Haunted Walk of Shame

The air was crisp in the late night/early morning. Our hair in messy bird nest-like structures on the top of our heads and back of our necks mounted and stiff.

In a drunken panic we shuffle our loose sock slippers across the campus. We were oddly alone on the fall night. Usually, the campus was bustling with eager freshmen at this time looking for literally anything to do and upperclassmen gathered in small pods vaping or talking. There was nothing but these two ragamuffins; my best friend and I being our classic manifestation of procrastination.

One of our friends has the missing notes for our history final in the morning. The attempt to make it to her dorm in the freezing cold, half drunk 3.5 hours before the test was ingenious. She was only half way across campus. We get to the back steps of the dorm leading down toward the building. They are open without walls or railing with a decent incline. The stairs shared a common space where the woods meet the dumpsters behind our dining hall.

We start down the steps and are sure to avoid shallow puddles from the evening rain. We know our slipper socks won’t make it. We both cross our arms as we begin to sober up and feel the gripping cold. We are still creeping our way down the steps when we are accompanied by the sound of a distant shuffling of feet. We continue down the steps until the sound begins to quicken behind us approaching us at an alarming rate. We both pick our heads up and split our path to let our fellow student by. When we look behind us there is no one there and yet there is still the sound of rushing footsteps as though someone who cannot pick up their feet is chasing after us.

We both throw widened eyes at each other and scream running down the steps. The shuffle and drag turns into loud slaps as though someone is running barefoot between us. There is the aggression of a cold gush of wind. And as we reach and bang on the front door of the dorm, nothing.

The night RA buzzes us in and without a word to each other we scream to her “GHOST”. She laughs with low eyes. “You think that one out there is something? Wait until you meet all the ones in here.”

The next afternoon my best friend and I do research on the history of the town we are in and the founding of the university. The dorm we visited last night was a 19th century motel, shut down for the murders and suicide and our school bought it shortly after because of the cheap price. We also found out that part of our school was built on top of the graveyard that outlines it. This is why it is only seperated by a fence and so many other ghosts refuse to leave our campus. Let me know if you want more of my haunted college tails.