(This story takes place in the early 1900s) There is a girl and a guy who are both students at The University of Miami.  The two are dating each other. The girl is much younger than the guy her family does not approve of their relationship. Because they do not like the guy they force the girl to drop out of school to keep her away from him. The family is local so she does not move away or anything, she just does not go to the school anymore. She is living at home, and the only way they can see each other is if he sneaks out at night and picks her up on his motorcycle.  They continue seeing each other late at night behind her parents’ noses. They eventually decide to run away together. The plan is: he is going to pick her up on his motorcycle and they are going to leave together and get married and have a life together.  It is late at night.  The way she always knows he is down there for her is he would go down with his motorcycle light off and he would flash his light once and she would know he was down there and she would open up her window (and you see the light behind her) so he knew she was there.  She waited and waited and he never showed up.  He actually died in a motorcycle accident and she never found out.  *When I asked her to repeat the story she remembered the portion about what the girl thought was the reason he never showed up* She thought he had cold feet and didn’t want to be with her.  The legend is that she is still waiting for him to this day and she never left the house even long after her parents died.  If you go down there at night and you flash your lights she is supposed to open up the window which is backlit and say, “I am here for you.”

Elizabeth told me that she heard this story when she was an undergraduate at Miami University. She told me that she and her friends would always conspire to go up to the house and flash their lights. They said the closest they would ever get as hopping in the car and then getting terrified eventually and calling off the entire operation. I found it hilarious how potent the belief was in her town. She says that she would not go to the house today even though she does not even think that the story is true. What adds to the believability of the ghost story is the fact that, according to her, other students at Miami University claim that they have flashed their lights at the house and seen the light from the window being opened (which is supposed to indicate that the girl is still in the house).

I asked her what she thought the story meant and she told me that it had something to do with how women never get over having their hearts broken. She said she can relate to feeling like even though she had not heard from someone she was dating she still felt that in time they would be together again. I think the story I a cautionary tale about what can possibly happen when children disobey their parents. The guy in the story died in a motorcycle accident and the girl has her heart broken and spends the rest of her life waiting for this dead guy. If they had listened to their parents and stopped seeing each other none of that would have happened. The girl’s parents were able to recognize the dangers in their relationship because they had the wisdom of age.  That being the case their advice should always be heeded.

I think another important fact was the difference in age. It could be seen as a warning to young college girls who may be interested in dating older men now once they are free from their parent’s watchful eye. It is as if the story is saying, “Date older men and this will happen to you.”