The girls recall stories of shadows that lurk the halls late at night when nobody else is home, beds shaking uncontrollably, and each sister has an eerie feeling like they are being watched. According to junior Lauren Foster, popular sites for ghost activity in the house are the downstairs foyer, where a dark shadow is often seen roaming, and the stairs, where a few girls claim to be pushed down.
Foster was not sure of any deaths in the home, but since the house was built in the early 1900s, it is likely that there have been at least one death in the house. According to what senior Rachel Kochinsky heard, somebody died in the upper bedroom of the house.
While the paranormal activity continued, questions remained unanswered. It wasn’t until senior Ashley Ferrentino pledged in fall of 2007 that some of the answers began to unfold. After hearing rumors of the haunting, Ferrentino, who has been interested in the paranormal since her aunt began practicing Wicca (witchcraft) several years ago, decided to do some investigating of her own.
“After I found out all the information about the Phi Sig house being haunted, I immediately grabbed my Ouija,” said Ferrentino. “After a few minutes of asking questions about our house, I got random bits of information: the name Maggie and the year 1934.”
After the Ouija board incident, Ferrentino went onto the Internet to do some research. What she found was alarming; an obituary of a woman named Maggie who died in Bloomsburg in 1934. From what she can remember from the obituary, which is no longer available online, Maggie was an older woman who died of natural causes. Maggie also had a daughter who died several years before.
Since then, Ferrentino has had a few run-ins with Maggie. One incident occurred when she and one other sister was in the house. As they were getting ready to leave the house, they heard laughter of a little girl coming from the kitchen. The sound could not be explained by anything else, as nobody was home and no televisions or radios were left on. Another night, when Ferrentino was laying in bed, she heard strange sounds coming from the inside of her wall, almost as if something were trying to come out of the wall. The sound went on for a few minutes before it stopped.
Incidents like this have been occurring in the house long before Phi Sig members moved in. Two years ago, the house belonged to Delta Phi Epsilon, and Delta Alumni Katie McGuire said a lot of weird things happened at the house when she pledged in spring of 2006. It started out with little things, like items disappearing or lights going out, recalls McGuire, but before long, the spirit began showing its presence in a less subtle way.
As McGuire recalls, one night the sisters who lived in the house were all getting ready for bed. The sister who lived on the first floor had locked the front and back door. “Right as we were about to turn off our light, the smoke detectors started going off all over the house,” said McGuire. “We were on the third floor so we went running downstairs to see what was going on. When we got to the kitchen, the faucet in the sink was running and the sink had overflowed and flooded onto the floor.” Nobody could explain what happened that night.
Some of McGuire’s pledge-sisters have had other experiences with the spirit, who they knew as Colleen. A few of the sisters have been pushed down the stairs. Another sister woke up in the middle of the night feeling as if she were pinned to the bed, being choked. Sisters have also complained about extreme drafts of coldness and one sister has even seen a shadowy figure standing near her radiator.
There are several stories regarding the haunting of 351/353 Lightstreet Road, all of them unique and equally creepy.
While the details seem to differ from person to person, there are a few things that remain consistent between them all: paranormal activity tends to happen on the 351 side of the house, the stairwell and kitchen seem to be popular places for activity, and seeing figures of some sort are often reported.
But why is this entity still there? Ferrentino believes it is a residual haunting, which is when the spirit does not know they have died, or does not want to believe it, so they continue living as they did when they were alive.
The sisters, who say they are often ‘creeped out’ by the entity, do not feel threatened by it or feel as if they are in any danger. Essentially, they have learned to share their home with the spirit until it is ready to cross over to the other side and lie to rest for good.
[via Phantoms & Monsters]
No comments:
Post a Comment