It's nuts. It's crazy.
It's too insane.
I knew I had seen a ghost.
It's what haunted me for 20 years.
That rage.
There was something else there.
I felt so scared out of my mind,
I didn't know what I could do next.
I felt a physical blow
completely of emotion.
I was so scared.
We probably brought this on our ourselves.
[CLATTERING]
She didn't like it that we were playing with her.
We were in danger.
We're going to be hurt.
He was so angry.
He just...
He...
[SCREAMS]
[BELL RINGS]
Questions are gonna be different.
The town that I lived in
was a fairly small town.
My high school was very confining to my spirit.
Everybody dressed alike.
It honestly felt like a prison.
It didn't feel like the real world.
My senior year of high school,
I was a girl on a mission.
My thoughts are focused on graduation,
college, freedom,
getting out of that town and seeing the world.
I just wanted to get out of there as fast as I could.
The boys from my high school were not a thought in my mind.
I just wanted to leave everything behind me.
Yeah?
[GIGGLES]
I was dating this young man.
He was out of high school,
older.
Parents would kill me if they knew I was dating him.
And that night I remember I was trying
to make it home in time for curfew.
And I was wearing a hot pink little dress.
And that was the first night that I wore it.
I finally felt, I think, like an adult that night.
I reached the first stop sign
and proceeded down old creek road.
There's a section of probably a half mile
to close to a mile
that becomes very twisty.
It's a little bit tricky
for a girl who hasn't been driving very long.
Out of nowhere,
like, literally out of nowhere,
two hadlights appeared in my rearview mirror.
The headlights were up high.
It was some sort of a pick-up truck.
Where the heck did that come from?
There's no opportunity for something
to appear out of nowhere.
There's no driveways.
There are no houses.
It's nothing but forest on either side.
These headlights appeared almost like by magic.
Whoever was driving was barreling down on me.
I was a fairly new driver.
This is my dad's car.
And as I'm easing into the bend
to approach the second "S" curve...
I had this mounting panic.
I'm still trying to figure out
where these headlights came from.
As I'm having this thought...
They disappeared.
They vanished.
They just were no more.
And in that instant...
[CRASHING]
There was this horrible scratching of metal on metal.
[METAL GRATING]
It's not my car.
I'm nowhere near the guardrail.
And the sound isn't outside the car.
It's inside the car.
On top of the noise is this sound
of this girl screaming at the top of her lungs.
[GIRL SCREAMING]
Just a blood-curdling scream.
And then
there was this terrible
slam.
[CRASHING]
Like a car hitting, like, a tree.
And then nothing.
I was all over the yellow line,
trying to get out of those "S" curves
as fast as I could.
And at the end of the "S" curves
is another stop sign.
[TIRES SKIDDING]
Reflexively, I just punch the brakes.
[GASPING]
My brain is just swirling.
There's a thought that enters my mind,
and it says, "Don't look up.
Victoria, don't look up."
Like, there's this impulse to just go.
[GASPING]
And as I was about to step on the gas,
I looked up.
About
ten yards behind me,
there was this kid in the road.
I hadn't passed him.
I hadn't seen him.
I hadn't hit him.
It was as if he had appeared out of thin air.
I could see him so clearly in the rearview mirror.
I can see what he's wearing.
Light curdorys
and a brown bomber jacket.
I couldn't see his face.
It was hidden in shadow.
And as I'm thinking, "Who are you,
and where did you come from..."
[ROARS]
[SCREAMING]
I felt a physical blow,
like a punch
that was comprised completely of emotion.
Just knocked the wind out of me.
It was so strong.
He was... [SHUDDERING]
He was so angry.
And he just...
He...
[ROARING]
[SCREAMING]
And it scared the living daylights out of me.
And I just hit the gas.
And I flew.
I flew home.
[DOOR SLAMS]
Hey, don't slam the door.
What's the matter?
I came into the kitchen,
and my parents were so obviously alarmed.
I couldn't speak.
Why are you so upset?
I'm... okay.
My mother said,
"What happened to you, what happened to you,"
and I couldn't even tell her.
And she said to my dad,
"Jerry, call 911."
No, dad.
I was afraid of being seen as crazy.
And then in sort of halted phrases,
I managed to kind of describe what had happened.
I was driving, and there, um, there was an accident.
My father even said,
"You left the scene of an accident?"
And I said, "No, you don't get it."
"There was no accident.
It was the sound of the accident."
[SPEAKING INDISTINCTLY]
My family didn't believe me.
And it was hard.
I was sort of left to deal with what I'd been through.
I couldn't figure it out.
None of it made sense.
None of it was logical.
I knew I had seen a ghost.
I knew.
But who is he?
Where did this kid come from?
[DISTANT ROARING]
[DISTANT SCREAMING]
All of the people in my world,
they couldn't tell me what it was.
They couldn't help me through it.
I was literally freaked out.
I said, "What do you want to do?"
We're going to be hurt."
[GIRL SCREAMS]
[MAN ROARING]
[SCREAMING]
Scared the living daylights out of me.
And I just hit the gas.
And I flew.
I was sort of left to deal with what I'd been through.
But I couldn't figure it out.
I knew I had seen a ghost.
I knew.
This wasn't a story that I was going to share with anyone.
Who would have believed it?
It's too nuts. It's too crazy.
It's too insane.
It was way too upsetting for me
and way too risky to be seen
as someone who'd lost their mind.
A few weeks after,
my sister, who was away at college in Massachusetts,
came home.
Probably because she was distracted
with my sister being in the car
or because she was tired of taking alternate routes,
my mother decided to take the most direct route,
which was old creek road.
Mom, what are you doing?
It's the shortest way, Victoria.
You can't go this way.
It doesn't matter if it's short.
Please just stop.
I never wanted to go down that road again,
and I have never been down that road again.
I really don't want to do this.
I don't want to see it. I don't want to see it.
It was too traumatic. It was too upsetting.
It was too haunting.
Stop!
Victoria.
It really, really, really rattled me
for years and years and years.
And all of the people in my world
that were supposed to know how to deal with that
had no idea.
They couldn't tell me what it was.
They couldn't help me through it.
[VOICES MILLING]
Ten years after high school,
I was working at a very popular drinking hole.
And one of the regulars
was this guy who looked super familiar.
I was going by a local bar,
and started going there more often.
Every time I waited on him,
we'd kind of look at each other like,
"Do I know you?"
Sorry.
Hey, um, I'm sorry.
Did you go to shs?
After a while, we realized
that we went to high school together.
And he said, "Yeah, what year did you graduate?"
And I said, "I graduated this year."
And he said, "That was the year I graduated."
[CHUCKLES]
I know we had a bigger high school,
but I did not know her
and she didn't really know who I was.
As time went on, you know,
we'd start hanging out and doing stuff together.
After getting to know him a little bit better,
Johnny became one of my dearest friends
in the whole wide world.
He's just a really, really good person.
Over the years,
I couldn't forget this experience on old creek road.
And I was still so undone by it.
I just wanted someone else to hear about this experience.
It's weird... it's surreal to tell somebody about this.
I haven't actually, um...
But I was driving home one night,
and I don't... uh, these headlights appeared behind me
out of nowhere.
As she's going through her story,
I'm like, "Okay."
Why are you telling me this?"
You know?
He's not easily moved.
He's not sentimental by any stretch of the imagination.
I really don't believe in ghosts
or paranormal activities.
I was driving on old creek road.
It kicked off in my head.
It's like, well, wait a minute.
Old creek road.
Do you remember that accident that happened junior year?
And then I remembered.
I remembered the crash.
And it was like a lightbulb went off.
There had been an accident
that had taken place on old creek road
when I was a junior in high school
that had involved four kids
from my high school
and one kid from the catholic high school
driving the truck was this very popular cheerleader, Beth.
The truth is that Beth and I had absolutely nothing in common,
and I never would have given her a second thought
if it hadn't been for what happened.
[CHUCKLING AND CONVERSATION]
[SQUEALING AND LAUGHTER]
Oh, you two lovebirds.
Uh-huh?
This pick-up truck
was driving southbound on old creek road.
There's an "S" curve going into the bridge.
The vehicle could not maintain control.
[CRASHING]
The truck rode the guardrail.
[GIRL SCREAMING]
This truck flipped over.
The truck went on its top
and spun around approximately 180 degrees.
[SIRENS BLARING]
[RADIO CHATTER]
The two people in the rear of the truck
were thrown out
and landed on the ditch on the other side of the road.
You all right?
Oh, my god!
The passenger, Chloe,
went out the passenger side window.
She suffered several injuries to her hand and arm.
The driver, Beth, had minor injuries.
Miss, what's your name?
The passenger Michael
was not as lucky as the other passengers.
Sir, sir.
And he was fatally injured.
That matched perfectly with the sequence of events.
The headlights were high.
They belonged to a pick-up truck.
The striking of the guardrail on the right
to the scraping along the pavement.
And there was a passenger in the front seat.
Oh, my... Oh, my god!
[SCREAMING]
And I think what I heard was her scream.
It might have been this kid who was killed
in my rearview mirror.
But I didn't know the boy who died.
I'd never seen him before.
I didn't know who he was.
He was completely unknown to me.
Standing, like, dead center in the middle of the road.
As I started to describe to Johnny
what he was wearing...
He had tan khakis on.
And he was wearing this brown leather bomber jacket.
[FORK CLATTERING]
And I hear a click, and I look up,
and Johnny has dropped his fork.
And he's staring at me with big, wide eyes.
The color has drained out of his face.
And he said, "You're not going to believe this."
As I got to the part
where this young man
was standing ten yards behind my car,
and I started to describe to Johnny what he was wearing...
He had tan khakis on,
and he was wearing this brown leather bomber jacket.
And Johnny is staring at me with big, wide eyes.
The color has drained out of his face.
And I said, "What is the matter with you?"
And he said,
"You're not going to believe this."
When we were in high school,
we used to play a lot of football.
I remember one day another car pulled up.
Six guys jumped out from the catholic school.
What's going on, man?
One of the guys who had showed up out of the car
was a neighbor of a friend of mine, Michael.
Hut.
One Mississippi, two Mississippi,
three Mississippi.
Oh, no! [HORN HONKING]
And Michael was dating a girl from our school.
The guys from that school
were definitely competition for the ladies in our school.
- Hey. - Hey.
Aw.
Victoria said that he was wearing a brown leather jacket
and brown curdoroys.
I'm like, well, wait a minute.
That's what Michael was wearing
the day I played football with him
and the day he died.
Victoria didn't know Michael.
She would never have known what he was wearing.
The details were so precise.
And only reason I knew what he was wearing
was 'cause I saw him that day.
In that moment, it was so powerful,
because it made it real.
[CRYING]
I have to believe her
because that was, like, really eerie
that she had that kind of detail.
You know, it is proof to me that she had seen something.
In many ways,
I'm still looking for answers
about what happened on that night.
I'd run into the ghost of a young man
who had lost his life.
You know, he died so suddenly.
I think that Michael didn't know
he was dead in that moment.
It's what haunted me for 20 years.
That rage.
[ROARING]
I don't think that I'd had that experience by accident.
Today I write ghost stories.
And it's due to that crippling fear
that I felt on that road.
That one incident
affected and changed the rest of my life.
We were kind of known for pulling pranks.
Up to this point, I had never seen drew scared before.
Maybe this prank that we did is now coming back to us.
[GIRL GIGGLING]
We felt that we were in danger,
that we were going to be hurt.
Lebanon valley is a college
that's smack dab in the middle of a small mom-and-pop town.
Sophomore year, drew and I moved in early.
We were there when the freshman came to campus.
Mary Green is a co-ed dorm.
Living in the same hallway with women was a good idea.
You are looking for the cars to go help
that have the freshman girls
to help them move their stuff in.
Just because, hey, you never know.
It might turn into a date.
I was very nervous when I first arrived
at lvc.
There's tons of people I didn't know
moving into a room that I'd never been in.
It was all just very nerve-racking.
[TRAIN WHISTLE BLOWING]
Directly behind Mary Green
is a very active railway.
When you first move into the building,
you know you're living next to train tracks.
[TRACKS RATTLING]
After the hustle and bustle of everyone moving in...
Yo, dude.
It was kind of a relief to finally have
our little home, really,
kind of set up the way we wanted it.
I was a music recording major,
kind of into the whole technology thing.
And we had all of our TV and stereo and everything
was ready to go, so we were
just kind of excited and looking forward
to the semester.
We were kind of known for pulling good-natured pranks.
We weren't gonna hurt anybody.
We weren't doing anything crazy.
[LAUGHTER]
I remember one time,
one of the guys that lives next door
was in the bathroom taking a shower.
And Scott and I stole his clothes
and, you know, towels and things like that.
And so he was running around the hallway stark naked.
Kind of displeased at us.
I was probably a little taken aback
by these two because I knew they were kind of crazy pranksters
that were always getting into trouble doing something.
And I guess I was always a little cautious
that they might do something to me.
It was maybe a couple weeks into sophomore year.
We were just kind of talking about different ghost stories
and different things on campus.
Have you guys heard about the ghost yet?
- No. - No.
Drew and I once heard the story of this little girl
that haunted Mary Green.
You guys ever heard anything creepy
around the dorms or anything?
No.
People say they heard a ball bouncing in the hallway,
or they had heard a child laughing in the hallway.
Just kind of brushed it off as, you know,
everyone has stories.
What dorm does she haunt?
Mary Green.
That's where we are.
- Seriously? - We live in Mary Green.
Yeah.
That's when I kind of got the idea,
I think there's a prank in here somewhere.
I think we can run with this.
[GIRL GIGGLING]
[CUTS OUT]
We just found a sound on the computer,
downloaded the sound,
and just played it through our regular computer speakers.
[GIRL GIGGLING]
And it recorded it on a tape recorder
that I would use for class to record lectures.
We knew we needed to get a ball
that, you know, made a lot of noise when it bounced
so that people knew what it was.
Ah.
[LAUGHING]
Dude, you're such a tool.
We waited until quiet hours.
This was the time that, you know,
they shut the hallway lights off
except for the emergency lights
at the end of the hallway where the stairwells are.
[GIRL GIGGLING]
[BALL BOUNCING]
[DOOR CREAKING]
[SHOUTING AND SCREAMING]
Oh, you guys!
You guys are so lame!
[LAUGHTER]
Yes.
Couple weeks had gone by.
Drew and I were just kind of sitting in our room.
Both Scott and I are pretty into technology
and, you know, gadgets.
And we have our TV sent through our stereo system.
And as we're watching TV...
[PIERCING FEEDBACK]
The volume just gets cranked.
[FEEDBACK WHISTLING]
So I'm sitting there spinning the knob,
trying to turn it down,
and it's not doing anything.
You ears were about to bleed, it's so loud.
Turn it down, man!
It's not going down.
[NOISE STOPS]
What the hell was that?
I don't know.
[PIERCING FEEDBACK]
TV kicked right back on.
He turned around, turned it off again.
[PIERCING FEEDBACK]
And the TV turned right back on again.
The quicker he's hitting the button,
the faster the TV's coming back on.
[TRAIN TRACKS CLACKING]
As we're watching TV...
[PIERCING FEEDBACK]
The volume just gets cranked.
[PIERCING FEEDBACK]
Turn it down, man!
He turn around, turned it off.
[PIERCING FEEDBACK]
And the TV turned right back on again.
The quicker he's hitting the button,
the faster the TV's coming back on.
So this point, I'm, you know, thinking
he's just trying to mess with me.
Dude, come on, what are you doing?
Give me the remote.
I said, "Drew, I don't... I don't have the remote."
It's on the table right next to you."
And he looked at me and said,
"Scott, I honestly don't know what is going on."
[TRAIN TRACKS CLACKING]
[DOOR OPENS]
Guys, come on.
Our r.A. Came over,
and as soon as he stepped in the room,
it's like, the volume just cut out.
So we tried to explain to him that we didn't do it.
It just happened. We didn't do it.
But of course he didn't believe it
because, you know, he kind of knew us from before
and figured we were just pulling another prank.
[DOOR CLOSES]
What just happened?
I don't know.
Drew did actually take the stereo apart.
Being a skeptic, I wanted
to come up with logical reasons
as to why these things are happening.
There's any number of audio glitches,
and, you know, little bugs in the system
that could have... Could have caused that.
I was a music recording major.
I work with technology every day.
But I couldn't explain what this was.
In the fall of my freshman year,
I was just getting settled on getting used
to the study schedule.
One night, I went to bed.
It was just like any normal night.
Everyone was sleeping.
[TRAIN TRACKS CLACKING]
[TRAIN WHISTLE BLOWING]
[GIRL SCREAMS]
I woke up in the middle of the night.
It was around 2:00 in the morning.
It was very dark and quiet in our room.
And I realized I had to go to the bathroom.
The girls bathroom was to the right down the hallway.
I saw something out of the corner of my eye.
I saw a childlike figure,
a little girl,
standing about, like, 10, 15 feet away from me.
She gave off this aura,
a sort of loneliness.
And then suddenly she started playfully running
down the hallway, almost as if to say,
"Come catch me."
[GIRL GIGGLES]
And for some reason,
I didn't hear any footsteps of someone running away from me.
[GIRL GIGGLING]
There was just a feeling that took over me
that I needed to run down the hallway after her.
[GIRL GIGGLES]
And she ran out to the stairwell
through the open doorway.
[GIRL GIGGLING]
There was absolutely nothing out there.
I would have seen something.
I would have heard someone go up the steps
or down the steps.
That's when it really hit me.
"Oh, my gosh, what did I just see?"
It's not my personality at all
to go running after something
that I don't know what it is.
And that's when I got really creeped out.
I was so scared.
[DOOR CLOSES]
I just ran back to my room.
I didn't want to tell anyone
because I was shy.
I didn't think anyone would believe me.
I barely believed it.
If I didn't talk about it,
then maybe it didn't happen.
It was getting towards finals time.
Drew and I were studying for finals.
It was like any other night.
We had wrapped up our night session.
We had shut the door, locked it,
'cause we were gonna get ready to go to bed.
We were in for the night,
kind of winding down from the day.
[CLATTERING]
All of a sudden, out of nowhere,
the door just came flying open.
And I know 100% that that door was latched.
Before I could say anything,
drew was out in the hallway
looking to see what was going on.
I didn't see anybody there.
If somebody was just right there,
you'd hear a door close or something like that at least.
And then...
[GIRL GIGGLING]
We were in for the night.
Closed the door and locked it.
All of a sudden, out of nowhere...
[CLATTERING]
Before I could say anything,
drew was out in the hallway
looking to see what was going on.
Don't see anybody there.
So as I turn to go head into my room...
[GIRL GIGGLING]
I hear a little girl giggle.
It was very apparently not somebody
who would be college-aged.
I felt so scared out of my mind.
It was definitely some giggling from a child.
It was a little girl.
So I maybe took a step towards the laughter
to see if I could see anybody.
[GIRL GIGGLING]
And then all of a sudden I hear it out of my other ear.
So it's now coming from the other side of the hallway.
[GIRL GIGGLING]
It was like she was right next to me.
[GIRL GIGGLING]
But there was nobody else around.
[GIRL LAUGHING]
Dude.
[PANTING]
I wasn't investigating anymore.
I was... i was done with it.
I was thoroughly freaked out.
He looked white as a sheet.
He had the look of complete terror on his face.
Up to this point, I had never seen drew scared before
about anything.
There was no possible way for this to have been a prank.
It was just way too real and too...
Too close.
I just looked at drew, and I said,
"Do you think this has had anything to do
with the little girl and the prank we pulled?"
It really gave me the chills,
and I had the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
I started thinking maybe we did stir something up
with our little prank we pulled.
Was this little girl playing tricks on us
since we decided to play a trick on everybody else?
Maybe this prank that we did is now coming back to us.
It'd been a couple days since the incident with the door,
and I was by myself in the room.
[DESK LIGHT PINGING]
All of a sudden,
I got a weird sensation that there was...
Something else there.
And so at this point I knew,
she's here.
I saw her.
I saw a little girl standing in the door.
She's standing there looking at me.
I kind of froze
because it's really not every day that you see a ghost.
She didn't like it that we were playing with her,
and she wanted us to know.
[BOTH GASP]
Jeez, man, you scared me.
What's wrong?
I just saw the girl.
What?
I didn't know what to do.
I felt so scared out of my mind,
I didn't know what I could do next.
We felt that we were in danger,
that we were going to be hurt.
So I said to him, I said,
"Well, what do you want to do?
What's our next step?"
At this point, all we heard
was a story that there was a little girl
that wandered the halls,
and, well, now I believe that story.
But I kind of wanted to dig a little bit deeper
and see, you know, why is she wandering the halls?
We're gonna cover everything up
to the beginning of the civil war.
Yes? Come on in.
Okay, see you next week.
I did speak with a professor
about everything that had happened.
What's up?
I was a student at Lebanon valley
from 1972 to 1976.
And I became an associate professor of english here.
The students come to me with a story or phenomenon
because I do not dismiss people's ghost stories.
200 people have heard or seen the little girl
at Mary Green hall.
Something's going on that people keep reporting.
[UPBEAT ROCKABILLY MUSIC]
♪ ♪
Once, many years ago,
on opening day,
a family was moving their daughter
into Mary Green hall.
And with her is her younger sister.
Maybe about six or seven years old.
Ball, ball.
Here you go, all right?
We found out as they were, you know, making sure
the older daughter was all set...
This little girl
decided to go downstairs and play outside
with her ball.
Then all of a sudden, the ball gets away from her.
Mary Green hall was built a matter of 100 feet or so
from the Redding railroad tracks.
And she goes out there to get the ball.
[TRAIN CHUGGING]
And that railroad is very active.
[TRAIN CHUGGING]
And suddenly there's the noise.
[TRAIN ENGINE WHISTLING]
[TRAIN HORN BLOWING]
Once, many years ago,
a family was moving their daughter
into Mary Green hall.
This little girl
decided to go downstairs and play outside
with her ball.
[TRAIN ENGINE WHISTLING]
[TRAIN TRACKS CLACKING]
[TRAIN HORN BLOWING]
And it hits her.
And it kills her.
After a few yeras,
people start to say, "You know..."
[BALL BOUNCING]
"In those corridors, I hear this bouncing ball."
That really kind of hit home with us.
We came to the realization
that we probably brought this on ourselves.
Perhaps she was wandering the halls
looking for her family,
or maybe she was wandering the halls
looking for the ball.
And when Scott and I bounced that ball down the hall,
that's what made her come back,
was hearing a ball and thinking maybe it was hers
and wanted to come play with it again.
I looked at him, I said,
"Why don't we just apologize
and see if everything stops?"
You start.
I'm sorry
that we made people afraid of you
for our enjoyment.
We're sorry for everything that happened to you.
Sorry if we offended you.
Sorry if you think we made fun of you.
We're sorry that we made you think
that we wanted to play with you
and that we bounced the ball down the hallway.
We don't want to play anymore.
We need you to stop.
We need to get on with our lives.
After a week, nothing happened.
Come toward the end of the semester,
nothing else happened.
We didn't experience anything else.
You never really know,
but to a point,
I could feel that we were out of this.
Years later, I found out a friend of mine, Jen,
had some similar experiences with the little girl.
At first, I was a skeptic.
But there's certain experiences in life
that just stay with you.
This was real.
Being that I am a dad now,
there's a lot of things that kids will do to get attention.
I can't be a skeptic anymore.
This is as real it gets for me.
It certainly changed my ideas
on maybe being more careful with...
[GIRL GIGGLING]
What you play with.
Pranks are certainly not a part
of what I do anymore.
It's a real-life tragedy that took place.
And it's not something that you want to poke fun at.
Knowing how she's walking the halls,
and she's never gonna find her family.
She was just looking for people to play with.
[GIRL GIGGLES]