This one's been haunting the White House for the last forty years:
BOOGA, BOOGA, BOOGA!
Posted on 10/07/2004 6:30:46 PM PDT by CurlyBill
SARASOTA - When Christina Siciliano was a student at Ringling School of Art and Design nine years ago, she turned off the lights in her dorm room every night and said, "Good night, Mary."
Siciliano didn't have a roommate.
She lived alone in Room 12 in Keating Center. Mary was the ghost students have talked about for years, and many believe she still haunts the building, a former hotel built in the 1920s.
"Haunted Campuses," an hour-long show scheduled for 9 p.m. Oct. 24 on the Travel Channel, features ghost stories from Ringling and four other college campuses. A production crew interviewed students and filmed on the Ringling campus in March.
Many students have heard about the ghost, and more than a few believe they have seen her.
"My freshman year, I was put into Keating," Siciliano said. "I kept noticing things had been moved, or the television turned off. There were earrings missing, keys gone, or the door locked itself - just weirdness. I just thought my sorority sisters were trying to scare me."
One day, Siciliano said, she saw a woman in a black nightgown enter a room at the end of the hall. But when she investigated, she discovered the room was actually a ventilation closet, and there was no one there. Other students told her the figure was probably Mary, the ghost believed by many to inhabit the building.
One night, Siciliano said, she was awakened by a flash of light followed by the sound of a vase crashing to the floor.
"I don't know why, but all I said was, 'Go back to bed, Mary,' " and I rolled over," she said. "From that night on, I always said, 'Good night, Mary.' I just sort of figured I had a roommate."
Siciliano, 27, said she last saw Mary about six weeks before the end of the school year.
"In the middle of the night I heard this horrible scratching noise," she said. "I woke up, and there was a very pale face staring at me just inches from my face."
Siciliano said she was scared and told Mary to go back to bed. The strange occurrences stopped after that night, and she never saw Mary again, she said.
"Even now, when I think about it, my heart starts racing a little bit," Siciliano said.
The typical haunt
If there is a ghost named Mary haunting Keating Center, she is typical, said William Heim, associate professor of literature at University of South Florida in Tampa.
"Most often, the supposed ghosts you encounter simply seem to be playing out the activities they did thousands and thousands of times when they were alive, and they are not aware that some things have changed around them," Heim said. "They are a residue or imprint, without any real awareness or consciousness that is still there."
Some ghosts come back with requests for the living, like Hamlet's father in the Shakespearean drama, Heim said. But most are like Mary and are simply fond of a particular location, he said.
"Florida doesn't have as many haunted sites as you might expect," Heim said. "What occurs to me is the population of Florida isn't as placebound as, say, Great Britain, where you can hardly find a square foot of ground that hasn't a reputed ghost."
No one is certain how the local ghost story began, but Heim said he has heard of Mary.
"It's a story that has been around for decades," said Christine Meeker Lange, spokeswoman for Ringling.
The story of Mary began when Keating Center, 1191 27th St., was the Bay Haven Hotel. The Bay Haven was built in 1925, according to its National Register of Historic Places listing. Some say Mary, about 18 or 19 years old, was a prostitute who plied her trade there. One night, she committed suicide by hanging herself - or, as others believe, she was raped and murdered.
By 1931, the land boom in Florida was well over, and the hotel was sold to John Ringling, who established an art school in it. Students and faculty members have lived in the upper floors since then, and stories - and reported sightings - of Mary continued.
Lange and some students have searched for a record of the incident without success.
Elizabeth Heath, 38, lived in Keating Center while a first-year student in 1985.
"The student who lived in the room before me said she had seen a ghost in it," Heath said. "But the building didn't have air-conditioning. This room had two windows and a cross breeze. I chose that room, ghost or no ghost."
Heath was 19 the first time she saw Mary.
"She wasn't particularly menacing. She was just kind of there," Heath said. "I am not a person who feels a great connection to the spirit world or the supernatural. But my memory of that is vivid. I think something real happened. I have a very clear picture of where she was and what she looked like."
Ghostly images
Melody Naylor is a second-year student at Ringling who lived in Keating Center last year. She lived in Room 6, directly across from the room Siciliano occupied nearly 10 years ago. Naylor had heard about Mary.
"I was a little bit nervous when I was assigned to Keating," Naylor said. "You do get an eerie feeling walking down the hallway."
Naylor has a photograph she shot last year in an empty hallway, and some believe it could be Mary. The image looks like a silhouette of a person's head and shoulders.
Naylor was working on a classroom assignment with a pinhole camera. She made the camera from a cardboard box sealed with black tape. Light-sensitive paper inside the box was exposed to light through a tiny hole similar to a shuttered lens, and the image was captured on the paper.
Naylor lives in another room in the same building this year.
"I haven't heard anything this year," said Naylor. "People are out and about 24 hours a day over there."
Heim said the ghost stories at Ringling are much like ghost stories in literature.
"Students really enjoy that sort of thing," he said. "Perhaps it is just not knowing, not having a tangible in front of you, that gives your imagination more opportunity to exercise itself. That's something we have lost with scary movies. The movies show it to you."
Ghost Ping!
Ghost Ping!
Good one! I needed it! Thanks, CurlyBill.
***There were earrings missing, keys gone, or the door locked itself - just weirdness.***
The same things happen to me!
...But it couldn't be because I actually lost my keys or my cell phone - or because I stupidly locked myself out of my house.
No, no, couldn't be that - It must be ghosts!!!!
Love those ghost stories! Thanks for the ping.
This one's been haunting the White House for the last forty years:
BOOGA, BOOGA, BOOGA!
There is supposed to be a ghost haunting a former girl's dorm at the college where I attended school and currently work. The ghost is said to be a student who died or commited suicide there in the 1920's but there is no record or newspaper accounts of the incident though several former students reported seeing apparitions over the years.
There are supposed to be ghosts at William and Mary College in Williamsburg, Virginia. The campus is on the Ghost Tour, if you ever get to Colonial Williamsburg.
That's why I don't go to "scary" movies anymore. They are more horror than scary. The imagination is much more entertaining. A good ghost story is fun. Thanks.
Have you ever seen "The Woman in Black"? It's a British film that is pretty low budget, but it is GOOOOOD!!!
Now that is DAMN SCARY!
No. Can I rent it?
It may be hard to get. Try an internet search... or maybe even Ebay. You can probably read the reviews of the movie online as well. The guy who plays the main character is the same guy who plays Harry Potter's father in all of the Harry Potter movies (the guy in the photos and mirror who never talks.)
"October 31st" bump.
If Chris is still in school, I'd hate to be paying her tuition bill!
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