My (True!) Ghost Story

Hi there!

I’ve been feeling under the weather and, therefore, watching way too many ghost documentaries (as one does). It has made me nostalgic for the days when I used to see ghosts.

Wait…what do you mean, “used” to see ghosts? Isn’t seeing ghosts kinda your…thing?

It was when I was growing up—especially since I grew up in a haunted house. Ghosts and ghost sightings were a regular part of my life. Sadly, not anymore. While I have had a few encounters in my adult life, for the most part, I stopped seeing ghosts after a rather harrowing encounter that occurred while I was in college. If you would like to know what happened….read on! It’s a bit of a long read, but perfect for these unbearably-hot-and-also-stormy nights we’ve been having on the East Coast.

BUT FIRST, AN ANNOUNCEMENT: Mark your calendars! I will be appearing on an episode of HORROR REALM on Tuesday, August 20th from 1-2pm (Eastern Time). I will be engaging in a lively conversation about all things writing and horror. You can find it on YouTube and it will be a delightfully scary time!

And now, on with my true ghost story, which I am calling….

My Final Ghost

I attended Sarah Lawrence College—a quaint, liberal arts school just outside of New York City. It is known for its individualized, progressive education model (its slogan when I was applying: You are different. So are we!), its writing program, its notable alumni (Barbara Walters, Vera Wang, J.J. Abrams…), its lack of straight men, and, well, that tragic sex cult debacle.

It is also known for its ghosts.

And while the Sarah Lawrence ghosts had been a bit of a fixture during my college years—especially the super angsty one that inhabits Westlands (the building pictured above)—by the time senior year rolled around, I was getting a little tired of them. In fact, I was getting a little tired of Sarah Lawrence.

I spent my junior year studying abroad in Ireland. There was only one other student from SLC in my program, and while she would become one of my very best, lifelong friends, I enjoyed spending a year away from the College’s weird social dynamics. A week before senior year started, I went back to campus early to attend a Student Leadership Conference. I groaned audibly as I set foot on campus for the first time in over a year. There were only a few of us allowed on campus for the conference, and I tried to soak in the quiet before the inevitable shitshow of the school year began. Well, let’s just get this over with, I thought to myself.

Not so fast. During dinner that first night, as I attempted to mope in the corner, a lovely, energetic flourish of humanity—who I will call Jax—came and sat down next to me. His hair was thick and shaggy, his head bobbed animatedly, and his smile was almost too big for his face. He was like an amazing, human Muppet.

“Oh, c’mon. It can’t be all THAT bad,” he said to me. I smiled weakly in response, and he was undeterred. By the end of the night, we had exchanged life stories, gone for an ice cream run in his lime green Volkswagen Beetle, and were fast friends. “You are going to have an amazing senior year. I promise.” And he was right. He was my hero that night. My Gayest Ex Machina.

The next morning at breakfast with the other Institute participants, there was a lull in the conversation as we all tried to chew our stale bagels. Jax blurted out, “I think Warren House is haunted.”

Warren House is an adorable, standalone house that was donated to the College many years ago and had been converted to student housing. It was designated for first year students only. Jax—the lone sophomore—would be the Resident Advisor for the year. He was also the lone occupant of the house until the first year students arrived the following week.

“Go on…” He had my attention. I leaned forward, cupping my chin in my palm.

“I keep hearing footsteps. At first, I didn’t think anything of it—I’ve lived in old houses before and I know they make strange noises all the time.”

“Trust me. I know.”

“But this afternoon when I came home during lunch, all of the doors in the house were flung open, except mine. They had all been locked that morning. I figured housekeeping had come to clean them one more time. However, a few minutes later, a security guard knocked on my door and yelled at me for opening the doors. I told him that I didn’t do it, that I didn’t have keys to any of the doors. He gave me a look like he didn’t believe me and checked my keys. I watched him as he locked all of the doors and double-checked them.”

I shrugged. “Well, maybe you were right and housekeeping cleaned them and didn’t tell security. I wouldn’t worry too much.”

Clearly my words did not provide the comfort he was hoping for. “If you think there’s nothing to worry about, then I think we need to have a sleepover tonight.”

I pretended to hesitate, but inside I was squealing. A sleepover! With my new gay friend! In a potentially haunted house! “Fine. But only if there are beauty masks, doughnuts, and Audrey Hepburn movies involved.”

As soon as I crossed the threshold of Warren House, I felt dizzy. It was the same kind of feeling that the Westlands ghost always gave me when I was there alone. I closed my eyes for a moment and regained my balance. Jax hadn’t noticed, as he was busying digging two sets of keys—one for the house and one for his car—out of his pocket and depositing them on the table in the house’s common area.

I followed Jax to his room, and as I did I heard whispering in my ear. I stopped. This time, Jax noticed and turned around. “What?”

“N…nothing.” I wasn’t sure if it was my mind playing tricks on me, is it is wont to do, or if I was having an actual encounter with a ghost. I needed more time and more information. Jax looked at me suspiciously for a moment before leading me the rest of the way to his room.

Jax had an extensive collection of old movies, and he left me to rifle through and choose one as he went to retrieve his water from the fridge. As I did, I could feel a presence enter the room and sit down next to me on the bed. The dizzy feeling returned. I closed my eyes and swallowed hard. In my mind’s eye I could see an older gentleman who was in a great deal of emotional pain. His mouth was poised directly next to my ear. He needed to talk to me. Urgently.

I was used to ghosts talking to me. I’d like to think that I had even helped a few ghosts on occasion. And usually, I was more than happy to lend a listening ear. But right there, on Jax’s bed while I was getting ready for our epic sleepover—and excited to be making a new friend—was not the time. “Not now,” I said aloud. “I will talk to you later, but now is not the right time. I’m sorry. “

He didn’t like that at all.

A few minutes later, Jax bounced into the room and suggested that we go pick up our doughnuts. We walked to table where he had deposited his keys, but only the car keys were there. “What the hell? I put them both here…”

I am not going to talk to you right now, even if you are trying to keep me here, I said inside my head. Jax and I began searching through the common area and tore apart his room, but the keys were just gone. Jax was getting more and more flustered, and so I decided that that was as good of a time as any to tell him.

“Yeah, there’s definitely a ghost here,” I said as nonchalantly as possible.

“Fuck me. I knew it!” He shook his head. “How do you know?”

“I…have had a lot of experiences with ghosts. Trust me. I know.”

We decided to just leave the house unlocked and hope for the best. When we returned from our doughnut mission, the energy in the house felt hostile. I didn’t like it, and it didn’t make me want to hear what the ghost had to say. Jax and I changed into our pajamas, applied our beauty masks, and loaded up our plates with doughnuts. Jax, like a true gentleman, was fluffing my pillow when his hand hit something.

“My keys!” he said, his face stretching into an almost cartoonish display of surprise. “Ok, I definitely did not put them here.”

“I know,” I said, my words hindered by the hardening mask on my face.

Jax sighed and closed his eyes. “Let’s just watch the movie. But I’m glad you’re here.”

Leave me alone, I said in my most stern inner voice. For the rest of the night, the ghost seemed to listen. But still, the two of us clutched onto each other as we slept—partly due to the space constraints of Jax’s twin bed, but also, partly out of fear. Ghosts didn’t usually scare me. But this one did.

I thought the noise was a dream at first. A rhythmic, thudding sound, like a ship hitting the side of a pier with each steady wave. But then I woke up. And I could hear it in all of its terrible clarity. Footsteps, circling repeatedly in the room directly above us. Stomping, angry footsteps.

Jax’s arms squeezed me so hard a little hiccup sound escaped my mouth. “What…what is that? Is that the ghost?”

My voice was dry and high-pitched. “Maybe it’s security?”

“Walking around in a circle? Does that seem normal to you? Besides…we didn’t hear anyone come in the house. Usually they knock and announce themselves.”

I couldn’t deny that he was right about that. I also couldn’t deny that the ghost was pissed. We lay there together, listening, hoping that the footsteps would stop, or we would get some indication that it was, in fact, just security upstairs. But the footsteps kept circling and stomping, relentlessly.

Finally, my bladder couldn’t take it anymore. Unfortunately, the closest bathroom was on the other side of the house. I leapt out of bed, bolted through the common area and ran into the bathroom that was just off the kitchen. As I did, the footsteps followed me. The stomping continued above my head as used the bathroom, and it followed me back into Jax’s room.

“Let’s get the fuck out of here!” Jax said, and we both threw on our clothes without bothering to shower. As we were dressing, the toilets in the upstairs bathrooms began flushing simultaneously. As we gathered our things and prepared to run out the door, we could hear the sound of the doors upstairs—the ones that had been locked—flinging open and slamming shut all at once. A whimper built in the back of my throat, and by the time we finally fled the house and its stomping and slamming and flushing sounds, it had grown into a scream.

Later that day I confessed to Jax that the ghost had tried to talk to me and I had told it to leave me alone. I also promised him that I would come back and listen to what the ghost had to say. But then, I got busy with Institute tasks, and phone calls with my boyfriend in London, and I tried to put the ghost out of my mind (and maybe I avoided Jax a little bit). Finally, it was move-in day for the first year students, and Jax was busy with his Residential Advisor duties. The following day, he practically sprinted across Westlands Lawn to where I was sitting and drinking my coffee.

“Can you PLEASE do something about this ghost?” His eyes were like dinner plates. He told me that he had been shaken awake the night before, but chalked it up to a bad dream. When he went to the kitchen for a glass of water, he noticed that every knob on the electric stove was turned to the highest setting. No one in the house had used the stove.

And so, later that day, when the first years were at orientation and the house was empty, I went and talked to the ghost. I closed my eyes and let him tell me his story about the person that kept him there, the person he was waiting for. The person he hadn’t realized was already waiting for him somewhere else. I told him he needed to go. He needed and deserved to find peace.

When it was all over, I felt drained and nauseous as I walked to my dorm room. I flopped on my bed and closed my eyes. It was then that I decided that I didn’t want this ability anymore. After a lifetime of ghosts, I didn’t want to see or hear them anymore. It was too much. I needed to focus on my life and the present and getting ready to be a Real Adult after college. I went into a deep meditation and asked the Universe to take this gift from me. And, for better or worse, the Universe obliged.

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Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this story, tell all of your friends! I have some fun things in store for this space.

Yours in Terror,

Brooke MacKenzie