La Xpress Sydney Silver About the Paranormal Column - Ghosts

Archived copy of my La Xpress Newspaper column

3/1/13

Ghosts at Mount Saint Mary’s
Part 1

I used to take the bus to Mount Saint Mary’s girls college when I attended USC. The first time there, I entered a dorm room bathroom. I was struck with a sudden fear. The place was dusty and just too silent. It looked unused. Feeling stupid and in terror, I used the restroom, staring at the black and white checkerboard floor, and ran out as fast as possible.

I forgot about my silly fear until I was hanging out with my friends in their room. We were doing homework. I heard all of the items fall out of the closet. My friends didn’t move. I said “hey, everything just fell out of your closet.” My friend Julita said “No, that was the ghost, it does that, don’t worry about it.” I laughed, and said “No, really, didn’t you hear it?” She and Valerie insisted. “No, really” said Valerie. “Go open the door and look. Nothing fell.”

I opened the closet door – everything was all perfectly in place. I stood there in shock while they giggled!

The next time I was there, they were sleeping. I felt compelled to draw. I drew and drew a face of a blonde girl. When Julita and Valerie woke up, I couldn’t stop. I was frantic. Julita slowly said “What are you doing?” I held up the drawing of the blonde girl. “Why… are her eyes bloodshot?” Julita demanded, looking at me strangely. I looked. Yes, I had drawn bloodshot eyes, highly done funeral makeup, a pallor on the girl. “You drew the ghost!” Julita said. And as I looked, I was surprised at my own work. They told me about a blonde who was rumored to have died in the bathroom down the hall – the one I had used! I told the girls, and they withdrew, gasped. “Don’t EVER go in there!” Valerie demanded.

They took me down the hall and pointed at where the blonde girl’s room had been. “You see how these papers on the door are moving?” they asked me. “There is a perma-wind, it comes from under the crack and blasts down the hall. The girls who live here are transferring. They hate it.”

One day, Valerie and I had fallen asleep. She was on the floor, I was on the bed, but both our heads were facing the same way. I suddenly heard the small fridge come slamming across the floor to smash my head in! I sat up with a gasp at the exact same moment Valerie did. “Valerie! I screamed. Someone pushed the fridge towards my head to kill me!” “No,” she stammered, “it was the stereo, and it was coming at MY head.” At that moment we realized; it had been the ghost. Nothing in the room had ever moved at all.

I thought maybe the college girls were messing with me, especially when they left me alone in their dark room one night for almost an hour, giggling, after we had watched “the Shining.” But they weren’t laughing when they came back and found me shaking and shivering under a blanket, curled up in a fear ball on the floor.

There were more events at this college, which I will write about in next week’s column, which escalated up to me refusing to ever return to Mount Saint Mary’s.

Recently, I wrote to Julita and asked her “Hi! Do you remember that ghost at Mount Saint Mary’s?” And she wrote back “Yes!” So to this day, she admits to the events as ghostly. And, I personally have no other explanation for what happened; especially as the next events took place when I was fully awake, and with many witnesses present. Stay tuned for next week!

Sydney Silver is a radio show co-hostess. You can find her on the Wild Man Bill Show or her website.