The Stories We Tell, and the Stories We Hide - A Review of Ghostland

Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places by Colin Dickey

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Almost every school in the Philippines is haunted. While this might seem obvious for some very old schools (like the University of Santo Tomas, which is the oldest university in the Philippines), even some rather newer schools can have ghost stories attached to them. For example, the high school I attended had a big, old tree that stood in one corner of the school grounds. One of the branches had some rope hanging from it, the dangling end looped in a way that was reminiscent of a noose. School rumour had it that a nun had hung herself from that rope, and that anyone who happened to wander around the grounds late at night might spot her ghost, either standing at the base of the tree underneath the noose, or hanging from the noose itself, her ghostly habit ruffled by an invisible wind.

There are some details about this story that make sense, but there are a lot more that don’t - or rather, simply have no answer. For example, it makes sense that the ghost is a nun, because the school was run by nuns. It also makes sense that she hung herself from the tree: the convent is adjacent to the school, but the part of the school where the tree stands is actually quite far away from the convent’s location, with one of the school buildings blocking the view. If a suicidal nun is looking for some privacy to ensure that she is not discovered in the act, the tree is the best place to do it, and hanging is the best means of doing it because it is unlikely she will create enough noise to alert anyone, and rope is fairly easy to find on the school grounds, since the maintenance staff use it for a variety of purposes.

( Read more... )