My Favorite Ghost Story

collage by Yinne Smith

I love ghost stories. I love stories about rattling cupboards and doors that open on their own. I love stories about not being alone in the dark. I love stories about crows circling, missing artifacts, and rearranged furniture. To celebrate my favorite time of year, I collected ghost stories from Unpublished staff. 

Our first story comes from Kimberly, a music writer at Unpublished. In 2018, Kimberley, her friend and her dad visited the Old City Jail in Charleston, South Carolina. Sound familiar? Buzzfeed Unsolved visited the place back in 2019. The Old City Jail was operational from 1802 to 1939. Since its closure, this site has been a hub for supernatural activity. 

Kimberly learned about a child who haunts the jail. He reportedly follows tourists around and scratches their legs. The next morning, after a terrifying tour of the jail, Kimberly’s dad awoke with a scratch on his leg. That night, Kimberly and her friend shared the same nightmare. They dreamt of being isolated in a never ending, white room. They could hear screaming. Kimberly and her friend awoke at the exact same time, both sweating profusely. They decided to call the jail. It was then that Kimberly discovered that other people on their tour also woke up with scratches on their legs.  

Our next ghost story comes from Cat, a spirituality and astrology writer with Unpublished. Cat’s childhood home is in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. The house was built on the ancestral land of the Lenape in 1922, a short drive from where George Washington crossed the Delaware River. When Cat moved back into her house, she built an ancestral altar. Doors began to open and close on their own. Shapes and shadows appeared in her peripheral vision. Items in the house were thrown around or fell by their own volition. Cat was seeing spirits out of the corner of her eye. She made an offering of gratitude to the spirits that have resided on the land since time immemorial. Sometime later, she was given a tarot deck by a friend. Cat took this as a sign that the spirits had accepted her presence and practice. 

Cat’s dad also started seeing ghosts. A little boy sits at the foot of his bed every night and speaks to him. He’s apparently the cause of mischief in the house. Her dad also mentioned a lady in a pink dress and a bonnet. One of Cat’s friends walked through the house and paused at the staircase. Much later, she told Cat that there were two spirits in the house. She sensed a lady with a pink shawl and someone “smaller” that she couldn’t quite make out. 

The land that Cat’s house resides upon is steeped in a history of colonialism. The Lenape were systematically displaced and mistreated by the United States government. The Old City Jail evokes its own history of abuse. Many abandoned institutions are sites of mistreatment. It makes sense that these places are haunted; they’re sites of traumatic incidents. 

Kimberly told me another story. When Kimberly was a sophomore in high school, she and her friends performed a ritual outside of her house. They didn’t research the ritual. As Kimberly and her friends spoke the words of a summoning and protection prayer, the wind picked up. Salt was scattered, candles were blown out. Terror set in. A couple seconds later, three skunks (one for every friend) emerged from the bushes and ran towards them. The friends returned to Kimberly’s house without closing the ritual. Although the night was clear, the electricity went out. 

Kimberly believes that the skunks were spirits, attempting to warn them from using witchcraft without the proper knowledge, or perhaps a sign that the protection spell worked. While the skunks were obviously not malicious, I can’t stress how important it is to do your research before performing a ritual or spell of any kind. Just as it’s dangerous to enter a space without understanding its history, it’s dangerous to perform a ritual without understanding what could happen. Ghost stories are fun to tell, but it’s important to respect spirits and the histories they represent. When it comes to haunted places, tread carefully this Halloween.