11/5/11

Interview takes place as follows:

 

Me: Tell me your ghost story

 

L.M.:  Okay. So this takes place in New Hampshire in an area where this place was converted from a Catholic school into apartments and the building used to be a dormitory in the catholic school.  So the rumor goes that during the last five years of the catholic girls’ school, before it got turned into an apartment, there were about 15-20 murders that took place.  Behind the dormitory they were getting buried behind the school area. But after these were turned into apartments there was a rumor about the dance hall that they had kept the same.  The rumor was that after a certain hour, you could hear the tapping across the dance floor as if people were dancing and you could hear a live orchestra as if there was a ball going on.  Apparently this would happen late at night or early in the morning between 12am and 2am. I don’t really know what would trigger it other than the idea that it always occurred late at night…it was almost the idea that if you were in there past a certain hour, you were disturbing them…

 

Me: them being?

 

L.M.: the spirits…

 

ME:  spirits?

 

L.M.: Yes because we couldn’t really see anything. I think the difference between a spirit and a ghost is that with a spirit you can’t see anything but with a ghost there would be some type of physical manifestation.

 

ME: Who did you hear this story from?

 

L.M.: I heard this from my friend whose dad lives in the apartment building.

 

ME: Do they still live there?

 

L.M. My friend doesn’t but his dad still does.

 

Me:  So is that the extent of the tale or is there more?

 

L.M.:  No, there’s never been anything truly scary happen.  It’s just spooky and the rumor is basically that if you stay past a certain hour, you’ll definitely hear them.

 

ME: I see.  So you said you had a personal experience in there?

 

L.M.: Yes.  So I was 17 years old going out to New Hampshire.  We were staying with my friend and they had converted the room next to the dance hall to a game room.  My friend had told me the ghost story the night before and we didn’t really think anything of it, but the next night we were in the game room.  The only division between the game room and the dance hall are two glass double doors so you can see right through them.  It was 12:30am and we were playing pool and we stopped because we heard this tapping and my friend went to the door to see if anybody was at the entrance and nobody was there.  Then 15 minutes later we heard the tapping again and this time it was a little louder, a little stronger…maybe more forceful, and we stopped to listen and it stopped again.  Then about ten minutes later we were listening to hip hop music, all of a sudden it sounded like there was a classical orchestra/ballroom orchestra playing music but nobody was there.  So we turned off the radio and the ballroom music continued.  Then we went into the dance hall and the music got louder as if we were in a ball.  We basically ran out of there.

 

ME: So you think the ballroom music and tapping were “spirits”?

 

L.M.: Yes and the reason why  was because when the tapping started we thought maybe it was somebody upstairs and we asked but there’s no room between the roof of the game room and the dance room, so basically it was in its own designated area and there was nothing above us.  Then when we went out onto the dance floor, you could still hear everything as if it was there, but it didn’t feel like there was a presence there…it was as if it was separated from this dimension, yet we could hear it.   This building is people’s homes, so it’s probably not that accessible in terms of visiting for ghost sightings but it is definitely a building that one would be able to find.

 

Me: What city in New Hampshire?

 

L.M.: Near Lake Winnepasaki

 

Me: Do you know how old the story goes back?

 

L.M.: It was a pretty well-known catholic girls’ finishing school before it was an apartment building.  The apartment building was the dormitory the girls used before it was refinished and fixed up a bit.   It was probably a finishing school around the late 80s.

 

ME: Alright.  Any other thoughts you’d like to add?  Interpretations?

 

L.M.:  No, I mean it was a spooky experience that I don’t really understand.  The legend proved itself to me that night though, what was supposed to happen pretty much happened and we weren’t going to stick around to see what might happen next.

 

Similarly to the way others avoid admittance of belief in ghosts, L.M. did not want to fully conceptualize the existence of ghosts in her story.  She had not seen anything, and as you can see, she attributed that to the idea that ghosts can be seen as opposed to spirits which can simply be heard according to her personal theory.  Therefore she did not fully want to admit to having had an encounter with “ghosts” per say, but she did respond with this tale when I had initially asked about “ghost stories.”  Personally, I’ve never been one to distinguish specific differences between ghosts, spirits, phantoms, or whatever else people might refer to these “things” as.  In my opinion, if you have an encounter with the paranormal, it’s the paranormal—there’s not much of a difference.  I tend to think of all of these manifestations as ghosts and/or spirits, with plenty of overlap and equality between the two terms.  It sounds as though the occurrence of the ballroom music and the tap dancing are unexplainable, and I believe in these experiences; I believe in ghosts.  It theoretically could be explained by means of psychological illusions, other sounds that were mistaken for tapping or music, or tapping and music coming from somewhere else, but considering the ghost story that accompanies the dance hall, and the fact that her personal story matched it, I feel that there is definitely the possibility that this story is one of ghosts haunting the remains of an old catholic school and that’s all there is to it.