Tag Archives: bedroom 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.