the campus has never prevented student protests.
All-in-all, Porter is one of the stranger parts of a very strange campus, even if you leave all ghost stories aside. However, the ghost stories give it that added element that just makes it particularly special.
SOURCES: Personal Accounts, Internet, Internet
Porter is also home to some of the most ominous-looking buildings on the UCSC campus - grim concrete structures that loom more than stand. The residential halls (AKA the dorms) have basements in which students are allowed to live (or were allowed to live as of the time I graduated in 1998), an unusual feature for student housing buildings in California in general and Santa Cruz in particular.
Most of the stories concerning this place involve two buildings - Residence Hall A (aka Building A) and Residence Hall B (AKA Building B). In late 1998, a student killed himself in Building A. The suicide took place at a time and place that resulted in a large number of his fellow students witnessing his death - whether that was intentional or not I have not been able to determine. Since then, people have reported seeing this student wandering Building A, dressed as he was on the day that he killed himself.
Building B hosts two different stories. The first concerns a trio of rooms on the first floor known collectively as "the Bermuda Triangle." Reports from these rooms include objects moving on their own (sometimes as if they are being thrown violently), strange noises, and voices from unseen sources. All of this is accompanied by a general feeling of dread that permeates the rooms and their surroundings.
The other story for Building B concerns the third floor, where people report waking up and feeling as if they are being strangled and/or held down on the bed.
The Meadow - a large...well...meadow located in Porter College is also home to a ghost named Lily, the spirit of a transient woman who stayed there during the 1970s. She is usually seen dressed in rags or completely naked which, well, wouldn't really have differentiated her from many of the students at UCSC back when I was there.
I have heard these stories, and many others concerning generic feelings of dread, strange voices, briefly glimpsed apparitions, and the like from many of the Porter residents that I knew when I was a student at Crown College, across the Campus. Most of these stories were either clearly being told for entertainment purposes, or were told by rather overly-dramatic people who wanted solely to be the center of attention, and as such I was interested in the stories purely as entertainment and thought little else of them.
However, there is one exception. A woman who attended Porter, and has , eleven years later, become one of my closest friends, had some rather odd experiences. She is generally level-headed, and not given to fantasy-prone episodes, and so her stories are weightier to my mind than most of the others that I heard about Porter College.
She told me of numerous different happenings, most of them subtle, and most of them based either on perceived objects moving or sounds, or on general feelings of fear or malevolence experienced when in the residence halls. On one occasion, she opened the door to her room, and was left with a feeling that she describes as "being as if I had walked in on something, like a wolf had been breathing heavily, but suddenly became silent when the door opened and prey appeared."
On another occasion, she reports waking up in her bed with her arms stretched straight at her sides, and a general rigor-mortis-type feeling throughout her body.
Commentary: As stated above, Porter College is primarily dedicated to the arts, and as such it has the expected assortment of legitimate and talented young artists mixed in with overly-dramatic wannabes. Colleges in general are breeding grounds for ghost stories, and a place such as this even more so.
Porter's ghost stories are unusual in that the most famous undead resident, the student who killed himself, was a real person and not simply a fictitious construct. Stories of suicides-turned-ghosts are as common as college dormitory buildings, and usually are based on nothing but imagination. However, in this case, there really was a suicide, and it really was as public and disturbing as is usually described. Whether this occasioned new stories, or was simply meshed with previous stories of the ghost of a suicidal student, I do not know.
The experiences of my friend are somewhat difficult to explain. On the one hand, if I did not know the person, I would be quick to dismiss it as an overactive imagination. Certainly, some of the experiences she described to me (only two of many are described above) are consistent with well-known phenomenon such as sleep paralysis and waking dreams. Others, though, are more difficult to explain. Which is not to say that they can't be explained, but rather that I personally have not been able to do so, nor has anyone else provided a suitable explanation insofar as I know.
Porter is also host to many non-supernatural legends. It is rumored that the architect who designed had as his primary occupation the design of prisons, thus explaining the concrete blocks that stand-in for buildings at the college. This is, in fact, not true. The architect was attempting (and failing) to imitate traditional Japanese architecture, but did so using materials that resulted on one butt-ugly set of structures.
Also, it is rumored that Porter college was nearly named after Alfred Hitchcock, who had a home in Santa Cruz during the 1970s, but this is probably not true.
Also, general to UCSC and not just Porter, it is rumored that UCSC's non-centralized design (the various colleges are spread throughout a set of ridges in the forest) was intended to prevent student gatherings such as those at UC Berkeley. Given that the University was planned and built throughout the 1960s and 1970s, this seems reasonable. However, as someone who has gone through alot of the founding documents because of a job that I had while a student, I can tell you that there is no real truth to this rumor, and that the campus was designed as it is primarily for aesthetic reasons. Also, I can tell you from experience that the design of the campus has never prevented student protests.
All-in-all, Porter is one of the stranger parts of a very strange campus, even if you leave all ghost stories aside. However, the ghost stories give it that added element that just makes it particularly special.
SOURCES: Personal Accounts, Internet, Internet
Friday, May 8, 2009
Christie Ranch
The Christie Ranch on Santa Cruz Island boasts two seperate ghost stories. The first is a classic "white widow" story - a young woman married the captain of a ship, and the two made their home on Santa Cruz Island at the ranch house. One day, he headed out to sea, and every day she stood at the window at the top floor of the house, waiting to see his ship. He is late in returning, and the young woman becomes worried, despite the assurance of her friends and family. Eventually, word comes that the ship sank, and that the captain went down with the ship. Her grief devoured her, and she stopped taking care of herself, eventually withering away and dying. To this day, her ghost can be seen, dressed in white, standing at the house's window, still watching the sea.
In a slightly more sinister version of the story, the husband was a slave trader, a fact unknown to the wife until she paid an unexpected visit to his ship while it was in port. On discovering her husband's true business, she scorned him and returned to the home. On his next trip, his ship sank and he drowned, and the wife again wastes away and dies, though this time torn between guilt and disgust over her husband's trade. This version of the story often features the ghost not as a passive watcher of the sea, but as an angry and vengeful force.
The second story is centered on a bridge that crosses a ravine that separates the main ranch house from the ranch hands quarters. One night while crossing this bridge, a Chumash servant girl began to scream. The ranch hands rushed out to see what had happened, and found the girl sobbing and gibbering incoherently. They brought her back to the ranch house, where she continued to spout incomprehensible nonsense. Eventually the girl was taken to a hospital on the mainland, where she died many years later, never having recovered her senses. However, to this day, people report hearing a weird, inhuman scream in the dead of night coming from that bridge, and nobody has ever seen its source.
In addition to these stories, the ranch also has reports of strange lights and odd shadows seen moving about in the ranch house, weird happenings on the land, and the occasional odd noise from an unknown source, usually occuring late at night.
Commentary: The land now known as the Christie Ranch served as the headquarters of a ranch that occupied the seaward-portion of Santa Cruz Island during the 19th century. The ranch is no longer used, although descendants of the pigs that were bred there now run rough-shod over the islands native flora and fauna. The ranch headqaurters has not been abandoned, however. The University of California runs a research facility on the island, and the Christie Ranch is a satellite base used by researchers on the southwest portion of the island.
Alhough there is running water (and hence showers and toilets), what electricity there is comes from a gas-powered generator, and the telephone lines to the ranch were long ago cut. Although there are standing buildings suitable for use as kitchens and work spaces, they have not been retrofitted for earthquakes, and as such are not suitable to sleep in, so workign there comprises an odd mix of camping and domestic life. Signs posted throughout the buildings warn of the danger of earthquakes, as well as other signs noting that Hanta Virus is a known danger in the area. Also, there is a telephone in the ranch hands quarters, but the line has long since been cut, and as such the "in case of emergency call 911" sign has been altered to read "in case of emergency call God."
A cozy place, all in all.
People usually work in groups out there, and the main form of entertainment in the evenings is sitting around the firepit outside of the ranch hands quarters. And this is when the stories come out. However the stories got started, they are passed on by researchers staying at the ranch.
Personal Experience: I stayed at the ranch for a week in the summer of 2003, while working on an archaeological research project with my advisor, one of his other graduate students, a graduate student from the University of Oregon, and a set of professors and undergrads from CSULB. On the first day, before we set up our tents for the night, we began telling each other what we knew about the place, including the ghost stories.
After I had told the story of the bridge, my advisor, Mike, decided to place his tent right by the bridge, leading to great amusement for all of us.
Later that night, I told the story of the widow in the ranch house. This led to me being dared to enter the house after sunset (yep, here we were, a bunch of adult researchers, behaving like 13-year olds). I agreed, nervously crossed the bridge in the dark, and made my way towards the house.
I had expected that the house would be locked, and I could return with that news. I tried the door. No such luck, it opened and allowed me in. Now, it was clear that the house had been built in two stages, and that there was a newer "outer" layer to the house, to which I had gained access, and an inner layer comprising the original structure. The doors to the inner part of the house were locked, and I could not enter. Nonetheless, I had done what was asked, I had entered the house, if only the outer portion, and I could now report back.
After all, the sooner I reported back, the sooner I could be an adult again.
Sources: Local Legend, Folklore, Personal Accounts
In a slightly more sinister version of the story, the husband was a slave trader, a fact unknown to the wife until she paid an unexpected visit to his ship while it was in port. On discovering her husband's true business, she scorned him and returned to the home. On his next trip, his ship sank and he drowned, and the wife again wastes away and dies, though this time torn between guilt and disgust over her husband's trade. This version of the story often features the ghost not as a passive watcher of the sea, but as an angry and vengeful force.
The second story is centered on a bridge that crosses a ravine that separates the main ranch house from the ranch hands quarters. One night while crossing this bridge, a Chumash servant girl began to scream. The ranch hands rushed out to see what had happened, and found the girl sobbing and gibbering incoherently. They brought her back to the ranch house, where she continued to spout incomprehensible nonsense. Eventually the girl was taken to a hospital on the mainland, where she died many years later, never having recovered her senses. However, to this day, people report hearing a weird, inhuman scream in the dead of night coming from that bridge, and nobody has ever seen its source.
In addition to these stories, the ranch also has reports of strange lights and odd shadows seen moving about in the ranch house, weird happenings on the land, and the occasional odd noise from an unknown source, usually occuring late at night.
Commentary: The land now known as the Christie Ranch served as the headquarters of a ranch that occupied the seaward-portion of Santa Cruz Island during the 19th century. The ranch is no longer used, although descendants of the pigs that were bred there now run rough-shod over the islands native flora and fauna. The ranch headqaurters has not been abandoned, however. The University of California runs a research facility on the island, and the Christie Ranch is a satellite base used by researchers on the southwest portion of the island.
Alhough there is running water (and hence showers and toilets), what electricity there is comes from a gas-powered generator, and the telephone lines to the ranch were long ago cut. Although there are standing buildings suitable for use as kitchens and work spaces, they have not been retrofitted for earthquakes, and as such are not suitable to sleep in, so workign there comprises an odd mix of camping and domestic life. Signs posted throughout the buildings warn of the danger of earthquakes, as well as other signs noting that Hanta Virus is a known danger in the area. Also, there is a telephone in the ranch hands quarters, but the line has long since been cut, and as such the "in case of emergency call 911" sign has been altered to read "in case of emergency call God."
A cozy place, all in all.
People usually work in groups out there, and the main form of entertainment in the evenings is sitting around the firepit outside of the ranch hands quarters. And this is when the stories come out. However the stories got started, they are passed on by researchers staying at the ranch.
Personal Experience: I stayed at the ranch for a week in the summer of 2003, while working on an archaeological research project with my advisor, one of his other graduate students, a graduate student from the University of Oregon, and a set of professors and undergrads from CSULB. On the first day, before we set up our tents for the night, we began telling each other what we knew about the place, including the ghost stories.
After I had told the story of the bridge, my advisor, Mike, decided to place his tent right by the bridge, leading to great amusement for all of us.
Later that night, I told the story of the widow in the ranch house. This led to me being dared to enter the house after sunset (yep, here we were, a bunch of adult researchers, behaving like 13-year olds). I agreed, nervously crossed the bridge in the dark, and made my way towards the house.
I had expected that the house would be locked, and I could return with that news. I tried the door. No such luck, it opened and allowed me in. Now, it was clear that the house had been built in two stages, and that there was a newer "outer" layer to the house, to which I had gained access, and an inner layer comprising the original structure. The doors to the inner part of the house were locked, and I could not enter. Nonetheless, I had done what was asked, I had entered the house, if only the outer portion, and I could now report back.
After all, the sooner I reported back, the sooner I could be an adult again.
Sources: Local Legend, Folklore, Personal Accounts
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Ouija Boards
When I was a teenager, some friends of mine who went to my church started playing with a Ouija board. The girls began to get something, the pointer was moving on its own. They asked if it was good or evil, and it spelled out E-V-I-L, and they got scared. One of them asked what it’s name was, and a red ‘S’-shaped rash appeared on each of her wrists, the ‘S’ standing for ‘Satan’ you know. They called the pastor over right away, and he performed an exorcism on the house.
Commentary: This version of the story, with the red “S” shaped rash, was told to me by a neighbor when I was a kid. The story was told multiple times, sometimes with more embellishment than others (sometimes the board spelled out S-A-T-A-N, sometimes it simply went to “S”, and sometimes with the rash on the wrists. I always asked if she was present for the event, and she always said no. When I entered high school, I began to realize that similar stories were a dime a dozen, and that the stories were primarily told either by kids trying to freak each other out, or by a particular type of Protestant trying to warn others of either the existence of Satan or their perceived need for others to convert to their brand of Christianity. In other versions of this story, those told by non-Christians or Christians simply telling a scary story and not trying to use it as a conversion tool, the evil force might be the spirit of a dead killer, an unknown but malevolent spirit, or any number of other things, not necessarilly Satan.
In other words, I began to realize that this story was an urban legend – complete with the classic “this happened to a friend” line at the beginning (the only times I have heard it told as a first-hand account have been on anonymous internet sites). The story seems to have two sources – the first being the distrust of “the occult” by many religious groups of the Judeo-Christian traditions, where anything “magical” that isn’t seen as being strictly of the “godly” mold must be satanic (I have even seen this pushed farther, where anything that doesn’t directly support Christianity, whether supernatural or mundane, is seen as satanic). Unlike other supernatural stories popular among this particular group, the Ouija Board stories are, in my experience, often independent of the teller as victim or hero in “spiritual warfare”, and seem to be told in equal parts as a lesson and just to tell a good creepy story.
The other source of the story seems to be the campfire story tradition – the desire to tell stories that are allegedly true not to teach a lesson or keep someone in line, but simply to have fun with a scary story. In this sense, these stories often fuel a type of legend tripping in that they inspire young people to play at contacting dangerous forces through an item that is really just a rather odd toy and remnant of a very weird period in history . Some enterprising (and pranksterish) individuals that I have met have even figured out ways to conceal magnets in order to fool other people into thinking that they have contacted an entity more malevolent than a teenager with a mischievous streak.
Regardless, the Ouija Board makes for one of the most enduring elements of many a creepy ghost story, and as such is absolutely worthy of mention.
A few more, similar stories can be found here, here, and here.
SOURCES: Personal Account, Urban Legend
Pursuing Demon
“You don’t believe in demons? You’re being a fool! I know that demons are real. I was out at Robert’s house one day. I knew it was time to go, so I got on my bike and started to ride home. After a little while, I felt something that was just wrong. I felt this really intense cold behind me, and I looked around and saw a ball of…just blackness coming after me. I knew it was evil, I could feel it, and I knew I had to get away. I rode as fast as I could, all the way home, knowing that this thing was chasing me. I finally got home, and when I looked, it was gone. THAT is how I know that demons are real!”
Commentary: This is probably one of the first “personal account” stories that I collected, back when I was in high school. I listened as one of the other students in my electronics class told this story to another student who had begun to be open about his skepticism of supernatural claims. At the time, I dismissed the story as nonsense, but I see it somewhat differently now.
Was this kid making the story up, or did he have an experience that he couldn’t understand or explain (whether or not someone else might be able to understand or explain it)? I don’t know, but that’s not what interests me about this story. What interests me is how this story was used as a social tool.
In order to understand what interests me about this story, I have to give you a bit of background information. This kid, we’ll call him Joseph, was a member of an Evangelical Christian church that firmly believed in the reality of “spiritual warfare” – the idea that heavenly and diabolic forces were locked in combat and that humans were playing a rule in a real and bloody war through their choices and politics.
I heard Joseph tell this story under two circumstances – when he was trying to sway someone over to Christianity, or when he was talking to other members of his church. In the first case, the use of the tool was clear- it was intended to persuade someone that they were in danger and only Joseph’s group could save them from that danger. Joseph’s target on that day didn’t buy it, but nonetheless, it was pretty clear what Joseph was trying to do.
The other time that I heard this and similar stories was when Joseph and other members of his church had gathered together. They would trade “spiritual warfare” stories – most of which were much milder, those sorts of things that could easily be chalked up to an overactive imagination (“I was in my room reading a book that I knew I wasn’t supposed to be reading, when I felt a cold presence, and it frightened me, so I prayed….”). Joseph’s, however, was not alone in its more explicit nature – actually seeing the demon, having to escape, etc. These stories seemed to serve both for social bonding, they were stories that everyone told to frighten or excite each other and bring the group closer together. These stories were also as a sort of one-upsmanship, this particular group (and similar ones that I have encountered since then) viewed encounters with demons as a badge of honor – something that demonstrates how the teller encountered and defeated a demon, a religious variation on “big fish” stories.
SOURCES: Personal Account
Commentary: This is probably one of the first “personal account” stories that I collected, back when I was in high school. I listened as one of the other students in my electronics class told this story to another student who had begun to be open about his skepticism of supernatural claims. At the time, I dismissed the story as nonsense, but I see it somewhat differently now.
Was this kid making the story up, or did he have an experience that he couldn’t understand or explain (whether or not someone else might be able to understand or explain it)? I don’t know, but that’s not what interests me about this story. What interests me is how this story was used as a social tool.
In order to understand what interests me about this story, I have to give you a bit of background information. This kid, we’ll call him Joseph, was a member of an Evangelical Christian church that firmly believed in the reality of “spiritual warfare” – the idea that heavenly and diabolic forces were locked in combat and that humans were playing a rule in a real and bloody war through their choices and politics.
I heard Joseph tell this story under two circumstances – when he was trying to sway someone over to Christianity, or when he was talking to other members of his church. In the first case, the use of the tool was clear- it was intended to persuade someone that they were in danger and only Joseph’s group could save them from that danger. Joseph’s target on that day didn’t buy it, but nonetheless, it was pretty clear what Joseph was trying to do.
The other time that I heard this and similar stories was when Joseph and other members of his church had gathered together. They would trade “spiritual warfare” stories – most of which were much milder, those sorts of things that could easily be chalked up to an overactive imagination (“I was in my room reading a book that I knew I wasn’t supposed to be reading, when I felt a cold presence, and it frightened me, so I prayed….”). Joseph’s, however, was not alone in its more explicit nature – actually seeing the demon, having to escape, etc. These stories seemed to serve both for social bonding, they were stories that everyone told to frighten or excite each other and bring the group closer together. These stories were also as a sort of one-upsmanship, this particular group (and similar ones that I have encountered since then) viewed encounters with demons as a badge of honor – something that demonstrates how the teller encountered and defeated a demon, a religious variation on “big fish” stories.
SOURCES: Personal Account
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