Sounds of witches laughing and victims screaming blared from a stereo, and smoke machines spit white clouds into the night's chilly breeze, as a swarm of scary story enthusiasts huddled on the sidewalk outside the Folklore and Ethnomusicology building. \nBut the chattering crowd quickly fell silent when Death walked out the door.\nA man dressed in a black-hooded cloak, hiding behind a skeleton mask and carrying a plastic scythe approached the crowd. Two witches and an Egyptian pharaoh followed him. As they made their way down the walkway outlined with glowing candles, the man in black held out his scythe and stopped to address the crowd.\n"I vant to velcom you to the third annual Ghost Walk," he said. "If you don't recognize me, my name is Death."\nWhen he's not busy haunting Bloomington or collecting souls, Death goes by the name John Johnson, an IU folklore professor.\nAt Friday's Ghost Walk, Johnson, along with other faculty members and graduate students in the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology, guided more than 150 people on a tour of some of IU's most haunted spots. The two-hour-long walk began outside the Folklore and Ethnomusicology building, 504 N. Fess St., and ended at the statue of Herman B Wells.
The girl in the yellow dress\nThe evening's first stop took place at the corner of Eighth and Fess streets when the crowd circled around Linda Degh, distinguished professor emeritus of folklore, and listened to the story about "the girl in the yellow dress."\nIn the late 1960s, a student murdered his girlfriend inside Read Quad after they returned from a formal dance. Since then, the legend is that the girl, who wore a yellow dress at the time she was killed, still lurks in the halls of Read.\nThe girl in the yellow dress isn't alone though, as "the lady in black" has been wandering the campus since 1911, according to another legend. Often mistaken for a burglar, Johnson said you can never get too close to her.\n"Be careful," Johnson said. "Because sometimes, deep in the night, you may wander by and see this woman in black with a big, black umbrella."\nBut in the middle of Johnson's story someone screamed, "Look, over there, it's the lady in black. And there, it's the girl in the yellow dress."\nTwo female graduate students in the folklore department dressed in long gowns -- one in black, the other in yellow -- seemed to appear from nowhere. They each had long hair hanging over their faces. Never saying a word, the two "ghosts" followed the crowd at a distance, giving the tour a creepy touch.\nFor Megan Remillard, 4-years-old, and her 2-year-old sister Nicole, the girl in the yellow dress was the scarier of the two. A large red stain on her chest blemished the yellow dress.\n"I didn't like the red thingie on her," Megan said.\nNancy Remillard, the girls' mother, said Nicole couldn't look at the girl in the yellow dress.\n"Nicole didn't want to shake her hand (after the tour)," Nancy said. "She kept saying, 'she looks too sad'."
'The tower of terror'\nAs the crowed walked up the steps to the student activities tower at the Indiana Memorial Union, graduate student Dan Peretti stood at the top, wearing a black suit and sunglasses. Peretti greeted the crowd and prepared them for a tour of the "tower of terror."\n"This place might seem ordinary during the day," Peretti said. "But it's a totally different place at night. It's ten floors of ultimate, grueling sheer terror."\nPeretti took the crowd inside the Tudor Room of the IMU and told the story of Jacob -- a boy holding a jack-o-lantern in one of the paintings inside the room -- who wreaks havoc on the waiting staff. After a collection of decorative tapestries was removed from the Tudor Room, Peretti said Jacob would come in at night and undo all of the table setting the staff had prepared for the next day.\nBut the tone of Peretti's story shifted from scary to humorous when he told the crowd his evidence for the tale of Jacob.\n"I asked the waiting staff, 'Does the ghost of a little boy come in here at night and do the work that you have done?'," Peretti said. "And you know what they said? 'Oh yeah, it happens all the time'. So there you go, irrefutable evidence. It's a creepy place folks."\nAfter the tour of the IMU's comically haunted side, Peretti stood by the door as the crowd exited and said he hoped everyone enjoyed the tour of "the most frightening student union in all of Bloomington, Indiana."
The not-so-scary stories\nAlthough the professor and graduate students conducted research on all the stories told during the Ghost Walk, not all of them have as much historical validity as the others. And resting on the stone wall surrounding Dunn Cemetery, John "Death" Johnson once again welcomed the crowd and shared with them one of the lighter tales of the evening. \nJohnson told the story of Michael, a fraternity pledge who died when a cannon misfired during a Little 500 celebration. Before he died, Johnson said it was Michael's job as a pledge to clean the toilets.\n"Sometimes you can still hear Michael at night cleaning the toilets, whistling a tune in a minor chord," Johnson said.\nAnd in the short time that the statue of Herman B Wells sitting on a bench has been on campus, legends have already surfaced. Ruth Aten, a staff member in the folklore department, said there have been reports of people seeing Wells move his hand when they sit next to him.\n"It's amazing how legends start," Aten said. "That statue (of Wells) wasn't there a month before a legend was born." \n-- Contact senior writer Colin Kearns at cmkearns@indiana.edu.
