Thursday, May 21, 2009

Hauntings in Indiana, Pennsylvania

As I surf around the Web, I realized that many people are interested in ghost stories and the paranormal. I have quite a few stories of my own and a whole lot of stories that I heard from people from all over the world. Today, I will share with you four stories (2 of my own and 2 heard first hand from people I know well) from a small college town an hour northeast of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. All the stories took place sometime in 2002 - 2003, while we were still students in Indiana University of Pennsylvania. I used to joke with my Malaysian friends that 'there are no ghost in ang moh land one lah', but boy was I wrong! Now, sit back and enjoy the stories...
The first story is pretty funny actually. Well, funny if you know the guy that had the ghostly experience. He is Malaysian (my fellow Penang lang) and he used to share an apartment with Kevin and another guy. Let's just call him J. This happened the semester before J moved in with Kevin. This happened in one of the apartments above the 700 Shop at the corner of Philly and 7th St. It was pretty late at night when J got home. When he opened his room door, he saw a solid apparition of a man, dressed in braces, staring out of the window. It took him a few seconds to register that it was not human and without thinking twice, he dashed out of his apartment and onto the rooftop of his building. He then went to knock on the window of another fellow Malaysian who was living a few apartments away from him (scared the living daylights out of that boy) to let him in. My other friend said that J was like totally white in shock. J is the kind of guy that is afraid to even talk about ghost stories, let alone experience it! He of course stayed the night at the other friends apartment. The funny thing is, after that night, he never saw it ever again. He also said that the apartment doesn't really have a creepy feeling or anything of that sort. Maybe it was a passing spirit? Who knows....

Now that we heard a story from Kevin's ex apartment mate, let's hear a story from mine. I lived with S in an apartment off campus during my second and third semester. During our first semester, S lived in Oakland Rooney, a dorm like building at the Southside of campus. I never liked that building. It always has this gloomy and dark feeling. Also, it was just beside the cemetery. Guess what? Her room had a perfect view of the cemetery! One night, she was in bed, trying to fall asleep. Suddenly, she had this uneasy feeling and felt like something was outside her window. She then saw a black mass/shadow come through her window, saw it move against the wall and went out through her door!! She swears that she wasn't dreaming and that it really happened. When she was living with me for those two semesters, I noticed that she always slept with her light on. I don't know, I guess she must have really seen something that fateful night!



This is my very own experience with the supernatural. I was living in an apartment on Philadelphia St (somewhere between 7th and 8th St) with S. It was a two bedroom apartment, somewhat old and kind of run down. When we moved in, I saw something that kind of spooked me for a bit. You know how they would stick a tiny sticker stating "This apartment holds a maximum of 2 occupants" in most of the rentals around that area. The freaky thing was, somebody scribbled below that in pencil"...and a ghost named Pipes". I had some goosebumps after reading that but dismissed it as a prank. After all, this are student apartments and I'm sure many students have been moving in and out. Anybody could have written that as a joke. One day, I was on the computer in my room when the phone rang. I picked it up and it was for S. I took a quick glance at my MSN Messenger and saw that she was online. It means that she was on the computer too, in her room. I called out to her, telling her that the call was for her. No reply. I called out again. While calling out to her, I also typed "oi! phone call for you la" on MSN to her. Still no reply. I told her friend that she must be sleeping and to call back later. I then went out of my room and went to her room to see if she was sleeping. Her room door was closed but I heard typing sounds from her keyboard. I knocked on her door but no answer. The typing sound also stopped. I opened her door and found no one inside!!! Her computer was also turned off!! I quickly went back to my room and it still showed her as online on MSN. I reasoned to myself that she must be at the library using the computer or something. The typing noises, that I couldn't explain. She came home about half an hour later and I asked if she was at the library or anywhere else using the computer. She said no, she went Walmart since a couple of hours ago!! What?!?! So who was on MSN and who was making the typing sound in her room? Could that have been Pipes??


This last story happened during Christmas break, 2003. Indiana is pretty much a college town and it gets really quiet and deserted during breaks when everybody goes home. My good friend Y, who was going to Uni in Michigan, was visiting for the holidays. We and a couple of other friends were supposed to leave for a road trip to Philly, Atlantic City and NYC the very next day. We wanted to print out some maps from Mapquest but I didn't have a printer in my apartment. We were too lazy to walk all the way in the snow to campus just to print out some maps. So, we decided to go to another friends house to print them out. That friend lives on Church St, just a few streets away from my Philadelphia St apartment. So, Y and I went to her place, printed out the maps and started to walk back home. It was around 1am in the morning and we were the only people out. Not a single car or person could be seen. Dead silence. Suddenly, we heard footsteps behind us. I knew Y heard it too but he pretended that it was nothing. We started to walk faster and the footsteps became faster too. I looked at Y and he knew what I was thinking. We counted 1, 2, 3 and stopped. The footsteps stopped too. We looked all around, not a single person was in sight. If there were somebody following us, we would see footprints on the snow. Nothing. We started walking again and the footsteps started again. We both began praying and the footsteps ceased. We arrived back home safely, left for our road trip the very next day and had one of the best trips in our lives! After the break, I returned to Indiana and was talking to some people about that incident. They said that they too have heard stories about that happening along that stretch of road. I went to research more into this and found out that a Russian exchange student was shot somewhere near the location where the footsteps begin. I think it was a drug deal gone wrong. Was it the ghost of that Russian student following us that night? Maybe he was lonely during the Christmas season and wanted to be with some fellow foreign students? Who knowss...but one things for sure, I never went walking along that stretch of road in the middle of the night ever again!

4 comments:

Linda said...

I also lived on Philadelphia Street in an older home rented out to college students. I had heard that it may be haunted but I needed a place to stay for my last year at IUP in 1982.There were 2 bedrooms upstairs and an attic apartment with a separate entrance. I lived in the downstairs diningroom apartment. Just off the kitchen. When I finished baking cookies I left them to cool on the kitchen table. I walked past the table from the small powder room to the doorway of my room and was startled when a cookie sheet flew across the room smacking into the wall just in front of me! It missed my neck. When I stared at the cookies all over the floor I turned expecting to see someone who flung it at me. No one in the kitchen or outside the back. It struck again pulling a hard stereo speaker on my mother's head again in the doorway of my room when I was packing to leave. I wonder if It was angry that I told whatever spirit it was that it wasn't allowed in my room...

Anonymous said...

I lived in an apartment near 11th and Philadelphia Streets. The building was a bar a long time ago. I lived there for 2 years. the first year I had a roommate who said it never felt right there. We would frequently hear bar noises late at night, even over night guests heard them. I would also sometimes see a tall effeminate male entity and a cat. The male entity didn't seem to like me much. When we first moved in I would frequently wake up with hand print shaped bruises and scratches that had no explanation,

Anonymous said...

I used to live in the apartment complex 228 South 7th street apartment 2, my roommates and I would constantly be woken up by loud noises in the walls and creaking in the hallways. We used to just blame it on the fact that the place was pretty old but later contacted our landlord who said she does not tell current owners the previous history of other renters. We found that very suspicious and decided to look into the house ourselves. We found out from one of the mechanics who came to fix our faucet that there was a previous male student living in the apartment next door who killed himself, yet there was no public information regarding the incident because the family wanted to remain anonymous… safe to say we did not resign our lease.

Kristan said...

Any stories about an older home on the 900th block of Philadelphia Street?