Dead Men's Tales.
St Patrick’s Day is the second best holiday of the year. Horray for Halloween. A new year is born as winter encroaches. For one night the barrier between worlds is dropped. Girls respectfully follow tradition’s demands to dress revealingly.
Believable scary stories make me cry. Or, at least, make my eyes well up uncontrollably. I love to cry to scary stories.
Kenyon College is old and established and lib’brul and rich and haunted. It’s about 14 miles from the farm. On Saturday night Dr. Shutt was to lead his renowned ghost tour of campus. I brought two friends to enjoy, but it was cancelled for fear of rain. I believe them Kenyon whelps aren’t constituted of strong enough stuff.
Sunday night was a weak sauce Halloweeny event put on yearly by the students. A candlelit scary-story “reading” (Poe. more Poe. a little more Poe.) in the old graveyard on campus. By pulling a series of levers and bells I had gained the confidence of Dr. Shutt’s daughter. Clever me. She arranged a small personal tour from the man himself to follow the funereal readings.
Kenyon has lots of ghost stories. It’s really a tremendous body of work. Dr. Shutt is the self-appointed keeper of this vein of Kenyon lore. He has heard so many. But he tells a select few. There are two types of ghost stories tellers. Those you want (at least a little) to believe. And those you can’t help but believe. He is the latter.
A couple of the stories he would tell in grand fashion, but at the end poo-poo. But the majority were true as he told them. It was good.
Some of the stories were old. In a fraternity initiation, a boy was tied up and placed on the nearby train tracks. He was hit by an unscheduled train, perhaps on it’s way to Mt Vernon for repairs. He haunts his old room. It’s possible that his dad helped tie him to the tracks.
The oldest building on campus burned down in 1949. Several kids died. The last seven trapped inside went out singing songs together. The building was rebuilt almost immediately. The ghosts appear walking where the floors would have been before it was rebuilt.
The best reported ghost of Kenyon is the ghost of Capels Hall. In 1979 a drunken boy in room 811 went down to visit his girl in 611. He was returning to his room via elevator after being rebuffed when it stopped working. He fell down the shaft in his attempt to leave. Ever since, girls who stay in rooms 611, 711, 811 and 911 report over and over again this: they wake in the night, unable to move. someone sits down next to them on the bed. and then the someone lies down next to them. It’s actually ridiculous the number of times this has been reported.
The Capels ghost was also implicated a couple of summers ago in an incident involving phone calls of screaming to the switchboard coming from those rooms. It was summer. The place was locked. Security found the lights on in those rooms. And the hot water on in the showers on those floors. But no one around. As soon as they left Caples, the switchboard operator fielded the same screaming calls. Security ran back. Found the same thing. No one there. Lights on. Hot water on. And this time the phone jacks were plugged in, but the phone cords were yanked off.
OSU should beware.
Believable scary stories make me cry. Or, at least, make my eyes well up uncontrollably. I love to cry to scary stories.
Kenyon College is old and established and lib’brul and rich and haunted. It’s about 14 miles from the farm. On Saturday night Dr. Shutt was to lead his renowned ghost tour of campus. I brought two friends to enjoy, but it was cancelled for fear of rain. I believe them Kenyon whelps aren’t constituted of strong enough stuff.
Sunday night was a weak sauce Halloweeny event put on yearly by the students. A candlelit scary-story “reading” (Poe. more Poe. a little more Poe.) in the old graveyard on campus. By pulling a series of levers and bells I had gained the confidence of Dr. Shutt’s daughter. Clever me. She arranged a small personal tour from the man himself to follow the funereal readings.
Kenyon has lots of ghost stories. It’s really a tremendous body of work. Dr. Shutt is the self-appointed keeper of this vein of Kenyon lore. He has heard so many. But he tells a select few. There are two types of ghost stories tellers. Those you want (at least a little) to believe. And those you can’t help but believe. He is the latter.
A couple of the stories he would tell in grand fashion, but at the end poo-poo. But the majority were true as he told them. It was good.
Some of the stories were old. In a fraternity initiation, a boy was tied up and placed on the nearby train tracks. He was hit by an unscheduled train, perhaps on it’s way to Mt Vernon for repairs. He haunts his old room. It’s possible that his dad helped tie him to the tracks.
The oldest building on campus burned down in 1949. Several kids died. The last seven trapped inside went out singing songs together. The building was rebuilt almost immediately. The ghosts appear walking where the floors would have been before it was rebuilt.The best reported ghost of Kenyon is the ghost of Capels Hall. In 1979 a drunken boy in room 811 went down to visit his girl in 611. He was returning to his room via elevator after being rebuffed when it stopped working. He fell down the shaft in his attempt to leave. Ever since, girls who stay in rooms 611, 711, 811 and 911 report over and over again this: they wake in the night, unable to move. someone sits down next to them on the bed. and then the someone lies down next to them. It’s actually ridiculous the number of times this has been reported.
The Capels ghost was also implicated a couple of summers ago in an incident involving phone calls of screaming to the switchboard coming from those rooms. It was summer. The place was locked. Security found the lights on in those rooms. And the hot water on in the showers on those floors. But no one around. As soon as they left Caples, the switchboard operator fielded the same screaming calls. Security ran back. Found the same thing. No one there. Lights on. Hot water on. And this time the phone jacks were plugged in, but the phone cords were yanked off.
OSU should beware.
posted by Lord of the Barnyard at 8:47 PM
5 Comments:
very nice.
one thing though - i think dr. shutt is more accurately considered an inadvertent, accidental, and vaguely unwilling keeper of the ghost stories. certainly not self-appointed. i think too, that this is part of what makes the tales, coming from him, so believable.
Puttin' a little back in your track:
http://pulchersentio.prwdot.org/002985.html
The story about the haunted rooms ending in 11 totally made my heart race....
Ever wish you would die a twisted sordid(sp?) horrible death so that you could haunt something/somewhere?
Me neither.
Well, I enjoyed this blog... Except your information is inaccurate. You said that the rooms 611, 711, 811, and 911 are said to be haunted... Well, There is no 911. The building stops at the 8th floor.
And I have some stories to share about Caples hall... I have stayed in that building twice for a statewide conference that takes place there every summer. And this past summer while staying there, within the first 24 hours, the fire alarms went off randomly four times. Nobody knows why. Not only that, I was in room 710, and some friends were in room 711. And the two girls who were in 711 were up late one night talking, and one girl hears someone whisper her name, and the other girl never said a word and nobody was around. That's an unknown mystery...
Kenyon college might actually be haunted, we all will have our own experiences... But, I guess that nobody will ever know if it is haunted or not unless professionals actually investigate the place.
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