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Halloween is just over a week away, that one night where the forces of darkness are allowed to run rampant. In ancient Ireland, Samhain, the Gaelic festival from which Halloween sprung, was a celebration of the end of the harvest. The Gaels also believed that on October 31 the worlds of the living and dead overlapped, the dead would return, and evil spirits would wreak havoc. Costumes and masks were worn by participants to mimic or placate the evil ghouls. Bonfires were raised, burning the bones of slaughtered livestock. The Celts would open their burial mounds during Samhain, and their priests and priestesses would enter to receive prophecies for the coming year.

As promised, I have another offering of spooky stories, three this time. Like the Samhain festival of old, this collection has its share of malignant spectres and restless dead communicating from the grave. So, without further ado, three more spooky stories:

1. Berea College: A Phantom Runner, Undying Tragedies, and the Ghostly Tour Guide Tucked away in the Kentucky woods, this obscure liberal arts college houses quite a few phantoms. As with so many other colleges, many of these hauntings are said to originate from tragic happenings in the school’s past. Still, it also has its odd, inexplicably random haunting.

Take, for instance, the Phantom Runner of Pearsons Residence Hall. It turns out that back in the 1920s, one of the school’s football stars, Charles Seabury, Jr. died of a broken neck while playing ball. His grieving father donated money for a new gym on condition that the school would never again have a football team. The school honored his request. Apparently, however, young Seabury has not ceased his pursuit of sports. To this day, students report the sounds of someone running up and down the fourth floor hall early in the morning. Phantom breezes blow past students with no apparent origin, leaving the students feeling chilled and frightened.

Also like many other colleges, a couple of Berea’s ghosts come from rumored suicides. In James Residence Hall, a female student hung herself in the elevator shaft after being taken advantage of. Students tell of finding wet footprints leading toward the old shaft, which has since been converted into a janitor’s closet. The footprints go in, but none come out. Another female student was rejected by her boyfriend after he got her pregnant. Unable to endure her shame, she hung herself in the Fairchild Residence Hall attic. Students report seeing a mysterious candle in the attic window and hearing footsteps and a melancholy rocking chair creaking in the attic.

In a much lighter tale, one student was taken on a campus tour by a strange young man in a 60s-style suit. When it came time to show him the library, the tour guide showed the building that used to be the library. The student told him that the new library was elsewhere and the guide agreed. That was when four more 60s-style students appeared, holding each other up, one of them crying. The odd tour guide vanished, and the students reported feeling an acute sense of loss and seeing a demolished, muddied, 60s-era tow truck being taken to the city dump. The student was left perplexed and you probably are, too.

2. Mount Holyoke College: A Picture Paints One Word Paintings seem to naturally invoke reflection, study, curiosity, and awe. At this South Hadley, MA college, however, one painting invokes madness. Apparently, Deacon Porter, one of the school’s early supporters, had an illicit affair with one of the school’s founders Mary Lyons. When Porter’s wife, Hannah, discovered his treachery, she vowed to get revenge on him. She exacted revenge from beyond the grave, it seems. A portrait of her, with its intense, staring eyes, is said to have driven a female student to insanity. It is unclear why the painting would exact its revenge on an unrelated female student or if the painting exists at all. Actually, there is little evidence to support any of the story. But it sure is spooky…

3. Kenyon College: 17 Ghosts and A Gateway to Hell This well-known liberal arts college is apparently quite crowded. One hall is haunted by a spectral insomniac, a former student who committed suicide in his dorm room. Another hall is haunted by a female student who died before she could attend classes; she continues to rearrange furniture from the grave, scaring her living housemates and exhibiting a complete lack of talent in interior decorating. And at yet another hall, another suicide victim flushes toilets, flicks lights on and off, and knocks on doors randomly- some people never grow up.

In the pool building and dance studio, a former high-diver cracked his head on the building’s glass ceiling, broke his neck, fell into the pool, and drowned. To this day, lifeguards will hear someone thrashing in the water, screaming for help. When they run into the pool room, it is empty, the water calm. In the dance studio next door, people have heard the same splashing sounds. They’ve also reported showers turning on and off by themselves. Wet footprints appear in the dance studios, and eyewitnesses have seen a white face with wet, slicked back hair peering out of the building’s windows.

At the theater building, security guards tell of curtains opening by themselves, light bulbs being unscrewed by themselves, and the ghastly sound of a body falling hard on the stage. Years ago, they say, a student fell from the catwalk and that the sound of his demise is being replayed again and again. At the fieldhouse, another ghostly runner frequents the track; it also likes to play music in the supply cage and open doors. At one of the female residence halls, a jealous spook haunts the elevator shaft where he apparently met his doom during a dangerous prank. He also likes to appear in the girl’s rooms and block their doors with furniture. He tried to harm female students, trying to smother one with a pillow on one occasion. Another hall is haunted by the victim of a fraternity pledge gone wrong, in which a student was struck and killed by a train.

To top it all off, Old Kenyon, which was the site of the deaths of nine male students when a fire consumed the old building, continues to experience a plethora of supernatural activity. The nine fire victims glide up and down the halls. They are said to be visible only from the knees up because the new reconstructed building was built ten inches higher than the original one. Students on lower floors will see ghostly legs protruding from the ceiling. Lights turn on and off; toilets flush. Scenes of panic are reenacted from that terrible night, with screams of trapped students being heard, doors being shaken violently, and male voices calling, "Wake up! Fire!"

To complement this severely haunted school, students claim that a gateway to hell exists at its main gates. They may not be too far off.

In a way I can’t wait until Halloween is over, because writing these posts is getting me freaked out. On the other hand, I must admit there is a primal thrill in scaring myself and others. Send in your scary stories- especially if you are a student at any of these schools. I’d love an insider’s viewpoint. Leave your comments below…

Just over a year ago, college textbook publishers were bombarded with complaints about the exorbitant costs of purchasing college textbooks. A report issued by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that textbook prices were increasing at twice the rate of inflation. Student advocacy groups claimed the rate was much higher. Publishers were found to be releasing new editions at increasingly frequent rates, driving cheaper used older editions out of college bookstores. New editions, which were discovered to increase in price by 58 percent from one edition to another, were also found to contain only minimal changes. Major newspapers nationwide released stories in reaction, decrying the publishers’ monopolistic actions, accusing them of forcing lower-income students out of colleges by increasing the already burdensome cost of attendance. Parents got mad. Students got mad. Lawmakers and political figures expressed outrage in congressional hearings. And then…

And then, well, nothing happened. The GAO’s study left just enough justification for the textbook publishers to slip out the back door and continue their crooked ways. There was just enough explanation provided to make students and parents bow down and take it up the tailpipe. These explanations were never well founded nor were empirical, quantitative data ever presented to support these excuses; but the angry mob was eventually quelled and dispersed. The subject of expensive textbooks faded from the national spotlight.

Today, textbooks are still unbelievably expensive. If the books went to class for you, did your homework, passed your tests for you, and provided you with complimentary laundry service, it seems they couldn’t be priced much higher. Students are still rubbing their eyes in disbelief as they leave college bookstores. Parents and students are still wondering how they’re going to make up for unexpectedly high textbook costs. And the publishers are still laughing all the way to the bank.

Therefore, having just been taken to the cleaners on my school books for the umpteenth time, I’m going to revisit and reanalyze those explanations provided by the publishers. My goal: to show that these lame excuses are hardly sufficient to justify price increases and to show a pattern of consciously, strategically forcing prices up. Let’s get started…

1. "Frequent new editions are necessary to win school support." I have a difficult time believing this one. New editions are reportedly being released, according to the California Student Public Interest Research Group (SPIRG), every 3.8 years on average. However, according to reports and personal experience, schools are not supporting the frequent release of new editions. On the contrary, countless colleges across the country have created booksharing programs to alleviate the financial burden being forced on their students. They encourage students to use websites like Half.com to buy textbooks at half the retail price (most of which end up being international versions that have been sold overseas).

In my own experience, my professors have apologized at the start of every term about the exorbitant book prices. They make every effort to use packets of their own design, which are usually cheaper than textbooks, out of concern for their students’ budgets. In addition, they are the first to comment that, with the lag from research to publishing in a journal to inclusion in a textbook, new editions of textbooks are always at least 7 years behind developments in their fields. They cannot be up to date, and schools know this. I find it hard to swallow that publishers are impressing anybody with textbook content that is almost a decade old.

Finally, I’ve never had a professor tell the class, "I know we just got a new edition a year ago, but I just had to have this new edition because they’ve put this handy new graphic on page 239. That really made the difference for me, and I think it’s worth an extra $58." No, their apology has always sounded something like this: "We wanted to get last year’s edition for you and save you some money, but the bookstore was unable to get additional copies of that edition from the publisher. So you’ve got to buy the new one. Sorry."

If it sounds like schools are accepting these new editions reluctantly because they don’t really have a choice, it’s because they are. By limiting access to older editions, professors are cornered into accepting new editions whether they like them or not. Publishers aren’t winning school support; they’re squeezing it out of their customers.

2. "Textbooks must be constantly modernized to keep students’ attention." The publishers’ rationale here is that this new generation of students has been raised on the flashy graphics and visuality of the internet, and, therefore, textbooks must mirror this design standard to be effective with them. According to publishers, this means putting out a new edition every 3 years. So, if you accept this excuse, students’ visual tastes must be changing every 3 years to justify every new edition. Does anyone else here smell a truckload of bull-oney pulling into the college parking lot?

Now, I’ll be the first to concede that textbooks need to have some measure of visual accessibility. I’ve read some of the driest textbooks around. One book, the size and weight of a large cinder block, was meant to chronicle every detail of gathering, measuring, and analyzing survey data. I think it also included a chapter on the joys of watching paint dry. Worst of all, the book did not contain a single diagram, photograph, or even a single dot of color. Just paragraph after boring paragraph in the smallest font possible. Note: if you are considering using sleeping pills to cure insomnia, try this book first.

But I refuse to believe that publishers need to release a new edition every 3 years to make textbooks visually tolerable. I mean, what can they add every few years that makes it that much better? A new stripe here? A fancy icon there? A snazzy paragraph that manages to fit Britney Spears into the Law of Diminishing Returns? Seriously, is anyone really saying, "Darn, it’s a good thing they put that new smiley face graphic at the corner of each page. I don’t think this new batch of students would’ve gotten this stuff otherwise"?

Let’s get real here. Textbooks will never be used as leisure reading for college students. Reading assignments will rarely be viewed by students as an aesthetically pleasing experience: "Just having those multicolored stripes at the top of each page really made me want to go on to chapter 3 and then 4 and then… well, I just couldn’t help myself." No, for the vast majority of students, reading assignments will always be viewed as a grueling exercise in comprehending mass amounts of information with the hope of being able to retrieve them in lecture. Honestly, we could make due with one less graphic if it would save us an extra $50.

I’ll give publishers this much: every new edition does indeed catch students’ attention- but not because of the striking graphics. The overblown price and empty feeling in our wallets are what catch our attention. The fact that our leisure money for the next month is blown because of your new edition catches our attention. Instead of feeling prompted to read that whiz-bang marvel of modern textbook publishing, however, we feel prompted to use the thing as a projectile to put out our professor’s office window. And we would- if they hadn’t cost us so much.

3. "New editions include newer teaching techniques and more modern information or interpretations." Call me skeptical, but how much do teaching techniques or information on a given college subject change in 3 years? And aren’t professors better equipped to bring things up to date for their students or to determine teaching techniques, for that matter, than publishers, who I’ve already pointed out are seven years behind current events?

Publishers have insisted, for example, that new editions help to ensure that textbooks are current and politically correct, including viewpoints from underrepresented groups that were previously left out. That’s important, of course. But do revisions need to be made to history books every three years? Do they need to be made to economics books, a field in which major advances happen every decade at the most? Do they need to be made in algebra, where the subject matter has not changed since ancient Persia? Authors are not even mentioned in literature anthologies until their works are, like, 30 years old. So what’s another 3 years? Again, publishers are inventing a false utility for their product to justify raising their prices. It is simply not true that new teaching techniques and information demand new editions every 3 years. Period.

There is a human being at the front of every classroom for a reason: to overlay current events on course subject matter, to help students make interpretations, and to use their unique teaching techniques to run their classes. You would be hard-pressed to find a college instructor who leaves the teaching up to their textbook.

4. "Bundling of textbooks with CD-ROMs, study guides, website access, and test questions helps professors teach better." At the most basic level, a book is just a book- a structure of paper, glue, string, cardboard, and ink. If all you’ve got is a few photographs and diagrams and a lot of text, how much can it cost? Only so much. Now let’s say you throw in a ridiculous collection of multimedia tools and other booklets to complement a textbook which is already probably too large to get through in a single term, as if your tri-annual revisions to the actual textbook weren’t enough to school any student who should fall under its influence. CD-ROMs come with significant development costs. Study guides easily jack up the price farther. To get a website functional to complement the book also incurs web design and development expenses, as well as ongoing costs for maintenance of the site. What happens? The price you can charge for each book suddenly makes an Olympic leap because, I mean, look at all these toys at your disposal.

But the fact of the matter is, professors don’t need, and, in many cases, don’t use, all of these toys. Unfortunately for students, the whole package, the learning extravaganza gold package created by the publisher, is the only package they advertise. Cheaper, stripped down versions with just the text that you can slide into a three-ring binder are available in many cases. But, of course, with a fraction of the commission they could make off the deluxe version, these discount versions are conveniently neglected by sales reps. Professors don’t even know about them for this reason.

Don’t be fooled by the bells and whistles. They only exist as an excuse to jack up prices and to give the impression of changes made to a new edition. Any student who has had to pay for one of these deluxe editions has probably noticed that their professor didn’t have the time to really use the added features. Like a computer loaded with way too many features and programs, students’ money is wasted on these so-called tools. The fact is, time is a very finite resource for both professors and students. They just don’t have the time to read from the textbook, run through a simulation on the CD-ROM, check into the website on a regular basis, do practice problems from the textbook, and then do more practice problems in the study guide.

And we haven’t even addressed the question of whether these study aids really help students learn better. My experience- take it for what it is- is that practice brings learning, whether it is on a good, old-fashioned sheet of paper or in a slick CD-ROM presentation. Throwing in the inconvenience of installing and navigating a CD-ROM only makes the student less likely to use the CD-ROM. Personally, I’d rather just open my book, pull out my calculator, and get to work.

But don’t count on publishers to realize this anytime soon. Sadly, with every consecutive edition, California SPIRG found that inclusion of these non-required materials rose by 21 percent. They will keep packing them in and pushing prices up until we wise up and push back.

Does this make you angry? It makes me angry. The college textbook rip-off continues. And the worst thing we can do is forget and let the publishers keep doing it. Students, parents, lawmakers, and publishers need to be reminded that this is unfair. So, if you’re angry about this, leave your comments below and send this article to your friends.

A great song offers this advice: "If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with." While I doubt the wisdom of this advice in terms of romantic relationships, it is certainly good medicine for unplanned career turns. Unforeseen obstacles sometimes make it impossible or implausible for us to work in our "dream jobs," so to speak. Do we then just consign ourselves to a life of misery and mediocrity? We don’t have to. When life gives you lemons, the old saying goes, make lemonade.

Take me, for instance. After graduating in English, I planned to become a lawyer. I moved my small family to Washington, DC, the Mecca of the legal profession, and applied for several legal secretary positions. I landed a temp legal secretary position but, after finishing my assignment, was transferred to an accounting position with the same company. For awhile, I struggled in a job that was almost just data entry.

However, I gradually gained more responsibility, experience, and expertise. After six months, I was running a team of seven accountants, training, troubleshooting, running communications with various departments during a time of tremendous change, and mingling regularly with management. Surprisingly, I found myself enjoying the challenges my job offered. I never imagined that I would find so much satisfaction in an accounting job.

I stayed in that position for two years at one of the world’s most profitable companies. After two years, I applied to both law schools and MBA programs. I didn’t get into law school, but I did get into a great MBA program. I’m now in the process of transitioning into a Marketing career.

Obviously, careers have a way of throwing you curve balls. Could I have known that my career would take the course it did? Not really. I planned and worked hard at each turn. And those plans changed often. I have learned, however, that you can excel and be happy in your career, despite unexpected changes. Following are five tips, some that I’ve learned through experience, others that I’ve picked up from mentors, that will help you excel no matter what career you’re in:

1. Be a happy camper – Work is just what it sounds like- work. It requires effort, exertion, and usually some level of unpleasantness. Unfortunately, most of the workforce wears that unpleasantness on their sleeves. They walk in the front door with a frown on their faces, perform their duties with a cynical, grumpy attitude, and then they leave at the end of the day with that same frown on their faces.

This means that, by taking on your responsibilities with enthusiasm and a big smile, you can differentiate yourself from your co-workers. Also, having a good attitude is self-perpetuating. The more you stay positive, the better your work experience. The better your experience, the happier you are and the more positive you become.

I got this piece of advice from a man who started his career as a poor kid selling auto parts to car dealerships. Day after day, he encountered rejection. But he never got discouraged. He showed up every morning with a smile on his face and went at it again. While the other salesmen would gripe and complain, he refused to.

Several years and a few entrepreneurial ventures later, this man returned to the car dealerships that had rejected him and bought them out. Today, this man owns a NBA basketball franchise, a chain of car dealerships, a movie theater chain, a pro race track, and a production company. He exudes positivity and limitless possibilities.

There’s no denying that attitude determines altitude. A great attitude makes you more attractive to your employers when it comes time for promotions, bonuses, and raises. They love your enthusiasm because of the effect it has on your co-workers, the effect that it has on meeting and exceeding company goals. People with positive attitudes drive business up. Rotten attitudes drag it down. More importantly, attitude determines satisfaction with life. You think, therefore, you are.

So, from a practical standpoint, smile at work. Speak positively of your work, of your company. Accept even difficult assignments with a can-do attitude. Encourage your colleagues. Volunteer to reach out of your normal responsibilities. Do favors for your co-workers. In short, be happy. It will take you a long way.

2. Be humble – No one comes into a job knowing all the answers. To think that an outsider would come into a new job in a new company and be able to pick things up effortlessly is ridiculous. If you need help, advice, training, etc., as you start a new job, join the club. Everyone around you has to go through the same thing. So don’t bother pretending that you are flawless and all-knowing. You know it’s not true, and no one would believe you anyway. Don’t be afraid to acknowledge that you don’t have the answers. That’s the first step to learning.

The word humble is defined as "not proud or arrogant; modest." So the first step in being humble is to avoid pride and arrogance. Replace talking over others with listening. Instead of looking down on others because of the color of their sweater or the way they shape their handle bar mustache, look at them as a source of knowledge, as a valuable resource. If you don’t know the answer to a problem, drop your pride and ask them for help. Learn to say the words "I don’t know." Your boss will value your honesty and willingness to learn. He will be angry and maybe fire you if you say you know or can do something that you really don’t or can’t.

I once trained a co-worker we’ll call Bianca. Bianca had over ten years of experience with the accounting systems we used, much more experience than me or the rest of the team. But the system was not exactly the same as the one she had used. In fact, critical changes had recently been made to the system. As I was training Bianca, she would make know-it-all comments about the things she did know but would neglect to take careful notes on the new things. She didn’t even complete the training, insisting that she knew it all and just wanted to get to work. So we let her get started on some real tasks.

Much to our surprise, complaints began coming from the field about misplaced orders. Bianca had overlooked some key steps. When confronted about her mistakes, she continued to refuse to take adequate notes. She wouldn’t apologize or acknowledge her mistakes. She wouldn’t take any training from anyone other than me. Needless to say, her lack of humility began to affect the entire department, fraying relationships and putting unnecessary strain on her teammates. Eventually, we had no other choice but to terminate her employment. It was more productive to have no one in her desk than to have her there.

So be humble in approaching your responsibilities. You’ll learn more. You’ll be happier. And you will grow faster in your job than if you’d pretended that you already knew it all.

3. Be curious – In every job, you reach a point where you feel comfortable with your responsibilities. You can handle any routine request or problem. You know where to go and who to talk to get things done. Now you can just sit back, relax, and coast, right? Wrong. If you want a satisfying career instead of just a job, this is where you stretch yourself and learn more.

Curious. The word brings to mind a certain insatiably inquisitive monkey, poking around in things, always asking "What is that? What does it do? How does it do that? Why does it do that? How can I do that?" Whereas this line of thought tended to get George into trouble, however, this same habit will take you to the top of your game. Learn to ask questions, not because you have to, but just because you want to know, because it will make you that much better, that much more likely to succeed.

For instance, your boss asks you to file a bunch of documents. At first, you may feel tempted to get the task done as quickly as possible. Instead of just flying through the task, however, glance at the documents. Ask yourself, "What are these? What do they mean? How are they important to the business?" Feel free to ask your co-workers. The more you learn about the workings of your company, the more apt you will be to advance and grow.

4. Dig in – Hard work for work’s sake is a dying virtue. Tasks that used to take significant labor are now accomplished with the push of a button or the turn of a dial. To a great extent, we’ve grown accustomed to only light work. Nevertheless, in any good company, the ability to work hard on a task is still rewarded.

Interestingly enough, it is when we really dig into our work and get our hands dirty that we experience the most satisfaction and growth. The greatest amount of learning occurs when we exert ourselves. It would be great if you were sweating away at your "dream job," making crepes in a Swiss village or, uh, whatever. But you don’t have to be doing what you love to experience a high level of job satisfaction. You just need to be engaged in what you are doing. A great poem comes to mind, but the exact wording slips my mind right now. Something like, "Stick to your task till it sticks to you. Work at it, sweat at it, smile at it, too." Aw, nevermind. You get the point.

5. Show up – This seems to be the easiest to accomplish. Ridiculous numbers of US workers take unwarranted sick days every year. Even when they come to the workplace, their minds are wandering somewhere outside, chasing down an elk, cruising down the highway on a chopper, or putting down pina coladas in Puerto Vallarta- anywhere but on the task at hand.

For this reason, my last tip is show up to work, mentally, physically, and emotionally. In doing so, you will surpass most of your out-to-lunch co-workers. Just being there will give you a competitive edge when it comes time for promotions. Also, much like our previous tips, showing up has an inexplicable positive effect on job satisfaction. The more you invest, you happier you are. Conversely, if you allow your mind to go on vacation, you inevitably will find yourself dissatisfied with your job.

As with life in general, careers have a way of surprising us. Fortunately, no matter what twists yours takes, you can always make it a positive turn. I hope these tips help. Do you have any tips to add to the list? Feel free to post your comments below…

About the author

Marcus Varner earned his BA in English from Brigham Young University with a Creative Writing emphasis. He is currently in his second year at BYU’s lauded MBA program studying Marketing. He blogs, writes fiction and screenplays, loves movies, and can’t resist playing superheroes with his kids.