Ghosts—Are They for Real?

Is “Bloody Mary” in your school’s bathroom?

Mary is a blood-covered ghost who is said to have murdered her three children with a knife. To find out if she is there or not. All you have to do is to go into the bathroom by yourself and turn out the lights. Then look in the mirror and summon her by saying her name three times in a row—Bloody Mary. Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary.

If she is there—and wants to come out—you will see her staring at you over your shoulder, in the mirror.

Most kids who have seen her have been so frightened by the sight of her. They fled the darkened bathroom before they could think to look and see if she still had the bloody knife in her hand.

When we think of ghosts, we don’t normally think of a ghostly seventeenth-century wooden merchant ship. But one of the most famous ghosts in the world is just that—a ghost ship, The Flying Dutchman.

She is known as the Flying Dutchman because of her Dutch captain, Hendrick van der Decken. He refused to seek safe harbor during a violent storm while navigating the Cape of Good Hope, despite pleas from the crew and passengers. Instead, the impudent captain challenged God to take them down. The ship was promptly cursed and in its ghost form is damned to never find port again. As a result, she has been haunting the seas since the 1600s.

Ships’ crews and passengers from all over the world have reported seeing her over the years. She often appears as a hazy image or as a strange light and is strongly believed to be the omen of bad luck and doom. Her last reported sighting was off the coast of South Africa.

So many people have reported seeing her over the years that Walt Disney Studios used her in a movie. They called it “Pirates of the Caribbean” and in the movie Davy Jones captained her.

Among suspicious sailors, Davie Jones was thought to be the deity of death and his “locker” was the final resting place of dead sailors. In Disney’s movie franchise he is featured as the undying evil spirit that collects the souls of the dying pirates while traveling in his legendary ship “The Flying Dutchman,” and his locker was portrayed as a sort of purgatory for the dead souls.

In a suburb of Chicago lies an abandoned cemetery that is believed to be extremely haunted. It’s known as Bachelor’s Grove and a wooded nature reserve surrounds it. Until the 1960s, for over one hundred twenty years, it was used as a local cemetery by the nearby residents before it was abandoned. Nowadays, the local teens use it as a secret party spot—if they are daring enough to brave the woods and the ghosts. Nocturnal visitors have reported sighting featureless orbs of light or blobs of ectoplasm. Many visitors report seeing a spectral farmer and his horse, a vanishing black dog at the cemetery’s entrance, eerie figures in monks’ robes, and a ghost with two heads.

The “white lady,” a ghost in white, is the most renowned ghost in Bachelor’s Grove. She chose to keep her baby even after death. On nights of the full moon, she is seen wandering the graveyard carrying a baby, or apparently sometimes in the full daylight sitting on a tombstone.

If you were a teenager from Chicago, would you be brave enough to go creeping around that cemetery at night? Or any cemetery at night?

Now we know ghosts like to haunt houses. And one of the most famous haunted houses is in a small town called Amityville on New York’s Long Island, where the Lutz family lived. Soon after they moved into the house, weird stuff started happening. Like voices yelling at priests, flies swarming in the house even in winter, cold spots, and unpleasant smells. They also experienced vivid nightmares, a rotating crucifix, physical attacks on the family, and appearances by a freaky pig monster named Jodie. After many other experiences like that, the Lutzes abandoned the house and left their possessions behind. Jay Anson wrote a book about their terrifying experience which was known as “The Amityville Horror” and Hollywood made a movie of the book.

What about you? Have you ever seen a ghost? Or known someone who has?

AIME