Ghost Stories Told by Bangor Students
P06218 Photo of Halloween costumes and decorations in East Holden, Maine, 1985.
P06218 Photo of Halloween costumes and decorations in East Holden, Maine, 1985.
Recently rummaging
through the extensive collection of ghost stories in the Northeast Archives of
Folklore and Oral History, I was especially intrigued by a group of stories
that had been collected from children in Bangor in the 1970s. The children ranged in age from 10 to 15 (now
they are 44-59 years old). The
researcher, Barbara Harriman, then a student at the University of Maine who
would soon graduate and begin a teaching career, collected the stories from the
Harlow Street School (no longer in existence as a school), the YMCA and Camp
Jordan. She came up with a number of
ghost stories, six of which I have reproduced here for your enjoyment.
Children like to
tell ghost stories to entertain and frighten each other, usually beginning
around the age of 10. This is a time
when they enter a stage when death seems funny to them and far away. Children accept supernatural creatures as
simple facts. Ghosts and monsters simply exist.
Images of ghosts that we have today are derived from an earlier time
when corpses were wrapped in winding sheets—strips of white cloth and although
this practice is long extinct, we still imagine ghosts as creatures appearing
in sheets.
Children tend to
tell their ghost stories with humor as a way of keeping terror of the supernatural
under control. Later, as teens, children
move away from ghost stories and start telling urban legends—like the killer in
the back seat. In this way, children
test the limits of safety by entertaining terror and confirming their sense of
safety with their parents. Halloween is
the time when children dress up as ghosts and ghouls (or their favorite Disney
character), and go house to house demanding treats for tricks. For some,
wrapping toilet paper over someone’s bush or smashing pumpkins becomes an “allowable”
rebellion. [1]
The Rocking Chair
Long ago a
fisherman, his wife and daughter lived along the shore in a snug little house.
One night there was a terrific storm and the seas rumbled and the waves rose up to 30
ft. and maybe even more. In the middle of the storm came a ship from England
which was just about to dock when it was smashed against the rocks. They could
hear the sharp screams for help
but there was nothing they could do. The wife was crying, and the
husband said "be quiet or you’ll wake our daughter up.”
“Listen stupid,
can't you hear someone else's daughter screaming out there?” the wife hollered.
Then the storm
stopped and the next day Mary the daughter found a cute little rocking chair on
the beach when she was playing. She went into the house and said, Oh, Mom, can
I keep this chair? She said yes, and then looked out the window and thought, “It
must have belonged to that little girl.”
Every time the wind
blew after that the chair creaked and groaned.
One Sunday a friend
of Mary's said, “How come there is a girl sitting in your rocking chair? She
has black hair but it’s all stringy and wet she just sits there rocking and
laughing.”
The next night the
fisherman and his wife went out and threw the rocking chair back into the
ocean. They could hear the ghost laughing because now she had the chair all to
herself.
Collected: Harlow
Street School 3/3/70
Informant: Kathy
Gendreau, 11.
Note: Kathy's
mother and father used to tell her this story when she was a child, and her
mother said she heard it in her native France originally.
Motifs: E402.1.8.
Miscellaneous sounds made by ghost of human being.
E236. Return from
dead to demand stolen property.
E414. Drowned
person cannot rest in peace.
E415.1. Ghost
returns to hunt lost article.
E42l.l.l. Ghost
visible to one person alone.
The Two Thieves
Once a long time
ago there were two men who were very, very good friends. They were planning to rob
a bank and they wanted to do it on a Sunday when everyone was in church. When
the day came, they went into the bank through a back window and opened the
vault where the money was. Then they climbed out the window and went to a
secret hiding place. When they got there, one man said, “I will keep your half
of the money,” but he was only kidding. So the other man came at him with a
knife and said, “NO!” He
then stabbed him in the back and the blood came pouring out. After he did that,
he took the body and threw it in the river.
The next night his
friend's body came alive and he went to the secret hiding place. His friend was
sleeping. So he woke him up and asked him where the money was cuz he wanted it
but he said, “I cannot tell you.” So he took his friend down by the river, tied
a huge brick to his foot, and threw him in.
The next night the
other man came alive and went to the hiding place, took him to the river, and
threw him in. And they kept doing that to each other.
Collected: Harlow
Street School 3/3/70
Informant: Debbie
Nadeau, 11.
Class: D
Motifs: E200. Return
from the dead.
E232.1. Return from
dead to slay own murderer.
E232.2. Ghost
returns to slay man who has injured him while living.
E232.4. Ghost
returns to slay enemies.
E234. Ghost
punishes injury received in
life.
E234.o.l. Ghost
returns to demand vengeance.
E236. Return from
dead to demand stolen property.
E413. Murdered
person cannot rest in grave.
House on Fire
One summer morning
Bill jumped into his car and started for the airport where he was to meet two
friends which he was going with. A little while later, the three landed in a
small town in Arkansas. After they went to the hotel, they went out to get
supplies for a hike in the woods they were going to have tomorrow.
The next morning
they got up early and started out--they walked and walked until they came to an
old house so they went in and then they
waited while Dick went upstairs. They heard a scream so Tom ran up and they
heard another and Bill ran out to find a policeman. When he brought the
policeman back, there was no house and the policeman told Bill that the house
had burned down during the Civil War.
Collected: Harlow
Street School 3/3/70
Storyteller: Mike
Scripture, 11.
Class: D.
Note: Mike heard
this story from friends at camp in the summer. Says he thinks it may be true
cause “those boys were from New York and Mike thinks that maybe it could have
happened in New York cause that's where lots of criminals live.”
Motifs: D209S.
Magic disappearance.
F771.6. Phantom Guise:
disappears at dawn.
The Flying Dutchman
In the 1700s the
sailors of a certain ship had a strange adventure. Suddenly, one of the clouds
became sails and all the sailors saw the Flying Dutchman. Soon the captain of
the Flying Dutchman came down to their ship, ate some food, and then asked if he could have some
letters mailed for him. As soon as the captain was back on his ship it
disappeared.
Soon a storm came
up. The captain was missing and the cabin boy said that he had ordered the cook
to fix supper. When the chief mate came, the captain said, “All our food
has turned into beans.”
By morning the
captain had to be held down by the
sailors. On the floor were the letters opened and torn. “The letters have
made him mad--let's dump them overboard,” said the cabin boy. The cook burned
them in the stove. The ship reached port and only the cabin boy would tell
about it. You could tell who had been on the ship, though, because none of those
men would ever eat beans again.
Collected: Harlow
Street School, 3/29/70
Informant: Kim
Joey, 11.
Class: D.
Motifs: D45.
Transformation: object to another object.
D476. Food
transformed.
D810. Magic object
or gift.
D812. Magic object
received from a supernatural being.
DB12.4. Magic
object received from ghost. (?)
Dll23. Magic ship.
Dl266.1. Magic
writings.
Dl353. Magic object makes person foolish.
Dl350. Magic object
changes person's disposition.
Dl361.21. Ship
becomes invisible.
Dl520.l5.
Transportation in magic ship.
E5lO. Phantom
sailors and travelers.
E511. The Flying
Dutchman.
E511.2. Flying
Dutchman's Ship.
E535.3. Ship of
ghosts.
Disappearing Children
This man lived all
alone with his two children in the woods. Well, everyday he had to go to work, so he had to leave them
all alone which he did not like. One day he came back and saw his little girl
crying but she couldn't tell him what had happened to the little boy. She could
not find him. The old father searched everywhere for him and didn't find him. Next day
he went to work again and when he came back his little girl was gone. He
searched everywhere and couldn't find her either. Finally he couldn't think of
any place and so he went up attic. So he took his shoes off and tiptoed up the
stairs and when he opened the door.
YEOW! (screamed)
Listener is supposed
to ask: "What happened?"
"He stepped on
a piece of glass"
Collected: Harlow
Street School, 3/29/70
Storyteller: Rebecca Harriman, 11.
Motif: D2095. Magic
disappearance.
Stranded in a Car
Once there was this
boy and girl and they went out for a drive and managed to get their car stuck
on an old dirt road -- The boy said for her to wait and then went out to get
help. At two a.m. she hears something scraping on the roof. Two times that
happened, and then in the morning she sees a policeman coming and he tells her
not to look up. She disobeys and looks up, sees her boyfriend hanging from the
tree.
Collected: Bangor,
Maine 4/11/70
Storyteller: Betsy Mitchel1, 10.
Norfolk Street,
Bangor.
Class: B.
Note: Betsy says
that she used to tell this story to all her friends when they were sleeping out
in the back yard during the summer and trying to scare each other when they couldn't
go to sleep anyway.
These stories and others can be found in accession #0523 in the
Northeast Archives of Folklore and Oral History at the University of Maine.
[1]
. (Diane Goldstein, Sylvia Grider and Jeannie
Bank Thomas, Haunting Experiences: Ghosts
in Contemporary Folklore, Logan: Utah State University Press, 2007).