On the subject of the Wilder ghost room:
Take this how you will: as truth, as a nice story, as very strange, as proof that there is a ghost in Wilder, as proof that I am crazy. Nonetheless, I can vouch for the truth of this story as the facts are laid out. I can also say that it scared me quite a bit.
My sophomore year I had a friend (hi Jess!) who lived in Wilder. She met this boy from Hampshire who wanted to take infrared photos in the ghost room. So he arranged to come over. I happened to be there when he came, and, rather than leave her alone with a strange boy in the ghost room (okay, so I was curious! :) I came upstairs too.
We went upstairs, and were playing with this Ouija board. We asked a series of questions, and I just thought I would run through them … And, for the record, I was not (consciously) pushing the pointer around, and Jess says she wasn’t either. Jess, if you are reading this and can think of anything else…
What is your name? (unclear answer)
Did you live here? (unclear answer)
Did you like it here? No
Why not? Nunery. (which of course I found hysterical .. this was once a seminary, and historically very similar to nunneries … btw it was her spelling not mine :)
Did you kill yourself? Yes
When did you kill yourself? 1919 (I think)
How old were you? (I’ve forgotten what she said now)
How did you kill yourself? (unclear answer)
Why did you kill yourself? Sin.
What kind of sin? Man.
At this point we asked her to stand in front of the window for the photographer. She agreed and told us where she was going to be in the room … He started to take pictures and Jess and I stayed on the Ouija board. All of a sudden, his camera flash started turning on and off really fast … he wasn’t doing anything to it. At the same time, the pointer on the board moved very quickly from 1 to 0 and back again. For those of you who don’t know much about electronic programming, these are the typical on/off symbols used. It was very eerie. After this, the pointer wouldn’t move again in any coherent way and we finally gave up.
Take it how you will, but it’s all true.
p.s. We never heard back from the Hampshire student about his picture.
[1997]
