Hallowe'en
Nov. 1st, 2009 06:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ravenNight drew in at half five: when I walked up the hill alone in the dark, the shadows and whispers of ghosts were deviated from somewhat by the entirely-earthly shrieks of the couple having a domestic dispute in the middle of the road, accompanied by the shouting, horn-blasting and general malevolence of the people in the six cars snarled up in either direction and the houses on either side.
I am feeling somewhat jittery tonight, and while it is probably something to do with a) the remaining alcohol in my bloodstream and b) that Sunday evening feeling (raised by a power, don't wanna go to school after reading week do not want) but it's much more poetic to stare out the window at the lights cutting ineffectually into the night and think delicious ghost-story type thoughts. I do love Hallowe'en - not so much the dressing up, and I never went trick-or-treating as a small thing - but the idea of it, which strikes me as rather a lot like Diwali: we dress up as the scary things so they are not scary, we light candles in the darkness so it is not scary, we take the masks off and it's just us underneath and there's nothing to be afraid of.
(Speaking of which: Private Eye's cover this week is a cut-out-and-keep Nick Griffin mask. It has no eyes. There's nothing to be afraid of.)
Anyway,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jacinthsong came round last night and we got dressed up. She dressed up as Willow, who looks like this. I dressed up as vamp Willow, who looks like this (and that's her in the icon, incidentally). Together, we looked... well, we looked kind of amazing. (Laura had spent a long time getting the right fuzziness of jumper; I had spent a lot of time staring disdainfully at my own cleavage.)
Thus attired, we went out tosir_rosealot's Hallowe'en party, and I have never gone outside in PVC leggings before, but mostly, I think I endorse the experience. And it was a lovely party. On the way through the city we saw a lot of people in mostly quite generic Frankenstein's monster costumes and whatnot - although Laura did note on the bus, "That guy. Is he dressed as a zombie or Yasser Arafat?" - but the party was much better in that regard. I liked osymandias as Death; as he couldn't find a scythe, he had decided to use a hoe on the dead instead. ("Oh!" said someone at this point. "People always sing about those, and now I know what one is!") There were a lot of vampire hunters to go with the various vampires, and deathbyshinies won the costume competition by dressing as webcomic character I do not know, but by doing it with aplomb. My main difficulty with being dressed as a vampire was the fact the plastic fangs were actually designed for children, and I kept having to put my teeth back in; which is not, I observed at the time, something I planned to do for another fifty years yet.
(Also,shimgray had a genius costume idea which he did not then implement, much to my chagrin; it involved a pith helmet, a cream jacket, a white shirt, brown trousers and a piece of sugar cane. For Hallowe'en, right, you should come as something scary, and what's more scary than colonialism?
...he said it might be offensive. Sigh.)
But yes, it was a lovely party. About halfway through we started playing Spin the Bottle - which was... well, people took turns spinning the bottle, and I happened to be the first person it landed on, so I kissed the nice man who'd spun it, and then I spun it, and kissed the nice girl it landed on, who then spun it on. When nice men kissed other men, there was a little more general approbation than in the other cases; at the end I realised I hadn't kissedsebastienne, so I asked her nicely. In other words - I think I like this game a lot better now I am not fourteen. The very-well spun bottle of pina colada was also nice.
We finally staggered home about three in the morning, having reached that delightful stage of the evening where the party is squished on a sofa far too small for it, and thus obliged to interlock in new and interesting ways. Today has been a splendidly do-nothing Sunday, underscored by minor fear re: schooooool, and also, I have to clean the bathroom. Turns out enormous quantities of red hairspray do no good to porcelain or soft furnishings. But on the whole I don't mind at all. It was a lovely night, and for our next dressing-up extravaganzajacinthsong and I have resolved to go as Kira Nerys and the Intendant. No points at all for guessing which is which.
It is dark outside, and the cats are prowling about: I occasionally see a pair of bright eyes beneath the window and then a flash of movement (and, let's face it, probably a dead rodent). It's nice and well-lit in here, though, and I'm being a bad girl and burning tealights as an expression of my religious tradition. So, flist, if you would like, tell me ghost stories.
Edited to add: I forgot to put my own ghost story in! This one is one my father tells, but I've always tended to co-opt it.
About the first thing I can remember is my father working at Mill Road, in Anfield. There hasn't been a hospital there for many years now, but in the late eighties there were still these small, Victorian-built hospitals all over the city, and Mill Road was just like all of them were, old brick and solidly built, and what I remember of it is mostly high ceilings and wide open space.
The labour ward was where my father was working at the time, and he used to do the morning rounds, just as the patients were waking up and the shifts were rotating. And fairly often they used to say, you must thank the night nurse. She came and she gave me some water in the night; I can't see her this morning, she was wearing a different uniform from the day nurses; thank her for me, Doctor. My father always promised them that he would.
Liverpool is a port city. During the Second World War, it was bombed eighty-three times - once at Mill Road, where the nurses tended to the victims all night. And my father never told his patients that on the labour ward in the late ninteen-eighties, there were no night nurses.
I am feeling somewhat jittery tonight, and while it is probably something to do with a) the remaining alcohol in my bloodstream and b) that Sunday evening feeling (raised by a power, don't wanna go to school after reading week do not want) but it's much more poetic to stare out the window at the lights cutting ineffectually into the night and think delicious ghost-story type thoughts. I do love Hallowe'en - not so much the dressing up, and I never went trick-or-treating as a small thing - but the idea of it, which strikes me as rather a lot like Diwali: we dress up as the scary things so they are not scary, we light candles in the darkness so it is not scary, we take the masks off and it's just us underneath and there's nothing to be afraid of.
(Speaking of which: Private Eye's cover this week is a cut-out-and-keep Nick Griffin mask. It has no eyes. There's nothing to be afraid of.)
Anyway,
jacinthsong came round last night and we got dressed up. She dressed up as Willow, who looks like this. I dressed up as vamp Willow, who looks like this (and that's her in the icon, incidentally). Together, we looked... well, we looked kind of amazing. (Laura had spent a long time getting the right fuzziness of jumper; I had spent a lot of time staring disdainfully at my own cleavage.)Thus attired, we went out to
sir_rosealot's Hallowe'en party, and I have never gone outside in PVC leggings before, but mostly, I think I endorse the experience. And it was a lovely party. On the way through the city we saw a lot of people in mostly quite generic Frankenstein's monster costumes and whatnot - although Laura did note on the bus, "That guy. Is he dressed as a zombie or Yasser Arafat?" - but the party was much better in that regard. I liked osymandias as Death; as he couldn't find a scythe, he had decided to use a hoe on the dead instead. ("Oh!" said someone at this point. "People always sing about those, and now I know what one is!") There were a lot of vampire hunters to go with the various vampires, and deathbyshinies won the costume competition by dressing as webcomic character I do not know, but by doing it with aplomb. My main difficulty with being dressed as a vampire was the fact the plastic fangs were actually designed for children, and I kept having to put my teeth back in; which is not, I observed at the time, something I planned to do for another fifty years yet. (Also,
shimgray had a genius costume idea which he did not then implement, much to my chagrin; it involved a pith helmet, a cream jacket, a white shirt, brown trousers and a piece of sugar cane. For Hallowe'en, right, you should come as something scary, and what's more scary than colonialism?...he said it might be offensive. Sigh.)
But yes, it was a lovely party. About halfway through we started playing Spin the Bottle - which was... well, people took turns spinning the bottle, and I happened to be the first person it landed on, so I kissed the nice man who'd spun it, and then I spun it, and kissed the nice girl it landed on, who then spun it on. When nice men kissed other men, there was a little more general approbation than in the other cases; at the end I realised I hadn't kissed
sebastienne, so I asked her nicely. In other words - I think I like this game a lot better now I am not fourteen. The very-well spun bottle of pina colada was also nice.We finally staggered home about three in the morning, having reached that delightful stage of the evening where the party is squished on a sofa far too small for it, and thus obliged to interlock in new and interesting ways. Today has been a splendidly do-nothing Sunday, underscored by minor fear re: schooooool, and also, I have to clean the bathroom. Turns out enormous quantities of red hairspray do no good to porcelain or soft furnishings. But on the whole I don't mind at all. It was a lovely night, and for our next dressing-up extravaganza
jacinthsong and I have resolved to go as Kira Nerys and the Intendant. No points at all for guessing which is which.It is dark outside, and the cats are prowling about: I occasionally see a pair of bright eyes beneath the window and then a flash of movement (and, let's face it, probably a dead rodent). It's nice and well-lit in here, though, and I'm being a bad girl and burning tealights as an expression of my religious tradition. So, flist, if you would like, tell me ghost stories.
Edited to add: I forgot to put my own ghost story in! This one is one my father tells, but I've always tended to co-opt it.
About the first thing I can remember is my father working at Mill Road, in Anfield. There hasn't been a hospital there for many years now, but in the late eighties there were still these small, Victorian-built hospitals all over the city, and Mill Road was just like all of them were, old brick and solidly built, and what I remember of it is mostly high ceilings and wide open space.
The labour ward was where my father was working at the time, and he used to do the morning rounds, just as the patients were waking up and the shifts were rotating. And fairly often they used to say, you must thank the night nurse. She came and she gave me some water in the night; I can't see her this morning, she was wearing a different uniform from the day nurses; thank her for me, Doctor. My father always promised them that he would.
Liverpool is a port city. During the Second World War, it was bombed eighty-three times - once at Mill Road, where the nurses tended to the victims all night. And my father never told his patients that on the labour ward in the late ninteen-eighties, there were no night nurses.
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no subject
on 2009-11-01 08:27 pm (UTC)My ghost story is not a very frightening story, but I do like it. I was asleep upstairs in my uncle's house, and he had just died the week before. And I woke up and thought somebody was in the room with me, either my uncle or my grandmother (who had died nineteen years before, the year I was born), and I was terribly afraid, but it didn't last long, and I fell back asleep. And when I went downstairs the next morning and told my mother, she said "There wasn't anything to be frightened of; they just love you."
no subject
on 2009-11-01 09:50 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2009-11-01 09:51 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2009-11-01 09:56 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2009-11-01 10:08 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2009-11-01 10:09 pm (UTC)The basement is terrifying, and home to the pottery wheels for ceramics classes. One spring break, in the 70s a new, young art professor came in to do some work. So the story goes, she had moved to Decatur for the job, and did not have many friends in town yet, and she had plans to travel alone somewhere for spring break. No one was on campus, and no one thought of it when she was out of contact for a week. When classes resumed, her body was found slumped over the pottery wheel. Her hair had gotten caught in the wheel and snapped her neck. Many students claim to have had conversations with her late at night in the basement, only to realize later that they have never seen that "student" before, nor will they ever see her again. She often makes irksome noises during theatre productions, though has saved more than one student from falling off the lighting rafters.
The upsetting part of that story is that there was indeed a professor who died like that in the 70s. I've never seen her ghost, but I avoid that basement like the plague.
Our other main ghost story is from the 50s, I think? Campbell Hall was the old science building (currently undergoing renovation, often unlocked at night, absolutely terrifying after, er, ingesting marijuana). A student was working in a chemistry lab, quite distraught after breaking up with her boyfriend. Some hours later, the work proved frustrating, she was still distraught and so she decided to kill herself. She mixed up something deadly, but immediately after drinking it changed her mind. She ran out of the building and towards the dining hall for a glass of milk, but died of the poison before getting there. You can still see her running sometimes, crying, and generally warning people not to kill themselves over their boyfriends.
There's a few other stories that are commonly told, but for some reason they all bear a distinct resemblance to the plot of Scream 2, which just happens to have been shot on our campus...
no subject
on 2009-11-01 10:11 pm (UTC)(pressed send too soon, dammit) And, thank you! I just saw the pictures of your costume - that is amazing. I esp. loved the mask.
no subject
on 2009-11-01 10:24 pm (UTC)Thank you! It was worth it nearly poking my eye out while trying to put contacts it. :D
no subject
on 2009-11-01 10:24 pm (UTC)And reminds me of another one, in fact! My boyfriend-in-high-school had a large family - five siblings and their parents, and they had lived in Ireland when they were very small. His mum told me that the house had never been reported to be haunted, but it was old and creepy and once they had moved in, she used to hear quiet footsteps and rustling skirts, and smell old-fashioned perfume on the stairs. In the end, she decided not to do anything about it. The elderly lady living in the house before had been lonely - and now there were children in the house again, and she was only haunting the place because she was happy to be around them.
no subject
on 2009-11-01 11:06 pm (UTC)The first ghost was the Grey Lady. She used to wander around every so often & was quite friendly - you'd see her walk into a room that turned out to be empty, or hear her talking from an empty room (usually in the evening after everyone else had gone home, just before mum locked up). She'd also try to be helpful by sorting some of the bags - every so often one of the black plastic sacks waiting to be sorted would gently throw itself from one of the collection cages over to the sorting area. You could tell the new volunteers - the oldies would just call out 'thank you!' while the new ones would turn white & need to be taken away for a cup of tea!
The second ghost was less friendly. Mum had quite a bit of trouble for a while, clothing rails suddenly being yanked across the walkway as people walked past, things leaning at an angle against the wall suddenly coming upright, then toppling over inches from people's feet, a wedding dress being picked up & draped carefully over a heater that was switched on & starting to smoulder, that sort of thing. Then suddenly, everything stopped - & the next day, mum got a rather disturbing report from one of the shops. The manager had put out the new stock, locked up, set the alarm, & gone home as normal. When she came in the next day, she unlocked the shutters, unlocked the door, switched off the alarm, & walked through the back room into the shop. The shop had been trashed - everything in the shop had been swept outwards away from a central point - which was a clock on the shelf that had arrived with the new stock the day before. It was the only item in the shop that hadn't been touched. Needless to say, that clock was promptly driven to the dump!
no subject
on 2009-11-02 01:49 am (UTC)no subject
on 2009-11-02 01:59 am (UTC)(I have a nearly ghost story, it involves a ghost, but is not really about the ghost.
At Castle, there is a gallery called the Norman Gallery. It's where the exec live (big, posh rooms, and double-layered doors; it's great up there), and when I went to Durham for an open day, and we were taken on a tour of the castle, they told us about the Grey Lady who haunts the Norman gallery.
She's dressed in white, they say, and wanders about on the Norman gallery. Of course, it had a lower floor then - some work had to be done to stop it collapsing - so she appears to be walking through the floorboards.
We're all standing there, listening avidly, thorougly absorbed. And then the door at the far end of the gallery opens, and a lady in white walks in. One of the tour group actually screamed a little. *g* It wasn't the Grey Lady. It was one of the exec coming back from a shower, in a white dressing gown. But it just could not have been better timed.)
no subject
on 2009-11-02 03:50 am (UTC)I can't type
on 2009-11-02 09:54 am (UTC)no subject
on 2009-11-05 12:25 am (UTC)no subject
on 2009-11-05 12:29 am (UTC)Also, a teen slasher movie was filmed on your campus. That is kind of awesome.
no subject
on 2009-11-05 12:32 am (UTC)no subject
on 2009-11-05 12:33 am (UTC)But I like that - how wonderful! :)
Re: I can't type
on 2009-11-05 12:34 am (UTC)no subject
on 2009-11-05 09:01 am (UTC)