There are a lot of ghosts roaming the woods behind campus. For safety reasons, I’m not going to say what uni I go to, only that it’s a small one in the Midwest.
There are a lot of ghosts, but today I am going to tell you about the most frightening one of all: The Frozen Lady, or as I like to call her sometimes, Ophelia.
We have these trails that cut through our woods, usually abandoned except for the occasional hiker, horticulture club outing, or me and a couple friends. They’re easy enough during the day and in good weather, but can be treacherous at night. In spring, they’re beautiful, I like to take my camera out for a spin.
One day last winter, I was doing just that on a different part of the trail than usual. This stretch of the trail was high up on a steep embankment overlooking the creek that runs through the woods, so I stopped to peer over the side. As I stood there, a safe distance away from the edge (didn’t want to fall in, after all), I felt a pair of hands suddenly shoved against the middle of my back, making me stumble forward. I was lucky enough not to fall headlong into the creek and crack my skull on the rocks at the bottom.
Having recovered my balance, I turned around, thinking one of my friends might have followed me into the woods and scared me as a joke.
No one was there.
All of a sudden, I got this intense mental image of a woman floating, trapped under the ice of the creek. She had grey, shriveled skin, fingers worn nearly to the bone, and long black hair that ripped around her head like a halo. I couldn’t really see what she was wearing, but it looked like the tattered remains of a white dress.
As I watched, her eyes snapped open. They were so clouded over that I couldn’t begin to tell what color they had been originally. Her mouth stretched open in a silent scream, revealing a full set of teeth. They would have been perfect teeth if they weren’t completely black.
I decided that now might be a perfect time to leave, as I didn’t want to stick around and find out what this lady was. So, I turned and speed-walked back up the trail and out of the woods.
Since then, while I still take walks in the woods, I don’t go near that part of the trail. The last time I went into the woods with some friends, a few weeks ago, we stayed in there till dark. Fortunately for me, one of my friends is a very devout Christian with true, strong faith, while another is a Hellenistic Pagan who works with Lady Hekate.
I was showing them around the main landmarks I’d been to over my expeditions into the woods, when all of a sudden I had the same mental image from before: the Frozen Lady opening her eyes, screaming, and then starting to break through the ice and crawl out of the creek. I turned to my pagan friend and said, “She’s up.” I’d told her about my experiences with the Frozen Lady before, so she immediately knew what I meant. As I ushered our other friends out of the woods, my pagan friend uttered a banishing incantation in the name of Lady Hekate, and I saw a mental image of the Frozen Lady sinking back beneath the water.
We must have really angered her this time, because not five minutes later she was out again, this time managing to crawl much further up the bank and onto the trail before my friend banished her again.
Once we made it out, my pagan friend told the friend we were visiting to get inside and grab the salt. However, she ended up getting slightly perturbed with my Christian friend, who didn’t go inside right away, as they wanted to look at the sky. Now, I’m not one to trample on people’s faith. I’m a born-again believer myself, so I respect not believing in the paranormal considering I grew up that way. But right then, I was worried for my friend, so I stayed out there with them until my pagan friend came back. We talked things out inside, explained the whole situation, and then decided to just chill and try to watch the Northern Lights. (They didn’t show, unfortunately.)
So, yeah. I’m home on summer break now, so I can’t go and visit the woods, but my pagan friend has definitely advised that I don’t go in there by myself so much. She also says at some point we’re going to have to do offerings to appease whatever issue the Frozen Lady is taking with me.
What’s most chilling is that she ONLY has a problem with me. My pagan friend has been in there with me multiple times, and she’s never had any issues. So Miss Ophelia clearly holds some kind of vendetta against me, but we don’t know why. All we really know, based on my friend’s insights, is that she was likely a witch, and that somehow led to her death.