Ghostly Poet

My husband attended Young Harris College located in the Blue Ridge mountains of North Georgia during the late 1960's. At that time spiritualism in any form was at an all time high and many young people including my husband became interested.

While in his second year of school, a former student who had attended at Young Harris in the late 50's and early 60's returned to complete his education. In the years between his leaving school and returning he had lived in the "Islands" and had learned some of the aspects of voodoo and seances. My husband and several of his friends became interested in the paranormal through the stories told by this man. In the late 50's, one of the English professors teaching at Young Harris had been named the Poet Laureate of Georgia. The young man had been a student of his up until the time that the Poet Laureate (who shall remain nameless) committed suicide in an office that had formerly been dorm rooms.

At the time of this story the building in which the Poet died was scheduled for demolition. Thrilled with the idea of actually speaking to a dead person; this young man, my husband and some of his friends decided to hold a seance in the room in which the Poet died and summon him to speak to them. My husband does not recall what they wanted to ask him and probably did not even know, but were fascinated with the idea of a ghost.

In order to get into the room, the boys pried open a window and crawled in one at a time and proceeded to set up for the seance. After a very short time of asking the Poet if he was there, they began to hear footsteps coming down the hallway becoming louder as they approached the door, which was closed and locked to the "death room". As the footsteps approached, they became louder although they also seemed sluggish. The footsteps stopped at the door where the boys were and to their horror the door bowed inward ever so slightly. My husband's recollection is that he was the first one out the window they had come in through! They did not go back to retrieve anything left in the room and the building was demolished soon afterwards, but the fear felt by the boys never went away.

When asked to tell the story, (our children love it!) he still remembers the fear and always gets goose bumps.

If there is a moral to this story I guess that it would be: Be careful what you ask for, you just might get it!