| A few guidelines help in tracing
and analyzing ghost stories. The oldest locates ghost stories among the
major forms of folk narrative: myth, legend, folktale. A second sets up
two categories: tales of the supernatural composed and transmitted orally
and those written for print and publication. A third depends on determining
authorial intention: a work using the dead and intended to frighten the
reader or audience is a ghost story.
Ghost
stories have their closest association with folk narrative form and, appropriately,
may best be considered “supernatural legends.” Some ghost stories are
little more than memorials — “narratives of a personal happening” of a
single individual. Others live on beyond a single teller to be told and
retold by a community of tellers over generations. Ghost stories, unlike
myths, ignore the cosmic questions, the inclusive explanations, and the
execution of great tasks; instead they concentrate on one or several ghosts,
a “returner” from the grave, who returns to set right an old wrong, doomed
to haunt an area or even as a protector.
Manmade buildings, if they're big enough, and especially
if they're old enough that they're foreign to the current society, are
natural homes for myths. It's the older Victorian houses which tend to
attract haunted house stories, because we don't build them like that any
more. Castles are even bigger attractors for myths of all types, most
frequently ghost stories.
Most myths are based on events.
Birthplaces: Where a historical
figure or famous person was born.
Deathplaces: Where a historical
figure died. Surprisingly uncommon, because so many mythic heroes instead
fade away.
Burial Grounds:
Where a historical figure is said to be buried.
Battlefields: The locations
of infamous battles, often so great that they've left scars upon the landscape.
Places of Magical Events:
As I've already noted, many places throughout Europe are said to be the
homes to miracles. Other cultures might have local settings whose myths
center around magical events.
Places of Romantic Events: Romances
always get good play in mythology. Particular Romantic settings might
be where a couple met, where they kissed, where they had sex, or where
their love was tragically destroyed (or they were).
Places of Tragic Events:
Death, destruction, and hopelessness, like battles, will be commemorated
and may leave their marks upon the landscapes.
The
evolution of a ghost
Sometimes
the human tenancy to build myths embellishes a haunted location, distorting
the facts in the process. For a ghost hunter this becomes a problem because
a great deal of the reported phenomena, or how that phenomena is perceived,
is built off of the local myth.
A
typical example is the Jerome Grand Hotel. According to the myth, Claude
M. Harvey
was in the elevator shaft working on the machinery in the 1930s. The story
has it that while he was in there, a nurse took the elevator down to the
first floor and crushed his skull. The coroner's report was hastily done,
with no real autopsy performed, and a verdict of 'accident' was handed
down. This was suspicious, because of the speed with which the investigation
was performed. They completely overlooked the fact that the safety interlocks
had to have been bypassed for the lift to come down and crush the man's
skull. The company just wanted to sweep it under the rug and be done with
it. The ghost of "Harvey" now supposedly haunts the hotel.
Several
problems with this whole conspiracy/murder theory when the situation is
studied thoroughly.
1:
The elevator is *sloooooooow*. You'd have to be a deaf paraplegic to A:
not hear it, and B: not be able to get out of the way in time. Or even
just shout up the shaft to let someone know you are in it. At that point
it is a simple matter to stop the elevator in motion. Just open the bloody
door a crack, it will stop wherever it happens to be, even between floors.
2:
A building maintenance worker DID die, this is true. However, when his
body was found in the bottom of the shaft, the only visible sign of any
injury was blood seeping out of his nose and ears. His head and everything
else was perfectly intact. This is consistent with a massive stroke/hemorrhage.
He suffered from his stroke and fell to the bottom of the shaft, between
the big springs which would have kept the elevator from crushing him anyway.
3:
There's a *ton* of space on the bottom of the shaft. A full grown adult
can *easily* simply crouch down and wait for the elevator to stop moving.
No crushy skull.
4:
A person would have to be about 7 feet tall to get his skull crushed between
the bottom of the elevator and the maintenance room floor landing as the
lift came down. Otherwise, it'd simply force a man to his knees, if he
were standing on the bottom of the shaft. Unless he was REALLY obstinate,
then I suppose if he locked his knees it could theoretically break his
neck. Still no crushy skull.
5:
A man standing next to the lift machinery on the maintenance floor would
have to be knocked to the floor with his head in the shaft to cause a
head injury. However, this would decapitate. No crushy skull.
6:
NO readings found anywhere in the elevator. No odd noises, no cold spots,
nada. The workers themselves at the front desk have *never* heard or 'felt'
anything in it either.
It does not make sense. It makes a nice ghost/murder story, but it doesn't
add up with the known facts. The Grand is haunted enough without needing
to come up with even more stories. However the Harvey's ghost is still
being searched for today by ghost hunters. The harvey story was started
and spread by the television show "Unsolved Mysteries" which
aired a segment on the hotel. Even the locals and hotel employees agree
that the story was exaggerated and embellished to make the ghost story
even more dramatic.
Unfortunately
this problem of embellishing is not limited to just the Jerome Grand.
Anytime a "haunting" is written about or broadcast on a television
show, the myth building begins, making the job of a paranormal researcher
much more difficult.
This
is a very important factor. If ghost hunters build their data off a certain
event or person and later those things are shown to be false, it can discredit
many elements of the investigation itself.
|
