by Rachel Larson
The ghost story is something all are aware of – some of us may have even participated in the spreading of these tales some night around a campfire or hiding under a flimsy pillow fort, holding a flashlight beam under our chins. For some, ghost stories are entertaining. For others, they are a serious reality. Personally, my childhood anxiety over Bloody Mary in the bathroom mirror was always soothed by reminding myself that the stories were just fantasies.
But what happens to that reassurance when it turns out that ghost stories are real?
More often than not, ghost stories stand rooted in historical truths, although they may have been exaggerated slightly over time, which is what sets them apart from urban legends. I learned this when I attended Thomas White’s “Ghosts and Legends of Western PA” event at the Cooper-Siegel Community Library in Fox Chapel. Fox Chapel is a little out of the way for a student in the city, but the dark winding roads my Uber took did well to set up a mysterious energy for the night.
Thomas White currently is the University archivist and Curator of Special Collections at Duquesne University. He lectures at both Duquesne University and La Roche College. In addition to this, White has authored seven books related to local Pennsylvania lore. From haunted roads to outlaws to witches, nothing is beyond his reach.
According to White, all folklore that isn’t from the deep South has gone through Pennsylvania. Since the population has of Pennsylvania has historically remained steady, folklore has been able to flourish among the residents. White’s approach to ghost stories is that they can tell us about communities—the values of a community, the important people in a community, and those whose histories would not have traditionally been recorded. “Every ghost story is a history lesson,” White said, before adding that around 70% of ghosts in these stories are women and the rest immigrants or African Americans. The ghost story at its origin serves as an unofficial history for communities, especially for tragic events. While names and other specifics may be lost to time, the tragedies of real people remain in twisted oral histories and legends.
The main focus of his talk at the Cooper-Siegel Library was the legend trip, and how it relates to infamous haunted sites around Western Pennsylvania. The legend trip is a sort of coming of age journey to a site where something tragic has happened, most likely where there have been reports of a haunting. As an out-of-state student relatively new to the area, the local references went completely over my head, but anyone from Western PA may get a creeping sensation of familiarity from these legend trip sites. Locations like Blue Mist Road and the steel mills of Pittsburgh are just a few of the close haunts for those planning their own legend trips.
For myself, White’s storytelling skills were enough of an experience. His dedication to understanding the history behind ghost stories and urban legends runs deep. When he recited cursed tombstone inscriptions and a poem about local Two Shop ghost, Jim Grabowski, the room fell silent. Local Pittsburgh history combined with accounts of eerie experiences sets anyone listening on edge—it’s one thing to recognize a familiar urban legend or an intersection driven past daily, it’s another to finally understand the truth behind the legend.
White’s work with lore and legend histories integrates the creative and academic in exciting ways. Everyone is familiar with a scary story or two, but what can make that thrill of storytelling even more impressive is the support of the history behind it. For the communities that originate these tales, it is doubly important to create a space for the lives and tragedies of real people to be remembered. That is precisely what Thomas White appears to be doing in his books and at his events. Work like this proves that fictional stories are fascinating, but factual storytelling can be the most thrilling of all.