A Couple of Scary Ghost Stories
By Joy J. Fine
Is the best time to tell scary ghost stories when you are sitting around a dark room late at night? Or is the atmosphere not nearly as important as the story about to be told? Would the story of the haunting of the Benini family be one of those you would tell? It began for the Benini’s in the latter part of the 1970s when Joe moved his wife and children to a home previously owned by father’s family. They settled in easily but it was not long before strange things started to happen. It began as sightings of a little girl who seemed to be there to advise them when bad things were going to happen to members of their family. She was not scary, just a little girl who warned them when their daughter was ill, his mother was going to die and a few other similar instances. These warnings only went on for a short item.
But then a couple of years later a little boy began to walk the halls. He too was a quiet and harmless spirit who appeared to be searching for something. When he sat down in one spot the Father became curious and pulling up the floor boards discovered a medallion lying under them. Trying to understand why these children had appeared to them Joe, the father, learned that they were likely the younger siblings of his late father who had died in the house. The little girl, Serena had died at the tender age of five and Giorgio had been only eight when he died. The circumstances of their deaths remained unknown.
So far this does not seem to be what one would put in the category of scary ghost stories. But then things changed. A third spirit descended on the family and this time it was a nasty one. It harmed the children, threw things around and terrified Joe’s wife. It seemed to be her that he was after. The family was so distraught over the occurrences, especially after a knife was discovered jammed into the kitchen table that they sought out help getting rid of the spirit in the black cape.
What about the story of the haunting at a church where two priests argued so many years ago. The argument turned violent and one of them killed the other. Now one side of the hallway is hot while the other is freezing cold. This is despite whatever the weather is like or if the heat is on. There are footsteps heard in those same halls and many people have seen blood coming from the sinks and toilets.
Perhaps a haunted ship would make for better material for the telling. The Queen Mary would be such a ship. She went from being a luxury liner to a troop ship in the space of only a few years. On one of her voyages she managed to cut another ship in half and left over three hundred people to their deaths despite the fact they had survived the initial collision. There are claims that the fists of these spirits can still be heard, along with the screams, as they hammer the side of the hull asking to be rescued.
Since the late 1960s she has become a hotel and museum. Part of her attraction seems to be the over one hundred ghosts that are supposed to walk her halls. They are seen on many decks; from the engine room to the women’s locker room, the loungers, and one particular cabin that has a frightening history. The story is told of a young man who wanted a lady companion for the night in his cabin. The steward found him a young lady who was willing to spend the night and brought her to him. The next morning the woman was found brutally murdered. There was no trace of the man, nor had that cabin actually been rented to anyone. The man’s name was not on the manifest. He did not seem to exist. But the ghost of that poor woman now haunts the cabin.
In other places strange things happen. In the boiler room the cameras are known to shut off. There is such a strong feeling of anxiety in the engines rooms where many stowaways were accidently burned when hiding. A young man is seen running in blue overalls from the belly of the ship where he was crushed to death so many years before. In the pool areas people have seen women in bathing suits from the 1930s; wet footsteps are seen and the excited screams of children laughing are heard. Are these the ghosts of children at play or are they two little girls who died there in the thirties; one by drowning and the other by having her neck snapped when the ship was suddenly tossed in a big wave? With over fifty deaths aboard the ship in a sixty year period it seems to be a place where scary ghost stories are not hard to find nor difficult to be a part of.
