HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: Matt Garretson
Subject: Re: The Lyric Theater
Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1992 23:50:01 GMT

In article <9210050544.AA01398@news.cis.ohio-state.edu> FURRJK@vtvm1.cc.vt.edu (Joel Furr) writes:
>
>The question I'd like to raise here for those of you who read the story is,
>"Why do the ghosts haunt the place?"  
  [stuff deleted]
>Why do you suppose the various ghosts, if there are any, are there, rather
>than off in heaven, hell, or whereever the dead go?

You said you liked the old theatre; maybe they do, too!   :)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.ghost-stories
From: trifid@agora.rain.com (Roadster Racewerks)
Subject: Real Indian warning...
Organization: Open Communications Forum
Date: Sat, 26 Sep 1992 12:05:10 GMT



I thought that although it isn't truly a "ghost story" you might be interested
in a real-life instance of an Indian warning about a "haunted" place coming
true...

Back a hundred years or so ago, when white people first started to move into
the area around Mt. St. Helens (Washington state), the Indians warned them to
stay away from Spirit Lake, which, despite it being a beautiful place, they
were careful to do, only using the area when the huckleberries were ripe.

Although the area never became heavily settled, it did attract quite a few
mountain cabins, and one big resort cabin eventually. The older Indians often
said "but when you go out on the lake, you can see bubbles rising from the
dead on the bottom!"

And when St. Helens blew up, guess where almost all the deaths were? And none
of them were Indians....

(An interesting side note; although accepted theory puts the Indians in the
US at only 10,000 years ago, the local Indians insist differently, and indeed,
the mountain did at some time in the distant past send down a smaller ash flow
that formed the lake, and would certainly have killed any Indians living in
that area.... makes ya wonder.... :-)

Suze

Newsgroups: alt.folklore.ghost-stories
From: pol30546@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Peder Larsen)
Subject: Coothooloo
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1992 04:16:11 GMT

J   K
 U   I
  S   D
   T   D
	I
	 N
	  G  
    :-)

	This is for Joel and my hero Nicholas.

	BTW, I have never posted about Cthulu and to tell you the truth,
I know much less about it than all of you who have been speaking so 
vehemently against posts about him/it/whatever.
	I merely posted my opinion on the matter and I left it at that.
Then I was attacked and called an idiot and a jackass among other things.
I don't think that was called for, I never got personal with them and
I take offense that they got personal with me.  I don't understand how
you can make such comments about an individual that you don't know and
that you have never met.  These conclusions were made about me from reading
one paragraph, only one.
	I still feel that there is room for Cthulu posts and that it does
not violate our precious charter (and don't send it to me again!).  
Actually, I think the topic would have died out long ago if people just let
it be.
	That's all I'd like to say on the subject, no need to post a response
or e-mail me.  Let's just get on with some stories and discussion.
								Peder
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.ghost-stories,alt.horror
From: gorski@pslu1.psl.wisc.edu (Tom Gorski)
Subject: Re: Cthulhu for Prez!!
Followup-To: alt.horror
Organization: Physical Sciences Lab, University of Wisconsin
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 92 13:48:54 GMT

Just like to say thanks in advance to everyone for moving Clueless out
of a.f.gs!!  :-)

--TG
From: uni@acs.bu.edu (Shaen Bernhardt)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.ghost-stories
Subject: Re: Filmed/Taped Evidence
Date: 1 Oct 92 22:17:17 GMT
Organization: Boston University, Boston, MA, USA

Hey:

Did anyone tape that poltergeist footage?  I saw it and was impressed...
(Only with portions however....much of it looked easy to fake....)

I would very much like to look over the footage again... anyone have a 
copy?>

e-mail responses appreciated
uni@acs.bu.edu
From: frantz@bvc.edu
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.ghost-stories
Subject: Re: My Very Own Street Light Story
Date: 5 Oct 92 15:10:08 CDT
Organization: Buena Vista College, Storm Lake, IA

In article <5OCT199210451329@lims01.lerc.nasa.gov>, devol@lims01.lerc.nasa.gov (WILLIAM DEVOL) writes:
> It happened!  While I was on vacation in Cancun, Mexico, my wife and I were 
> waiting for a bus to take us downtown late in the evening when the street 
> light we were standing under winked out.  All the other lights remained on. 
>  The first thing I said was, "Now, I can tell my news group."  The second 
> thing I said was, "I hope all the other stuff folks have been writing about 
> doesn't start happening to me."
> 
> Please, don't ruin it for me by saying that it was a faulty bulb.  That 
> takes all the fun out of it.
> 
> ********************************************************
> 
> Friends don't let friends go to Miami University.
> 
> Remember to post a ghost!
> 
> Bill Devol
> 
> ******************************************************* 


Forgive me if this is an incredibly stupid question, but what does it mean 
if a streetlight goes out while you're under it?  Is there a superstition 
attached to this significant event?

Andrea\

Newsgroups: alt.folklore.ghost-stories
From: pol30546@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Peder Larsen)
Subject: Re: Cthulhu belongs here!
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 1992 21:13:10 GMT

Peder Larsen (pol30546@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu) writes:

	Despite Joel's comments:

        What's the big deal, let Cthulhu stay!!!  There is plenty of room
and if you don't want to read a story or comment about him, don't.  Even
I skip most of the articles concerning him but they are still interesting
and could even be considered a ghost story of sorts.
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.ghost-stories,alt.horror
From: asper@time.sbc.com (Alan E. Asper)
Subject: Re: Cthulhu for Prez!!
Organization: Southwestern Bell Technology Resources, St.Louis, MO
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 92 18:16:34 GMT

In article <1992Sep30.130610.1@ulkyvx.louisville.edu> kamata01@ulkyvx.louisville.edu writes:
>
>One other question I forgot to ask...
>
>What is a occum razor ???  
>
>
Others will surely know more details, but Ocam (the spellings vary) was a 
philosopher/theologian in the Middle Ages who came up with what is known as
"Ocam's Razor": that is, in the face of several explanations for some
phenomenon, the simplest is the one to choose.

Am I right, everybody? I'm just trying to remember details from Phil 101 and
Jeffrey Burton Russell's book "Lucifer: The Devil in the Middle Ages."
I hope this helps,

Alan
From: whelan@sbphy.physics.ucsb.edu (John T. whelan)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.ghost-stories
Subject: Re: Halloween
Date: 2 Oct 92 19:33:02 GMT

jlysagh@hubcap.clemson.edu (james joseph lysaght) writes:

>FURRJK@vtvm1.cc.vt.edu (Joel Furr) writes:
>>place if ever there was one, the parents of Athens, Georgia used to do some-
>>thing that really puzzled me.  On Halloween, we students would be bumming
>>around our apartments, doing homework, not thinking anything of the occasion,
>>when we'd hear car doors slam and see kids spilling up the sidewalk towards
>>our buildings.  Yeah, that's right: parents would bring their kids to the
>>apartment communities where all the students lived and let their kids go
>>from door to door in each building

>Here at Clemson different student groups arange to bring kids through
>the dorms for Trick or Treat.  Anyone who is interested in giving out
>candy signs up on a list and then each kid that comes for Trick or Treat
>is escorted by a student who has a copy of the list and takes them only
>to the rooms participating so as not to disturb the other students.  A
>lot of people particiapte too.  I did one year, it was kind of fun!

	When I was an undergraduate at Cornell, we did a similar
thing.  The amusing part was that there were so many more dorms
interested in having kids trick-or-treat than children's groups
(Ithaca being a fairly small city) that the kids would be booked solid
for the week of Halloween, and sometimes it was hard to get them at all.
	As seniors, my girlfriend and I moved off campus to Cayuga
Heights (made up largely of professor's houses) and had high hopes of
having the local kids come by and trick-or-treat.  Our first visitors
were two friends of ours who were Big Brothers/Big Sisters, and
brought their respective little sibs by for trick-or-treat.  However,
our neighbors across the street (a married couple of profs from
Cornell and Ithaca College) told them that they were the first
trick-or-treaters they'd had in years!  As it turned out, another pair
of "kids" did come by, but I recognized them as students who'd lived
in my girlfriend's dorm the year before.  Suffice it to say we didn't
want for candy in November.
					John Whelan
--
	"Do you know what Freud said about dreams of flying?
	 It means you're really dreaming about having sex."
	"Indeed?  Tell me then, what does it mean when
	 you dream about having sex?"  -- Sandman #15
From: pete@introl.com (Pete Ikusz)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.ghost-stories
Subject: Haunted carriage ride
Date: 2 Oct 1992 14:56:09 -0500
Organization: Introl Corp.
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: introl.introl.com

A few years ago I listened to WLS radio in Chicago, (during this time
of year) and they were talking about a haunted carriage ride.
Someone/some company offered this.

Basicly it was a ride that took you throught a number of eleged haunted
sites in the surrounding Chicago area.

If anyone has any information regarding this please let me know.
Thanks,
-Pete
-- 
-------------------------------------------------------
Pete Ikusz	Introl Corporation	pete@introl.com
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.ghost-stories
From: FURRJK@vtvm1.cc.vt.edu (Joel Furr)
Subject: TAKE IT TO ALT.CONFIG!
Organization: The Ohio State University Department of Computer and Information Science
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 1992 05:38:42 GMT

Ladies and gentlemen of alt.folklore.ghost-stories, and you Cthulhu idiots,
I posted a message to alt.config asking that an alt.cthulhu newsgroup be
created to take the jackasses OUT of here and put them in their own padded
cell.  Those of you who insist on infecting other newsgroups with your stupid
posts about Cthulhu being a Melnibonean deity ought to start posting this
drivel to alt.config.  An alt.cthulhu.melnibonean newsgroup would be created
so fast your heads would spin, and then you'd have NO excuse not to go there
and LEAVE US ALONE.
From: ken@batman.austin.ibm.com
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.ghost-stories
Subject: Re: Filmed/Taped Evidence
Date: 30 Sep 92 20:28:45 GMT
Reply-To: ken@austin.ibm.com
Organization: IBM, Austin

ccspjs@gdr.bath.ac.uk (Pete J Suters) posts:

#  With all the stories about ghosts around, there seems to be very
#little evidence on film or tape of ghostly activity, but there was
#one tape I heard which was very spooky.

If a show called "Haunted Lives: True Ghost Stories" (I believe
that's the correct title) comes on in the UK (it was just on
here in the states last week), catch it. There's video of lots
of poltergeist activity and it's the scariest thing I've ever
seen! Doors, drawers, and cabinets opening and closing, objects
moving, interference on the camera. It was great!

BTW, they found the camera smashed!

AND DUMBASS ME DIDN'T HAVE THE VCR ROLLING TO TAPE IT....

This show may be a series, but I'm not sure - there's a country
music awards show special on tonight (when HL:TGS was on last
week). Yee-haw...NOT! What a waste - I'd rather see more footage
of spooks than see Garth Brooks do the "Will he quit?" thing (it's
almost as bad as Ross perot)...


=============================================================
THIS POSTING DOES NOT REPRESENT THE OPINIONS OF MY EMPLOYERS.
-------------------------------------------------------------
"The killer awoke before dawn, he put his clown shoes on, and
             he ... flopped on down the hall..."
=============================================================
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.ghost-stories
From: FURRJK@vtvm1.cc.vt.edu (Joel Furr)
Subject: Halloween
Organization: The Ohio State University Department of Computer and Information Science
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1992 06:15:06 GMT

Does anyone out there on the net have a ghost story involving trick or
treating, Halloween, or something to that effect?  I recall that on
a few occasions when I was a kid I'd hear the day after Halloween about
how a few kids' older siblings had gone to great length to scare the
daylights out of their younger siblings by waiting in the bushes with
glow in the dark fright masks and so forth.

No, we don't need to bring up the old 'did you hear about the people that
poison candy on Halloween' UL.  I recall reading in one of Jan Harold
Brunvand's books that research had shown NO reported cases of either poisoned
candy or candy with razor blades or needles inside.  The only thing that
came CLOSE was one particularly evil father who had killed his own son by
poisoning the kid's candy and then blaming it on anonymous ghouls out
in the city somewhere.

When I was an undergraduate at the University of Georgia, a ghost-haunted
place if ever there was one, the parents of Athens, Georgia used to do some-
thing that really puzzled me.  On Halloween, we students would be bumming
around our apartments, doing homework, not thinking anything of the occasion,
when we'd hear car doors slam and see kids spilling up the sidewalk towards
our buildings.  Yeah, that's right: parents would bring their kids to the
apartment communities where all the students lived and let their kids go
from door to door in each building.  It was annoying as hell, and stupid,
too, since none of us students ever had anything to give them.  We never
understood the reasoning behind it: you feel little guilt sending your own
kids out to trick or treat in your neighborhood, right, because their kids
are coming to your house and everybody winds up even.  But _apartment blocks_?
I never did find out what reasoning sent all these parents to the apartment
blocks where all the students lived... why pick on us?  The kids never got
anything to speak of, so why did the parents keep doing it year after year?

One Halloween, particularly annoyed with this, I went to the local supermarket,
the Bell's store on Prince Avenue, and bought a bag of apples and a box of
double-edged razor blades, paid for them, and walked back to my apartment
on Grady Street just behind the President's mansion, carrying the apples in
one hand and the box of razor blades in the other, and NO ONE PAID ME ANY
ATTENTION.  Not in the supermarket, or on the street, or anywhere.  As I
recall I was pretty disgusted when I got home and put the razor blades in
the bathroom cabinet and the apples in the refrigerator, where they were
eventually located and consumed by my roommate's predacious girlfriend,
Heather.

Anyone ever cook up their own "haunting" to scare the kids on Halloween?
Or did you get "haunted" by someone older than yourself?  Search your
memories!  Let's get some ugly childhood reminiscences posted to the net.
Xref: sparky alt.folklore.ghost-stories:537 alt.horror:4222
From: egl1@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu (Elizabeth G. Levy)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.ghost-stories,alt.horror
Subject: Re: Cthulhu for Prez!!
Date: 30 Sep 92 18:29:54 GMT
Reply-To: egl1@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu (Elizabeth G. Levy)
Organization: Columbia University

Occam's Razor is a logical argument developed by this medieval monk
Occam.  Essentially, the simplest theory that explains all the facts
is the correct theory.  The razor is to remove all extraneous details.

Consider the Ptolemaic model of the solar system, where all the
planets revolve around the earth.  In a sense, this is a correct
theory: from our vantage point, things do go around our planet.
However, when astronomers began to give more detailed observations of
the way planets move, the theory ran into problems.  It was forced to
include more and more wrinkles (I forget what they're called,
something with additional circles going in different directions, etc),
and became very burdensome to use.  Then came the Copernican model.
It was very simple, and explained everything.  The older model could
also explain everything, but you had to do logical somersaults to get
it to work.  By Occam's razor, we would throw out the old one, for
having too many extra wrinkles.

--
"I was trying to figure out which of my friends were hedgehogs, and which
were foxes...."
"Shakespeare wrote _King Lear_, NOT _King Leo_...."
From: jfurr@vtssi.vt.edu (Joel Furr)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.ghost-stories
Subject: ghosts-n-lemurs
Date: 6 Oct 1992 09:49:01 -0500
Organization: UTexas Mail-to-News Gateway
NNTP-Posting-Host: cs.utexas.edu

It's interesting that Tom Pierce mentions Lemurs in this newsgroup, as they do
indeed happen to be an interest of mine.  Lemurs are small primates that live
in Madagascar (Madagascar being a large island off the southeast coast of
Africa) and are mainly known for their large eyes, long, bushy tails, and
fondness for Twinkies and Big K Grape Soda.  

There are several kinds of Lemurs, including the ring-tailed Lemur, the ruffed
Lemur (which has a large white ruff around its neck), the aye-aye, and others. 
The Madagascar natives wiped out a lot of the indigenous Lemur population as
the human population grew, but most of the Lemur country is now within
protected nature preserves.

Why do the Madagascar natives wipe out Lemurs on sight?  Well, because the
natives consider them virtually supernatural critters, ghostlike bringers of
bad luck.  The very name "Lemur" comes from the Latin, "Lemure" being a name
for evil spirits of the dead.

Just thought I'd toss in my $0.02 on the subject.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Joel Furr                                                   jfurr@vtssi.vt.edu
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.ghost-stories,alt.folklore.urban
From: swaim@owlnet.rice.edu (Michael Parks Swaim)
Subject: Re: Ghost writing...
Organization: Rice University
Date: Sun, 27 Sep 1992 04:15:55 GMT

In article <1992Sep22.233557.8620@nezsdc.icl.co.nz> derek@nezsdc.icl.co.nz (Derek Tearne) writes:
>If you examine the truth of X in a binary (digital) world then there are
>two values.  We do however still live in a generally analogue world where 
>true and false are not absolutes.  There are therefore _always_ many other 
>options.  
  I use X on an almost daily basis, and I've got more than two options.
TWM, Motif, and OpenLook make for three options, and that's only for Suns.
If you add the Macs, RTs and IBM PCs you've got many options. (X11R3 through
X11R5, as a matter of fact.)

>There are only two options when truth or falsehood can be proved absolutely.
  Three, if you include "who cares."

>Derek "2+2=5, for a sufficiently large 2" Tearne

Mike "all a Sun 3's good for's an X terminal" Swaim



-- 
Mike Swaim            | Canada will become the next world power
swaim@owlnet.rice.edu | and they will work to ENSLAVE all the nations
Disclamer: I lie      | of your planet. -Ricardo
Cthulhu in '92! The stars are right!
From: barclay@RAIL9000.gatech.edu (Barclay Blanchard)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.ghost-stories
Subject: Re: A friend's old house.
Date: 30 Sep 92 18:32:45 GMT
Organization: Georgia Tech Research Institute

In article <1992Sep30.152537.11272@javelin.sim.es.com> aharris@javelin.sim.es.com writes:
>Just a guess on the purpose of the tunnels under your friend's house.
>I have heard that it used to be popular (and in some places still is)
>for people with assorted respiratory ailments to spend time under ground
>in abandon mines and tunnels or what have you, in the belief that the 
>damp cool air is theraputic.  Any of you historians out there know if
>this was the case with T.B. patients?  

I'm not a historian, but I've been to Mammoth cave and it was once used as
a sanitorium (sp?) for TB patients.

-- 
Barclay Elizabeth Blanchard    barclay@rail9000@gatech.edu
"I've been laughed at by some of the funniest people."
--Lissie, Alice Walker's _The Temple of My Familiar_
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.ghost-stories
From: FURRJK@vtvm1.cc.vt.edu (Joel Furr)
Subject: The Lyric Theater
Organization: The Ohio State University Department of Computer and Information Science
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 1992 05:40:53 GMT

I thank collectively all of you who've posted your compliments about
the Lyric Theater ghost story here and who've sent me your mail.  That
post is not just a recollection of ghost phenomena but is obviously
also a memoir of a theater I really, really liked.  That's why it wanders
on for so long before getting to the subject of the ghosts.

The question I'd like to raise here for those of you who read the story is,
"Why do the ghosts haunt the place?"  The screaming woman who screams "let
me out, let me out" or just screams wordlessly is a real cipher, for no
woman is known to have been walled up in the building.  Perhaps a murder
that has never been discovered took place.  The other ghosts, the chatting
people in the balcony and the eerie malevolence in the crawlspace and in
That Room, may or may not be connected to the screaming woman.  The latter
more than the former, probably.

Why do you suppose the various ghosts, if there are any, are there, rather
than off in heaven, hell, or whereever the dead go?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.ghost-stories
From: jhugart@news.weeg.uiowa.edu (Jacob Hugart)
Subject: Re: Filmed/Taped Evidence
Organization: University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 13:38:19 GMT

I really want to debunk this, but it is a good story.

ccspjs@gdr.bath.ac.uk (Pete J Suters) writes:

>  With all the stories about ghosts around, there seems to be very
>little evidence on film or tape of ghostly activity, but there was
>one tape I heard which was very spooky.
> [...stuff deleted...]

I will, however, state that such things should perhaps be taken with a
grain of salt.


-- 
Jacob Hugart  <jacob-hugart@uiowa.edu>
--------------------------------------
Take nothing but pictures,
   Leave nothing but footprints,
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.ghost-stories
From: FURRJK@vtvm1.cc.vt.edu (Joel Furr)
Subject: Charter for alt.folklore.ghost-stories
Organization: The Ohio State University Department of Computer and Information Science
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1992 07:33:36 GMT


The charter of alt.folklore.ghost-stories is as follows:

Alt.folklore.ghost-stories is intended to provide a forum for discussion and
posting of ghost stories, both personal experiences and those which have been
passed on from others.  "Ghost stories" can include local retellings of the
"Vanishing Hitchhiker" legend, popular local ghost legends, personal experi-
ences, stories told to you in dark rooms on Halloween, classic ghost story
plot and narrative elements, and so forth.  The purpose of all this is to
allow those interested in ghost stories to discuss and enjoy them with one
another.

This is *not* the Cthulhu newsgroup.  Chatter about running Cthulhu for
President do *not* belong here.  A while back there was talk about an
"alt.fan.cthulhu" newsgroup.  Someone said "alt.fan.hplovecraft" would be
more appropriate, and yet others said it should be "alt.fan.cthulhu-mythos"
and somewhere along the way the discussion got sidetracked and no group
was ever created as far as I can tell.

In response to the poster who said "yup, yup, this is the Cthulhu newsgroup"
I respond "As the person who thought this group up and got Terry Wood to new-
group it, I can definitely say that this is NOT a group intended for chatter
about 'why vote for the lesser of two evils?' and 'Cthulhu for President'.
TAKE IT ELSEWHERE.

And the rest of you, the lurkers and people who've been posting ghost stories
throughout, thanks!  Some people may have missed out on reading stories posted
here in the first few weeks of this newsgroup as it was slowly propagating its
way around the net; perhaps some of the more interesting stories could be
reposted for us to talk about and discuss.
Xref: sparky alt.folklore.ghost-stories:526 alt.horror:4197