Mmmm, Athens...
Soooooooo I'm at athens, sittin' in Jo's supa-comfy chair in a pink spaghetti strap tank top and a pair of black panties... typin' up an LJ entry. It was REALLY friggin nice here today, and I got a pair of old dance shoes for 10 bucks at Athens Underground, this old used store that has the CRAZIEST shit in it, I kid you not. I've never seen so much frou-frou/garish polka dots/screaming pink and orange and green go-go dancer shirts in one spot. And that was just one rack. O_O Man, it was great. So yeah.
Highlights of the day/this weekend: Going to Strouds park and writing "COLE + SEB 4 EVER" in the sand with an old rotting log cuz we're TOOLS (Cole and Seb being two Original characters Jo and I have XD) while watching a young college couple trying to discretely dry-hump about 50 feet away. Driving around listening to a fabulous old mix tape of Jo's and singing along at the top of my lungs in butchered JApanese. Aaaaaaaaand going to the Ridges... at night... sans flashlights (keep in mind I AM A CHICKEN!!)
For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, Athens, Ohio, is one of the most haunted---if not THE most haunted, according to several *admittedly cheesy* books on the subject----towns in America. This is mainly due to the abandoned mental institution on the hills just across the river from the university. This place is referred to as The Ridges. It's a mental institution from the late 1800's-- early 1900's, back when all you needed to do to get rid of someone was claim they were insane, and they would get carted off to a mental institution. Not nice, not psychiatry-friendly, very... fucking creepy. It was closed down during the 70's, and some of the buildings have since been renovated and put to use by Ohio University (O_O) but it's still creepy as fuck.
A large number of the buildings have metal bars on the windows. They architecture was pretty, but nothing could disguise the fact that all the narrow-windowed buildings used to be holding cells. ...we actually got ourselves psyched up enough to peer in one, but we couldn't see shit. Some of the windows had been partly painted over from the inside, but in some of the pains the paint had been scratched away by fingernails, from the looks of it. *Creeps out*
So then we decide to tool ourselves on over to the graveyard. Man, I have never been in SUCH A FUCKING CREEPY PLACE. 90% of the gravestones don't have names, they just have numbers. A few have names, but only a very, very few. And there was this one area where all the graves were in this circle, faceing inward. We neglected to bring flashlights, so we were stumbling around this graveyard of dead crazy people (?) in almost pitch fucking black with NO ONE else around and I almost twisted my fucking ankle on a low gravestone I didn't see. God.
Creepy Ridges stories. The first one has been affirmed by
luckynavigio and miss jou herself (jou being the gal I'm staying with at the moment) and the second one might just be local legend... still creepy though. Since I don't live in Athens, I might have a few of the minor details wrong... Jo or Traci, please correct me if I get them wrong? Or Jennae?
Before the Ridges was shut down, there was an inmate whose name was Matilda. She WAS actually crazy, and would often try to run away. She'd never get very far, and the people who ran the institution would always find her and bring her back before she got very far. It wasn't that they were afrad she'd hurt anyone, more that they were afraid she'd hurt herself.
But one day she ran away, and hard as they searched for her, they couldn't find a damn trace of her. Weeks went by, and they still couldn't find her. They eventually wrote her off as lost.
Fast forward about... fuck, I don't remember, a year. The staff re-opens a wing of the institution that had been sealed off for quite some time, planning on using it for more inmate living areas, and they are greeted by the most god-awful smell. Yeah, you guessed it. Matilda had hidden herself in the abandoned wing and had gotten locked into the boiler room. She'd been too far away for anyone to hear her screaming, and had died there. There's a stain on the floor of the room to this day.
Now the reason I say this is true (and really I don't give a shit if anyone bbelieves me, cuz it's STILL a great story) is that our dear Traci and her shit of a boyfriend Paul, back when those two were still at OU, managed to get into the boiler room and Traci tells me she has SEEN the stain on the floor. ...it's small, she says, and from the looks of it the woman laid herself down and folded her arms across her chest after awhile.... right before she died. *gets the heebs*
Aaaaaaaaand I really don't feel like typing up the other one. I know like three or four more, because practically every fucking buidling in athens has a ghost story associated with it, not just the Ridges, but mebbe I'll put it in the next one.
I wanted to watch Schreiber fall down the elevator shaft in Kate & Leopold, but I have to get up at the buttcrack of dawn tomorrow and it's too late to start the movie now. Ah, well. I'll just watch it tomorrow at me mum's house.
Highlights of the day/this weekend: Going to Strouds park and writing "COLE + SEB 4 EVER" in the sand with an old rotting log cuz we're TOOLS (Cole and Seb being two Original characters Jo and I have XD) while watching a young college couple trying to discretely dry-hump about 50 feet away. Driving around listening to a fabulous old mix tape of Jo's and singing along at the top of my lungs in butchered JApanese. Aaaaaaaaand going to the Ridges... at night... sans flashlights (keep in mind I AM A CHICKEN!!)
For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, Athens, Ohio, is one of the most haunted---if not THE most haunted, according to several *admittedly cheesy* books on the subject----towns in America. This is mainly due to the abandoned mental institution on the hills just across the river from the university. This place is referred to as The Ridges. It's a mental institution from the late 1800's-- early 1900's, back when all you needed to do to get rid of someone was claim they were insane, and they would get carted off to a mental institution. Not nice, not psychiatry-friendly, very... fucking creepy. It was closed down during the 70's, and some of the buildings have since been renovated and put to use by Ohio University (O_O) but it's still creepy as fuck.
A large number of the buildings have metal bars on the windows. They architecture was pretty, but nothing could disguise the fact that all the narrow-windowed buildings used to be holding cells. ...we actually got ourselves psyched up enough to peer in one, but we couldn't see shit. Some of the windows had been partly painted over from the inside, but in some of the pains the paint had been scratched away by fingernails, from the looks of it. *Creeps out*
So then we decide to tool ourselves on over to the graveyard. Man, I have never been in SUCH A FUCKING CREEPY PLACE. 90% of the gravestones don't have names, they just have numbers. A few have names, but only a very, very few. And there was this one area where all the graves were in this circle, faceing inward. We neglected to bring flashlights, so we were stumbling around this graveyard of dead crazy people (?) in almost pitch fucking black with NO ONE else around and I almost twisted my fucking ankle on a low gravestone I didn't see. God.
Creepy Ridges stories. The first one has been affirmed by
luckynavigio and miss jou herself (jou being the gal I'm staying with at the moment) and the second one might just be local legend... still creepy though. Since I don't live in Athens, I might have a few of the minor details wrong... Jo or Traci, please correct me if I get them wrong? Or Jennae?Before the Ridges was shut down, there was an inmate whose name was Matilda. She WAS actually crazy, and would often try to run away. She'd never get very far, and the people who ran the institution would always find her and bring her back before she got very far. It wasn't that they were afrad she'd hurt anyone, more that they were afraid she'd hurt herself.
But one day she ran away, and hard as they searched for her, they couldn't find a damn trace of her. Weeks went by, and they still couldn't find her. They eventually wrote her off as lost.
Fast forward about... fuck, I don't remember, a year. The staff re-opens a wing of the institution that had been sealed off for quite some time, planning on using it for more inmate living areas, and they are greeted by the most god-awful smell. Yeah, you guessed it. Matilda had hidden herself in the abandoned wing and had gotten locked into the boiler room. She'd been too far away for anyone to hear her screaming, and had died there. There's a stain on the floor of the room to this day.
Now the reason I say this is true (and really I don't give a shit if anyone bbelieves me, cuz it's STILL a great story) is that our dear Traci and her shit of a boyfriend Paul, back when those two were still at OU, managed to get into the boiler room and Traci tells me she has SEEN the stain on the floor. ...it's small, she says, and from the looks of it the woman laid herself down and folded her arms across her chest after awhile.... right before she died. *gets the heebs*
Aaaaaaaaand I really don't feel like typing up the other one. I know like three or four more, because practically every fucking buidling in athens has a ghost story associated with it, not just the Ridges, but mebbe I'll put it in the next one.
I wanted to watch Schreiber fall down the elevator shaft in Kate & Leopold, but I have to get up at the buttcrack of dawn tomorrow and it's too late to start the movie now. Ah, well. I'll just watch it tomorrow at me mum's house.