Brush up on ghost stories

Does your family groan when you start to tell the tale of the time your friend’s friend’s friend’s pickup truck got stuck on a back road on Friday the thirteenth? Maybe it’s time to expand your collection of scary stories in time for Hallowe’en. Here are some sites to help you.

Ghost Source at http://www.ghostsource.com/ has a database of true tales, as written by the people who experienced them. They also have reviews of classic and new ghostly films, and a look at famous ghost-filled locations. You can search their database for tales from a particular country, U.S. state, or add your own. (Click on the “go” button next to true stories at the top. You may get one pop-up ad at this site.)

Retired professor D. L. Ashliman specializes in folklore and fairy tales. He has a page of short Russian vampire and ghost stories online at: http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/vampire.html

HorrorMasters publishes a new ghost story every night. They offer the new and classic tales in downloadable pdf format (you will need the free Adobe Acrobat viewer to view or print). Although some ofhe new tales have a nominal fee associated with them, the classic tales are free and available here: http://www.horrormasters.com/Themes/horror_classics.htm

And if you want to tell an urban legend – or debunk an urban myth – the Urban Legends page at http://www.snopes.com/ – despite its garish appearance – is one of the best resources on the net. There’s also the Urban Legends and Hoaxes Resource Center at http://www.scambusters.org/legends.html

Last but not least, here’s one of our favourite stories.

One dark night on the Canadian prairies, the town drunk meandered home from the bar. He took a shortcut through the graveyard at the edge of town.  As he turned the corner near the war memorial, he thought he heard a voice.  But the wind was strong and likely it was just his imagination, or so he told himself.

Just as he was about to take his toque out of his pocket, the ground opened up in front of him, and he fell down – into an open grave! The hole was deep, and pitch black.

He heard the voice again – clearer now, as if it were beside him. It was calling to him by name. From the corner. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness,  he made out a form sitting beside him. It called his name again, and he scrambled away in fear, trying to climb out of that terrible grave. He clawed at the dirt with his fingernails.

Then the figure proclaimed, “You can’t get out.”

The drunk gave a shriek of terror and leapt straight up more than six feet. He caught the edge of the hole in his hands, scrambled out, and ran for home as fast as he could go, swearing never to drink again.

Inside the open grave, his neighbour Dave cussed a little. He’d fallen into the hole half an hour before the old drunk and had hoped together they’d be able climb out. Now he was going to have to wait until morning to get someone to bring him a ladder.