I’m somewhere between a skeptic and a believer. I’m happy to accept that there may be something to the paranormal. Magic is just science we don’t understand, etc. I also know plenty of people who are dead serious about their experiences, and I’ve also had some. Most I can find a way to explain. Especially when I knew there might be a haunting ahead of time. But there are two instances where I did not have knowledge beforehand, yet the experiences matched up very closely.

The university I went to has a number of hauntings and paranormal stories. I did not learn about these or any details until after I graduated and I was setting up a Monster of the Week RPG for my friends who also went to the university and I was making for source material.

I quickly realized that the man who I often saw hanging out on the balcony of the “old main” building when walking around campus late at night/early morning was, in fact, a known haunting. Same description. Everything. I remember thinking it was weird at the time, especially since the building was being renovated, but it also wasn’t entirely closed off to the public. A classic situation of a ghost you notice, but when you look back they are gone.

There was also a more paranormal haunting in another building. Apparently a student was dumped in a ditch in the early 30s and not found, but then when they built the building in the 60s they found bones and figured it had to be that particular cold case based on some other material found. We would often use that building after football games to watch the halftime show (marching band) and do some post-game wrap up. University football game, so we’d be in that space around 11pm to midnight or later depending on the game length. There was one time a bunch of us were taking our time packing up and chatting and we were down a hallway a bit further away from the majority of people. Everyone else had pretty much left and, even the faculty had locked up thinking no one else was left. Just the always-on emergency/safety lighting. Then it just felt… awful. Unwelcome, not a good place to be, the mental image of “get out”. And we all wordlessly just got up and started heading out. The way you might all as a friend group collectively decide “well, time to bounce”, but without any of the semi-ritualisric awkward conversarion cues or learned signals. Once we were away and took a moment to think about what happened, we all felt very uncomfortable and it felt almost like we were compelled to leave. Learned later that it was similar to other reports of the building.