From: jfurr@vtssi.vt.EDU (Joel Furr)
Subject: traveling to Staunton
Organization: The Ohio State University Department of Computer and Information Science
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1992 16:52:34 GMT

I'm going to be in Staunton, Virginia tomorrow for a Toastmasters divisional
speech contest, which I'm running since I'm the district officer who's
responsible for the division in Western Virginia.  As an added enticement to
get people to show up, I offered a ghost story storytelling session prior to
the contests.  

For some reason... troubled economy, the fact that Staunton is geographically
rather far away from the other cities in Western Virginia which have Toastmas-
ters clubs, football games on the same day, I dunno... we're not getting a lot
of interest in either the ghost story competition or the contests themselves. 
Six people, including myself, are signed up to tell 5-7 minute ghost stories,
and I was hoping for a few more... preferably people I haven't heard speak a
zillion times before.

I'm hoping that the storytelling session will go well... none of the six
people, including myself, are renowned for their storytelling ability but
sometimes, if the story in question is particularly personal or particularly
good, average storytellers can do very good jobs.  I'm keeping my fingers
crossed, because my particular story is still taking shape.  I'm making up a
story to tell rather than use any of the ones I've used before: ghost lights
atop mountains in Western Virginia, ghosts at the University of Georgia,
ghosts in the Lyric Theater, etc. because people will be there who have heard
those stories before.

The story I'm making up will have to do with a railroad trestle and ghosts who
keep trying to make it across the gorge from one side to the other before an
oncoming train runs them down.  In western Virginia, it's not uncommon to read
in the newspaper that a couple kids were killed in so-and-so County trying to
do precisely that... get on across before the train gets them.  Sometimes you
read about the one kid who had the sense to jump off the bridge into the
river, twenty feet below, while his brothers get crushed on the bridge.  I
dunno why people never think to jump.  If I had the choice between getting
clobbered on rocks below or drowning, and being crushed by a train and dragged
along for a mile or two, I know which one I'd pick.

This is one sort of ghost story I haven't heard mentioned here yet.  We've
talked about reasons for ghosts to haunt places, and have cited having been
fond of a place in life, or having been killed there, or having some message
to give to a living person, or watching out for a living person, or even just
emotional "recordings".  Haven't heard any that I can recall of ghosts staying
around to keep trying to accomplish a task they failed at in life, although
that's just in this group I haven't heard that theme used.  I have heard that
theme used in many stories I've heard told.

The story is still taking shape in my head... I'm trying to think how to tell
it, and what elements to add to make it 'scary'.  For example, should I have a
ghost train as well, and for what reason?  Driver trying deliberately to run
kids down, driver tortured by thoughts of running kids down... any ideas?

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Joel Furr                                                   jfurr@vtssi.vt.edu
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Newsgroups: alt.folklore.ghost-stories,alt.horror