Mason Spirits
Students collect tales from the pond and beyond
If you want to hear a good ghost story, contact folklorist Margaret Yocom, associate professor of English. For years, she’s been Mason’s “ghost keeper,” who with her students have collected hundreds of supernatural tales for the Northern Virginia Folklife Archive.
With tales of Ouija boards and unexplained apparitions to haunted buildings and houses, the archive is a rich resource of more than 1,400 stories collected over 27 years, which celebrate the culture, traditions, and folklore of Northern Virginia. But it’s not all about the supernatural—Yocom collects folklore about local people, workers in regional industries and families, as well as ethnic and regional recipes, traditional art and folk medicine. Around Halloween, however, the ghost stories get the most attention.
“People have a lot of interest in the supernatural,” says Yocom. “Ghost stories are journeys into a world we haven’t even imagined. Many people believe that world is out there but its pathways are only glimpsed at from time to time. When you hear a ghost story from someone, it can be a touchstone that says, ‘Oh, it could be. It’s possible.’”
The archive has been a popular research resource for Mason students—whether for a folklore course, a creative writing project, or a stage performance. Members of the Northern Virginia community, as well as folklorists throughout the United States, have also used the archive.
Every other academic year, Yocom teaches a folklore course, Narratives of the Spirit World: The Lore of Ghosts and Fairies, “always in the fall and always at night,” she says. From this course and others, such spooky stories as the following have been researched and documented by students and can be retrieved from the archive by making an appointment with Yocom.
Mason’s Crew Team Ghost, “Old Man Johnson”
Collected by Laura Craig, BA English ’04, in 2003
This ghostly tale is well known to Mason’s women’s crew team. According to legend, Old Man Johnson rowed in the area years ago, some say in the 1970s. One night he found his wife sleeping with another man in his bed. He was so upset that he went out to row and never came back. Some say he rowed over a dam on the Occoquan River; others say he jumped off. Team members have reported seeing his ghost early in the morning near the docks or the dam. Whenever something strange happens that no one admits to doing, the team says it was the work of Old Man Johnson.
The Bunny Man Bridge
Collected by Hayden Zell in 2003
The Bunny Man Bridge in Clifton, Va., is perhaps the most famous haunted site in Northern Virginia. Featured on television and the Internet, it was named one of the Scariest Places on Earth by the Fox Family Channel in 2001. Zell relays several different versions. One version holds that in 1904, a bus transporting inmates from an insane asylum to Lorton Prison crashed near the bridge, allowing the inmates to escape. All were caught by authorities except for one. While searching for him, the police found many rabbit carcasses and assumed that the man was surviving on the meat.
His spirit is said to haunt the bridge and can be seen at midnight on Halloween for anyone brave enough to wait. (For more on the Bunny Man tale, see the profile on Mason alumnus and Fairfax County Library historian–archivist Brian Conley, BA Psychology and History ’88, who has delved into the origins of the Bunny Man legend on page 15.)
The Restaurant Ghost
Collected by Susan Wiedemann, BA History ’00, in 1999
The wait staff at Carlos O’Kelley’s restaurant on Main Street in Fairfax often tell of unusual happenings after hours. According to Wiedemann, a dishwasher named Billy who worked at the restaurant some 8 to 15 years ago hanged himself in an upstairs dining room of the restaurant one night after his girlfriend broke up with him. The manager closed the restaurant for two days and told everyone the dishwasher had gotten into a car accident. Since then, early in the morning or late at night, glasses break and fall without anyone near them, and sometimes people hear a voice when they are in the upstairs room, although no one is there. Many of the kitchen staff won’t come into the restaurant unless someone else is there.
The Haunted Mill
Collected by Joy Fairman, BA English ’98, in 1998
In Manassas, Va., people have reported strange happenings at an old abandoned mill. According to the story, many years ago, the mill owner killed a woman and her young daughter who lived nearby. The daughter was found drowned in a stream behind the mill, and the woman was found tied to a tree with her throat slit. In the archive case file, Fairman talked with a young woman who went to the mill site with a group of friends. The young woman was spooked by many things she couldn’t explain, including a tree that changed colors depending on where she was standing and her car engine revving without anyone touching the gas pedal. The complete story of the haunted mill can be found at www.gmu.edu/folklore/nvfa/new/fairman.htm.
The Gazebo Ghost
In addition to these researched and archived stories, many Northern Virginia ghost stories can be found online. This tale is posted at the Shadowlands Haunted Places Index (theshadowlands.net/places/virginia.htm) and tells of a ghost story right on the Fairfax Campus. “A small gazebo bordering the [George Mason University] campus [pond] is said to be frequented by the spirit of a young man. He apparently drowned in the lake one evening. His body was found sitting in the gazebo by two females the next morning. Since that time, the man’s figure has been seen standing at the edge of the [pond] or sitting in the gazebo. He has been known to beckon young women to come sit with him and quickly disappears when accommodated.”
According to University Police Sgt. Judy Meade and Lt. Willie Morton, who have worked at Mason for 14 and 18 years, respectively, no one has ever drowned in Mason Pond. “We have had a car end up in the pond as the result of an accident,” says Meade. “But no one drowned. There may be some interesting fish and animals in and around the pond, but no ghosts that I’ve ever heard of.”
Want more spooky tales? Grab some hot apple cider and make an appointment to read some of the hundreds of supernatural stories this Halloween season. For more information about the Folklife Archive, visit www.gmu.edu/folklore/nvfa or e-mail Margaret Yocom at [email protected].
Bunny Man Bridge