Paranormal Story Archives
July 2002 – Page 17

U of O Ghosts
by Max F.

On the University of Oregon campus in Eugene Oregon, just across the street and down a ways from MacArthur Court, which is the basketball court also known as "The Pit," there is a historical graveyard. I say 'historical' because I do not believe it has been used for interment for many decades. It is quite a lovely little place, with evergreen trees and quaint little pathways.

I have twice seen things there at night which I can not explain in any other way than to say that they were supernatural apparitions; these incidents occurred back in the early '70s while I was a college student.

One night, I was walking with a friend of mine from his dormitory to that of another of our friends a short way across the campus. It was about 11:00 p.m. Our route took us through the graveyard. We were walking across the graveyard on a path when my friend suddenly stopped in his tracks, staring up and to our left with his mouth hanging open and his eyes like saucers. I turned to look where he was staring, and what I saw was what appeared to be a lady in a long, flowing white wedding dress. This might be explained away as a prank if it were not for the fact that the lady would have had to be about 15 feet tall to occupy the position she was in. The area under her feet was wrapped in swirling fog, even though there was no fog that night, being a calm dry spring evening. I stared for a moment and then looked at my friend, who stared back at me in amazement and said, "Do you see that?" When we both looked back, the apparition and the fog were nowhere to be seen.

Another incident occurred a few weeks later near the same area, in a soccer field adjacent to the cemetery. I was cutting across the soccer field, again at night, having walked around the graveyard to avoid it, when I suddenly heard bagpipes playing. I turned in the direction of the sound just in time to see a very tall man slowly march out from under the eaves of the trees in the graveyard, onto the soccer field, dressed in full Black Watch regalia. I froze as he approached me obliquely, trying to figure out just what I was seeing. He continued his half-step march and passed me by within about six feet without looking at me or acknowledging my presence in any way; he just played what sounded like a funeral march on his pipes and kept walking. Just after he passed me by, some other students appeared over by the library, laughing and talking. I glanced over in their direction and when I looked back where the piper should have been, he was gone. This was in the middle of the soccer field, and there is no way a human being could've moved fast enough to get out of my sight in the few seconds in which I was distracted.

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