The_Dunedan

From places I've lived:

East Hall, Appalachian State University, Boone NC: Most haunted college dorm in the US, allegedly home to at least six ghosts, two of whom (both suicides) are rumored to appear from time to time on the anniversary of their deaths.

4th Floor, Practice room 413, Music Building, Appalachian State University: Ghost of an overworked and jilted Soprano is rumored to walk the hall late at night singing her own dirge after hanging herself inside Rm. 413. Also widely reputed to appear reflected in the room door's window-glass, as if standing behind the observer and to their left.

Newton, NC: The town's movie-theatre was partly destroyed by fire sometime back in the 1930s, and at least one person was trapped and burned alive by the fire. The ghost of this person, a 13yr-old Black girl who was trapped trying to escape the Balcony (now 2nd screening room) by a narrow passageway and stairwell which at the time was the only entrance/exit. To this day, that stairwell gives me the creeps. Something trapped in there HATES my White ass!

According to several friends who've taken Uncle Sam's kind offer of a 13wk beachfront vacation, Marine Corps DIs (and numerous disreputable others) at Parris Island -still- like to scare overworked, underfed, and exhausted Crapheads with breif and profane tales of the deadly Wampus Cat; endangered and indiginous only to the South Carolina Coast and barrier islands, this ferocious predator has been known to carry off whole Gunny Sergeants to feed its' young, and is alleged to have a fondness for recruits who show weakness and evolutionary unfitness by falling out on marches or getting lost during navigation exercises.*

The Josefov (Jewish Quarter) of Old Prague is said to still be haunted by the Golem Of Prague. According to legend, the Golem was created in the late 16th Century by Prague's most famous and learned rabbi, Rebbe Judah Loew ben Bezalel. Originally created in order to defend the Josefov from anti-semitic riots, the Golem is reputed to have come to life at least once more, killing at least one Nazi officer during the German occupation of Czechoslovakia. In any case, the body of Rebbe Loew (who had to deactivate the Golem after it started killing every Gentile it came across) -and- the Golem itself are commonly reputed to be stored in the attic of the New Old Synogogue in the Josefov. A competing story holds that the Golem and Rebbe are, again together, both buried in the Zizkov district of the city. In any case, the crux of the legend is that if/when the Jews of Prague are threatened with extinction (as during Loew's day, though oddly not during the Holocaust; many Czech Jews ended up at the "show" camp at Terzin, which was intended to be shown to the Red Cross and international aid workers. If you -had- to end up in a Camp, you wanted it to be Terezin), the Golem may/will be reactivated and set loose again. Of course, without the Rebbe to deactivate the creature, legend holds that -this- time the Golem will be unstoppable and will simply kill every non-Jew, every unobservant Jew, and every insufficiently righteous Jew it finds (in that order).


*Edited To Add: I am not myself a US Marine. I am the family and friend of many such, and have heard of the Wampus Cat from two; once as "Wampus" and once as "Wackus" Cat.