It is three a.m. My room is dark. I don’t move, barely breathe. What caused me to wake? When I glance at the red numbers glaring at me from the clock, I see her. A woman is standing in the corner of my room. I try to keep myself together. I don’t want it known that I’ve seen her. But I am too late. She knows.
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I felt conflicted. Conflicted by my exhilaration for the impending tour and the museum’s haunting artifacts and, yet, simultaneously distressed by the fetishization (both my own and owner’s) of relics of tragedy.
Read MoreUnderstanding Our Relationship With Haunted Spaces, Abandoned Asylums & Ugly History
It’s an ugly truth, but we enjoy visiting places where people have suffered or where horrible things have happened. There is something about a place with a bad reputation that sucks us in, crowds our imaginations, and almost energizes us. For me, Letchworth was that place.
Read MoreThese People Aren't Actually Here
The woman who works in the office points out where Anna and Mildred walked together, where Mildred pulled out a pistol and shot Anna, then herself, because of a man named Jack. Mildred survived, went to the asylum in Waterbury, where she stayed until her family took her away. Anna died, not in the tower where both the women are standing now, but in the field. The woman who does not work in the office asks the woman who does why Anna would be here. "I don't know," says the woman who works in the office. And then, "I don't think she's here." And then, "I don't know why she would be."
Read MoreGhost(ed)
When I was nine, my mother, grandmother, and I moved into an old Victorian house in a neighborhood full of old Victorian houses.
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