You know, I just remembered that my high school, Mount de Sales Academy, is considered one of the most haunted places in Maryland. I was there a lot, obviously, and I never saw anything. Although I did almost get severely injured once.
It had snowed recently, and there was a layer of it frozen on the roof of the five-story building. I was walking along the side of the school in the morning. A chunk of the icy snow, probably a foot in diameter (it obviously wasn’t circular, but I can’t think of a better way to say it) and two or three inches thick, broke off from the roof and fell, missing my shoulder by a whisper. I remember looking down at the sizable pile of shattered ice and taking off in a frenzied run for the door, stopping to pant in the cafeteria like I had traveled a mile instead of five yards. I don’t know if it would have been fatal or caused heavy injury, but I imagine it wouldn’t have tickled. I never realized snow could coalesce into a frozen lump like that; it seems so fluffy.
But back to being haunted. Nothing supernatural ever happened to me. Aww man, wait, it did. This wasn’t ghostly though… This priest came to school who was said to be a healer. He would do this thing called laying hands on you; I can’t remember if he put his hands a centimeter away from the sides of my head or if he actually touched me. Anyway, I walked up to him, handed him a card where I had written prayer intentions (this was to keep things moving; people apparently go on and on when they say them verbally), he started to pray, and his hands came close… And suddenly there was this immense pressure on me. It penetrated my skull, and suddenly I couldn’t hear or see. A strong tingling overtook my body, as if every bit of me was asleep. Then I blacked out.
I don’t remember it, but apparently my body started falling backwards. Two men were behind me; they each supported one of my shoulders and lowered me to the floor. My reaction to the laying of hands was common; it seems that when someone passes out from it, their body falls, but is weightless to anyone who touches them. I watched it happen to probably a hundred other girls. The men lowered them effortlessly, as if setting down a feather rather than a person. The explanation is that the priest is channeling the Holy Spirit into you, and that the human body is overwhelmed in the face of it. I wonder what that means if you didn’t fall? I remember seeing a lot of girls start to tilt backwards, but fight against it and remain standing. Maybe it’s an acceptance thing? Who knows.
At any rate, I wasn’t like that for more than a minute. My vision swam back into focus, and I could hear again. I shakily got to my feet; my body wasn’t responding well, and I didn’t regain full control for about five more minutes.
But that also wasn’t the kind of ghost story I was originally hinting at. My school is more than 150 years old. It was always an all girl’s school, although back then it was a boarding one. The girls lived on one side, and nuns lived in the other. The fourth floor, or the fifth if you count the basement, which I always did because it has classrooms, is in disuse. This is where the girls slept (the nuns, I believe, had individual rooms, whereas the girls slept in one huge common room on the fourth floor). The fourth floor is creepy. There are holes in the floor, exposed pipes, and, most mysteriously, relics of the school. Anything that was originally in the school that proved too cumbersome to move, such as two HUGE and very old pianos that would be worth a fortune if we could figure out a way to fit them through the doors (how did they even get there?!?!) was shoved to the fourth floor. There is a definite air of creepiness, of ancientness, and of sadness there. I confess that if I were there alone I would be uncomfortable, but I was fine in a group. The hauntings are usually described as occurring there.
There were many stories on the origin of the ghosts. One maintained that scarlet fever hit the school, and the girls who died there remain. Another said that a girl once opened a door to no where on the fourth floor. There IS a door to no where up there. It has been sealed shut; if you could open it, you would be staring outside, and if you stepped through, you would fall to the ground. This story impressed me as a freshman; however, upon further inspection I realized that every floor has a handsome balcony along that side of the building, except for the fourth floor. I asked, and it turns out it was removed due to rot in the wood. So there goes that story; that door just opened out to the balcony in the old days. Another story holds that a girl was talking to her love interest by leaning out the window from the fourth floor (hope they each had a good set of lungs, and a way to shout without being overheard). A nun’s boy radar went off, and she came up behind the girl to punish her for having a boy around. The girl was so startled by her sudden appearance that she fell out the window. The most famous story is that a ghost of a nun hangs around (for some reason, people say she’s transparent and…blue).
So what kind of haunting goes on? Supposedly doors on the fourth floor that were open will be locked, and doors that were locked will open without anyone doing it. Door knobs rattle. Apparently the blue nun likes to pace, and people have reported hearing it from the third floor. The most common occurrence is flashes of blue light, seen from the fourth floor windows from the outside the building. That’s all I ever heard of; the ghosts seem to be benign, and unable to use stairs.
Creepy things have happened there, but they were ordinary enough. A teacher had a heart attack during class, but he was ancient. Once a bit of ceiling fell on a girl’s head in the stairwell.
So, I’m curious. Does anyone here believe in ghosts? I don’t think about it much. They may be out there; I don’t see why not. But I have no personal experience with them, and I’m not vehement about their existence or lack thereof.
This turned out WAY longer than I had anticipated. I hope no one minds O___O Sorry if it was random.
~Jen
