Student Bloggers

Whenever I think of England, I always picture huge castles and Queen Elizabeth. Of course, this isn’t really what England is like. When we drove from the train station to Lancaster University, we had to pass sheep and cows. There weren’t any huge castles or picturesque buildings, Queen Elizabeth didn’t wander the streets of London, and it’s windy or rainy, all the time. It’s a really nice place though; it’s calm and quiet. At night, I can actually see the stars, unlike in London where the smog is everywhere (or it was just really cloudy, who knows).

In town, there is exactly one castle: Lancaster Castle. It isn’t what you would think of as a normal castle with royal people wandering about and wonderful things happening. Nope, this castle is a working court.

We took a tour of the castle our first week here and found out that Lancaster’s history is a bit grimmer than any of us realized. We learned about the Pendle witches on the tour. Basically, they were accused of being witches and were hung at Lancaster castle. A bunch of other people were also hung at Lancaster Castle, which is what makes this town so grim; the good news is that it’s illegal now.

I’m pretty sure I accidentally brought one of the spirits home because the lights in my bathroom kept flickering when I turned them on. A few days later, I came back to my room to find that the lights wouldn’t turn on.

Well, something weird was definitely going on but that’s fine. I put in a request for my lights to get fixed. It’s all done through the app, which is pretty great. That night, as I was falling asleep, the light suddenly blinked on. It was about one or two in the morning at this point, so it was pretty dark. I was a little scared to turn it off, just in case it didn’t turn back on again.

My main light still didn’t turn on but that got fixed a few days later. The lights in my bathroom still flicker a lot when I turn them on but I think the ghost and I are on good terms now. Maybe it’s because Halloween is just around the corner.

When a lot of us were doing research before coming here, we thought that Halloween wasn’t as big of a deal here as it is in the States. Turns out, most clubs have some sort of Halloween theme for the week. Most of the Uni students don’t seem to celebrate Halloween to the same extent that we do as kids in the States but it will be fun to go out to town to celebrate!