By Marriya Schwarz | Editor-in-Chief
Wake up.
That chill you’re feeling in the Wren Building isn’t the A/C; it’s the frigid temperatures that accompany supernatural energy. Ghosts do wonders for lowering internal cooling costs.
A 2013 Huffington Post and YouGov poll reported that 45 percent of Americans believe in ghosts. The other 55 percent are lying to themselves.
I mean, let’s think about it: ghosts are entities that cross over almost all cultures and time periods. Folklore on ghosts dates back to Ancient Mesopotamian and Ancient Egyptian cultures. How can so many different communities have this one concept in common? One of the first ghost stories was by Pliny the Younger in the first century A.D. in Rome in the form of a letter in which he described a ghost haunting his house. A big argument against belief in ghosts is that they are constantly used as a marketing ploy to get tourists to go to haunted locations, like the Winchester Mystery House or the Lizzie Borden Bed and Breakfast. But my dude, Pliny, wasn’t trying to get gullible tourists to his house in Athens. He had nothing to gain from writing his friend:
“Hey, bro. This crazy old guy is hanging out in my house with like chains and stuff? But he’s like dead. Like I’m C% positive. Whatever. I’m sure it’s nothing.”
SEE YOU LVIIIR, GLADIATOR.” (Pliny, paraphrased).
There are a lot of theories on why people see ghosts: electromagnetic fields, infrasound, mold symptoms, carbon monoxide poisoning, it is actually a bitter adult in a mask who would have gotten away with it if it wasn’t for some “meddling kids and a dumb dog.” Spoiler alert: Velma Dinkley is lying to you.
I’ve had my fair share of ghost experiences, but the one that always gets me is from a summer session at NYU. I was placed in this freshman dorm called Brittany Hall. It was this towering building with elaborate Gothic detail, and it was right off of Broadway. The amenities were insane: a private bathroom, a trash chute right on my floor, a penthouse study lounge that used to be a prohibition-era speakeasy, and the ghost of a little girl named Molly (I didn’t even have to pay extra for that last one!).
When I first got to the building, things felt a little off. For one thing, one of the elevators tended to shake around the fifth floor, and the basement felt eerily cold. But I thought nothing of it at first. I was a fool. I should have known that ghostly activity almost always goes along with good architecture.
Then I started doing research. According to the legend, Brittany Hall dates back to 1929 when it was originally a hotel. Molly was the daughter of a construction worker who was tasked with building Brittany Hotel. Her father would bring her to work with him, and he would give her a room on the fifth floor to hang out in. One day, during construction, Molly was playing with her dolls in the hallway, and she lost her balance and fell down an elevator shaft. Her body was never found. Allegedly, she still walks the halls, looking for new playmates.
Now to roughly quote Survivor contestant, Kelly Wiglesworth, I wasn’t “here to make friends [with a ghost].”
My friend informed me that Molly mainly just haunted the fifth floor, but that didn’t calm me. I tried to bring up the topic with my RA, who immediately changed the topic. I thought about asking other staff members, but I was worried they would say something like, “What? You asked the 16th floor RA? We haven’t had an RA up there in 30 years.”
So, I took to Google. Of course, I went to the library. I didn’t want Molly reading over my shoulder; I’m not an idiot. My findings were startling. People had seen her staring at them when they woke up, random giggling would be heard throughout the halls, phones would just start playing ‘Dead Girl Walking’ from Heathers, etc. Now, I like Ghostbusters as much as the next person, but I never wanted to live it.
My dorm quickly became a “No-Molly Zone.” No one could mention the name. As far as I was concerned, Ron Weasley didn’t have a Mom, the redhead from The Breakfast Club was off-limits, and I feared the World War II American Girl series.
One day, I invited a friend over. On the corner of 10th and Broadway, I grabbed her arm.
“We do not mention Molly in this dorm,” I said. “The ghost will hear.” I wasn’t taking any chances. I didn’t want to befriend a little girl from the 1920s. (I mean, what would we even talk about? “So… what are your thoughts on Herbert Hoover?”)
In the elevator, once we hit the fifth floor, the mechanism started shaking. I looked at my friend and shrugged in a way that evoked a woman named Karen from HR saying, “Mondays - am I right?” But my friend had other ideas.
“Molly, would you please stop that?” she asked.
And the shaking stopped.
Now, I know that isn’t as climactic as you would have liked, but that’s just a precursor of what happened the next day:
I was on the phone with my parents and I started hearing this ticking that sounded like it was coming from the ceiling. At first, I ignored it, but then I decided I wanted to know where it was coming from. I had this idea that it was coming from one of the many electronic smoke detectors or other devices on the ceiling. There were a fair amount of them all in a row. I got off my bed and walked to the first one. It sounded like it was right above me, and I felt accomplished; I would call maintenance right away. Then, the sound moved. That’s right; it moved. I walked to the next ceiling electronic thingamajig, and the same thing happened! Eventually, I followed it all the way down the hallway of my room and down the hallway of my floor. I could have given up the chase, but the game was on. Finally, the ticking stopped. I looked around – the ticking had led me right to the elevators.
I don’t believe that ghosts are here to hurt us, but I do believe that they are real. Maybe I just have an overactive imagination or mold poisoning or something, but I thoroughly want to believe that there is something after death. I want to believe that I can look over my loved ones and protect them from harm, Ghost-style. (I've always wanted to have a conversation with pre-The View Whoopi Goldberg.)
I’m not the only one who brings up the positive aspects of ghost activity. Associate Professor of Anthropology and Communications at the University of Southern California, Tok Thompson, made a good point that ghosts carry an important moral reminder for the living. In ghost stories, ghosts usually haunt because they have unfinished business (unsolved murders, preventable tragedies, etc.) For example, there are a lot of sightings of enslaved people and murdered Native Americans. They are seeking justice from beyond the grave, demonstrating that our actions have consequences. But they also offer a chance to “atone for past wrongs” (i.e. Madame Zeroni in Holes). When you look at it that way, it’s a lot less scary. Ghosts are also a nice way to remember that those that we lose are never really gone. They stay with us, whether Velma Dinkley believes it or not.
In conclusion, I don’t care if you don’t believe in ghosts, but if you kill me with your car at Confusion Corner, I’m haunting you first. (Knock on wood, of course.)