Tag Archives: female ghost

A Ghost at SUNY Buffalo

Text

Tell me your ghost story:

Was in pharmacy school, in the early 90s, 1994ish. I had just rented a very small apt, in an old house. I was in the upstairs apartment. My room was really small, had space to walk in, my bed, inches, and then the window and the wall. There was no room between the bed and the window for people. One night early in my time there I was sleeping but then I woke up in the middle of the night. I look toward the window side of my room and there is somebody standing there, so real to me that I sat up and said “Hey!” The person was a very small in stature woman, dressed in black mid 1800s mourning garb with a veil, lacy, everything. She was standing there, regarding me. The feeling was like she understood I was a new tenant and she was taking my measure. After a little she disappeared, maybe a minute or so.

Were you paralyzed in fear?

To me it felt like a realization it wasn’t an intruder was positive, and then I had a few moments of getting that feeling. She wasn’t threatening, wasn’t there to scare me, it just felt like she was seeing who she was sharing her apartment with.

Part B:

At the time I had two cats, Punky and Sophie. I was sitting in my couch studying one afternoon. I had put a bag on a chair, and it had been there for a while. All of a sudden it starts to crinkle, and it could’ve been plastic fatigue or something but I was looking at it, and I said out loud “Please don’t do that, you’re scaring me.” Immediately after, it stopped.

Was there anything else that happened in the apartment?

It sometimes felt like the cats were watching something that wasn’t there.

Your version of the house in the 80s:

That house had bad spirits in it, evil ones for sure. Always had a not good feeling. There were two incidencies I remember. I used to have a big typewriter and I must’ve been home from college in my freshman year, my mom and dad were divorced. My dad stayed in that house. One night, middle of the night, the typewriter gets pushed over and clunks against the wall. The feeling was, “Something did that.” It was just “Woah,” and I was wide awake and then eventually I went back to sleep.

There was another night when my dad was dating Kathy and my brother Jason wasn’t there, so I was home alone, my dad and Kathy had gone to the movies. I went to bed. Sometime in the night I’m in bed and I hear distinct footsteps coming up the stairs. I thought, “Oh they came here.” I get out of bed, flip on the lights, and there’s nobody and nothing. There was a pit in my stomach. I remember feeling such relief at the thought of them being home, I hated that house alone, and that is how sure I was I heard someone home.

There was no fear with the spirit you saw, but one felt malevolent?

I never thought about that, but really it’s because you get a feeling. It’s like when you meet someone and the sense you get as to whether they’re positive or not, and maybe it’s the same with spirits.

Context

This is my mother’s story about a spirit she saw while in pharmacy school. Interestingly enough, she had a similar ghostly experience, that being a figure in old clothes standing over her while she was sleeping, to the one her mom had ten years earlier. While doing this interview I realized they had never discussed that, so they didn’t realize there was a throughline to both of them. My mother’s interpretation of the events we got into during the questions, but suffice to say the experience wasn’t negative for her with the ghost in pharmacy school. Her story about the malevolent spirit in the 80s absolutely was negative, but I only snuck that in as a matter of recordkeeping.

My interpretation

The similarities between this story and her mother’s story of ghostly encounters (especially when they had never discussed it) is fascinating. The collection of this folklore and the theorizing of its origins makes it important, but more than anything, the multiple perspectives of the same event is important as well. I was careful to not ask leading questions to either of them about the experiences they both shared, which made it all the more interesting when they would bring up similar details in stories they hadn’t discussed with one another. I think my mother truly did see something hovering next to her bed that night, and that it is plausibly unexplainable. I think she did hear footsteps clamping up the stairs while home alone and see nothing once she opened that door. The world of spirits and apparitions is not one usually discussed, which makes the collections of these stories have all the more value.

Mad Bess: A Ghost-Story

The informant heard this ghost legend in elementary school, particularly from the older middle schoolers and the old principal. It was a legend to give the campus character and teach the kids some history as well through talking about the mines and buildings around campus. It was an entertaining story from childhood intended to scare young kids as well. Now, the informant tells it to reminisce on childhood and to entertain friends, usually around a campfire or during other such story-telling times.

“The school I went to for elementary through middle school had a lot of old buildings that used to be people’s houses, like people used to live there because they’re super old old mining houses. There’re a little, like, I don’t know, like, kind of like victorian-ish era and from mining times. This family lived in the old lunchroom because the old buildings that the campus was made of were originally old mining homes. Her father worked in the mines that are located around campus and her mother was a stay-at-home mother, doing the cooking and cleaning. There was that collapse in the mine, that like 10 other ghost stories are about, that killed her father. Her mother was, like, older and got very sick and also died. So the young girl was left as an orphan and lived in the house still, but because she was so young couldn’t take care of herself and she just died a bit later because she couldn’t provide for herself but she still stayed in the house after all those years and now she haunts it and protects the house in a wrathful, mean way.”

Although this story teller did not really tell a story so much as a recount of the story, one can still get the general idea of what the story was supposed to be. The story was likely intended to entertain children as well as teach them about the history of the school campus. Being a mining town, the campus is surrounded by mine shafts (safely covered for the children) and all the school buildings are old houses from the mining days. Ghost stories are a good way to teach children about the place they inhabit as the legends reinforce that there were times before the kids got here. They will certainly remember history if it has an exciting story that goes with it. Thus, this culture values remembrance of place and times before. They value history, especially of the relevant place in which they reside. The culture values teaching children about said history, which is unsurprising considering that it is a school, and they realize that stories help knowledge stick. If nothing else, the culture values entertainment for children and thus created the story to do just that.