Poor Emily still wanders in the field where her body was found. Today, Richard Crowe explained, it is the site of the new Morton College, built in the 1970s.
“The new college was not yet finished when her ghost was spotted,” he said.
A man was working on the roof when he was startled to see a teenager in white walking along the edge. He called to her, and she stepped out into the air and vanished. “When he ran to the edge and looked down, there was no one there,” said Richard.
Since that day, the troubled spirit occasionally appears on the roof. She is also known to play with the elevator, slam doors, and toss stones.
If Emily had not been murdered, she would be fifty-five years old and probably a grandmother by now. But the breath was cruelly snatched from her lungs by a monster. Maybe her killer is still alive and feels no guilt, and that is why the spirit of Emily cannot rest.
“Perhaps the solution to her murder will free her,” said Richard.
We don’t know if the detectives harvested and saved DNA from the homicide. If they did, recent scientific breakthroughs could soon put detectives on the heels of the killer. His days may be numbered, and Emily could finally graduate to a peaceful plane.
Ghosts in the News
Monster in Our Midst
THE SITE OF A HORRIFIC unsolved murder in Keddie, California, is believed to be haunted, according to a June 10, 2001, article in the San Francisco Gate.
Keddie Resort, founded in 1910, was once a placid vacation spot where visitors could rent one of thirty-three rustic cabins or a room in the lodge, reported writer Kevin Fagan. People drove hundreds of miles to the northern Sierra Mountains resort to explore the pristine wooded trails and dine at the Keddie Lodge Restaurant, which was packed nightly as customers lined up to eat wild game and sip fine wine.
Everything changed on April 11, 1981, when four people were brutally tortured and murdered in Cabin 28. Thirty-six-year-old Glenna Sharp; her son, fifteen-year-old John Sharp; and his friend seventeen-year-old Dana Wingate were bound and killed.
Sheila Sharp, fourteen, had spent the night at a friend’s, and the poor girl discovered her loved ones in the carnage. Her two younger brothers and their friend who was spending the night were unharmed, but her thirteen-year-old sister, Tina, was missing. Tina’s skull was discovered three years later by a bottle digger.
With the public too frightened to visit, the resort “rotted into a refuge for squatters and hobos,” wrote Kevin Fagan. He also reported that the campground was being restored and would soon reopen. The “Murder House,” however, was a dark reminder.
Its windows covered with plywood, and its doors nailed shut, it was a site so filled with evil that even seasoned detectives did not like to step inside. The many curious neighborhood kids and homeless people seeking shelter who have broken into Cabin 28 have all ended up fleeing in terror.
While some locals were skeptical of the idea that the place is haunted, others told Fagan that they had seen eerie floating figures; had heard footsteps, doors slamming, and moans in the empty house; and had witnessed objects that inexplicably materialized there.
Frustrated detectives continue to work the very sad cold case that left so many mourning and so few clues.
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Within the Shadows
The old beggar woman sometimes drew pitiful stares from the passersby. Other times, people gazed at her with self-righteous scorn. Their eyes said that they thought she was as low as a piece of manure stuck to the bottom of their shoes. They could not see that the ragged woman was more like they were than they could have imagined; that she had been born to a respectable family and had once dreamed of being a wife and mother.
They did not want to recognize the human bond. The shabby figure was not only a shameful sight, but she would soon become as all who are born will eventually be: dead.
Maybe something in her eyes made them shiver as they quickened their stride to pass her on the cobblestone street. If they looked too long, they might just recognize the fatal likeness. One day they, too, would be united with her in death.
There is something about Morrill Hall that makes the skin creep. Perhaps it is the fact that it is one of oldest buildings on the University of Maryland campus and exudes the spooky ambience typical of historic structures. Or maybe it is the ghosts that peek out of the windows at night.
Students have reported sudden flashes of light in the dark windows, followed by the appearance of an apparition. Framed in the window, the face gazes out. As one brave student approached the window, the image quickly faded.
Built in 1898, Morrill Hall was the only structure to survive with all its walls intact when a Thanksgiving Day fire roared through the campus in 1912.