Random fact #3
Since starkweather-moore asked...sorry it took me so long!
I spent most of my college years living in a haunted dormitory. I saw evidence of this personally.
So, three stories. Episodes, events. Whatever. The last one may not seem particularly creepy as set down, but believe me, it was.
One: The school in question has some old buildings, at least by U.S. standards, and my dorm was (IIRC) well over a hundred years old* by the time I moved in. Students told the expected stories about typical ghosts, but no one took those seriously.
What was taken seriously was the presence that dwelt in the second-floor RA’s room, and that would at times take the blanket off the bed while no one was in the room and put it on the floor. Repeatedly. It wasn’t malicious and the RA I knew was never upset by it (though he was a placid guy to begin with). I didn’t witness this, though.
Two: The girls’ bathroom on the third floor was L-shaped, with showers to the left of the door and sinks and toilet stalls straight ahead as one entered. The pattern was four sinks on the left, four stalls on the right; three sinks had mirrors, and the fourth had a window above it.
One night, one of the students (I don’t recall her name at this late date, but the dorm was small enough that we all knew each other) was brushing her teeth at the first sink, closest to the door. As one does, she was watching herself in the mirror; there was no one else in the bathroom.
The door opened and a girl came in, passing behind the student to go into the last stall, furthest from the door. The student watched her go by in the mirror and didn’t recognize her, but didn’t think much of that since the dorms weren’t secured and people visited in and out all the time.
But when she finished at the sink and turned around, the stalls were all empty and there was no one there at all.
There was no way out of the room without being seen. The student had hysterics and almost moved out of the dorm; she wasn’t a prankster and (in my less than charitable opinion) hadn’t the imagination to come up with that kind of story.
Three: The doors to the rooms were heavy and had doorknobs, but no latches; the only way to keep a door shut was to lock it, and the locks were the combination kind with buttons--something like this. So everyone got in the habit of locking their doors when they went in or out, just to keep them closed. It was reflex.
My best friend at the time and her roommate started hearing someone at their door, usually at night--not knocking, but punching the buttons as if inputting the code and then trying the knob on the lock, rattling the door slightly. But when they would check the peephole and then open the door, there would be no one there. Their room was near one end of the hall, and it would have been possible--barely--to mess with their door and then run out of sight--but not silently. The stairwell was the only refuge aside from the other rooms, and it echoed. And there was never any sound of someone going through the stairwell door.
This happened several times, and then whatever was doing this switched tactics, and kept trying to hold it closed when they opened it. It didn’t succeed, but it was unnerving.
The final part occurred in broad daylight. My friend’s room was a tiny, narrow space, just big enough for two beds, two desks, two dressers, and two tall and very heavy wardrobe shelves. The furniture was lined up on either side of the room, with the window (third-story, and not accessible without a ladder and a lot of time) at the end; beds, desks, dressers, and finally the wardrobes, one on either side of the door. My friend and her roomie had a cube fridge on one dresser and a small TV on the other.
One day my friend got back from snack shopping. She put her groceries away in her room; she had purchased two large glass bottles of tomato juice (bleah!), among other things. She opened one, took a drink from it, and put it in the cube fridge; the other she put unopened on top of one of the wardrobes--which meant reaching above her head.
Then she left, automatically locking the door behind her, and went to find me. She was away from the room for six or seven minutes at the most.
When we got back to her room, she unlocked the door and let me in. I walked straight to the TV, moved something from in front of it, and turned it on. When I looked back at my friend, she was staring at what I’d moved.
It was a full glass bottle of tomato juice; the cap had been removed and was sitting next to the bottle. The one in the fridge was still there; the one I’d moved had been on top of the wardrobe when my friend had left the room.
We later confirmed that her roomie had been in another building the entire time. The only other people who had the code to the room were the RA and the housing office, and the RA took her job far too seriously to prank anyone.
After that, the incidences all ceased, at least while I still lived there.
I wouldn’t label these entities, if you will, ghosts as such; I don’t think they were the spirits of dead people hanging around. But they’re something. I’m with Hamlet on this one.
*My standards for old expanded when I went to grad school in England; I had classes in a building older than my nation.