Of Ghosts and Dorm Rooms (Pt. 1)

Again, it is request week in Jersey. The first request goes out to satori@fishbowl, who would like me to recount of the ghost in my dorm room.

If you have a topic you would like to hear about, please request it in a note, or refer to entry ‘All 80’s Lunch Hour’.

It’s hard to start this story and really have it mapped out, there are several circumstances involved with it, and I am hoping I can explain it without losing you all together.

It’s important to know that there are two perspectives to every story. This one is no exception. There was my perspective, and the other’s perspective. The story changes a bit, depending on how it’s told. But I’ve decided to give you the other’s perspective, and let you draw your own conclusions. Maybe someday, if you ask real nice, I’ll tell you my side of the story.

Heather was my first college roomie. We got along okay, she had a boyfriend I couldn’t stand, but we seemed to just stay out of each other’s way, and we were both okay with that. On the way to the cafeteria one day with my friend’s Ronnie and Rich, we saw a medical EMT team with one of them cots roll by into our end of the dorm. At the time, I didn’t think anything of it, we had a lot of detox cases, and I went and ate my lunch. Little did I know that incident would change my track at college.

I went about my day and returned to my dorm room a little after ten at night where I found Heather and Justin cradled in each other’s arms, Heather bawling her eyes out. After asking what had happened, I got the scoop about the EMT. Apparently Heather had been up for several hours straight, and was just physically exhausted. She had started hyperventilating and said she couldn’t breathe. Justin had called an ambulance for her. The weird part is, Heather didn’t remember a thing about it. She said she just remembers blackness. Justin said he had been with her the whole time, and on the way to the hospital she kept clutching at her neck, saying she couldn’t breathe, and she kept asking how the baby was, and if the baby was okay…

Heather wasn’t pregnant. Heather never admitted to ever being pregnant, or even thinking that she was. She kept saying over and over again, it wasn’t me, it wasn’t me. Somebody took my body.

I’m not real big into spirits and stuff, and I had a hard time believing her. I had my doubts. I told Ronnie and Rich what happened and Ronnie went ape shit. She ate it up and had a field day, said the room was haunted and this spirit was trying to talk through Heather. That the spirit entered her because she was so weak from exhaustion. I told Ronnie she was full of bullshit, but somehow agreed the next night to pull out the Ouiji board. I must have been out of my mind.

We didn’t tell Heather what we were planning, to keep her from getting more upset, but that night Ronnie, Rich and I sat down in the middle of that room, 1207, and brought out the Ouiji board. Ronnie headed up the whole thing, as if this was her area of expertise. Rich and I stayed quiet, did what we were instructed. After she had ‘Called the spirit’ sure as shit, the pointer thing began to move. We had reached her. She said her name was Madeline, Matty for short. She had hung herself in that very room four years prior, because she had been raped…and she found out she was pregnant. She didn’t think she could take it anymore, the disappointment from her family and friends. So she ended it. In that room. I asked her to prove it…to name silly stuff, like what was playing on the radio, who her favorite band was, to see if she could give us any signs. She answered the questions, and when I asked for a sign…the television came on…

We asked her what it is that she wanted, and why she ‘took’ Heather’s body over. She said that she had unfinished business, that she couldn’t rest until the boy that had raped her was brought to justice. She had one problem though, she was trapped in that room I guess, and she was trying to use Heather to get out.

The whole thing kind of baffled us all…and later I ‘went to the library’ to look up old records. Sure as shit Madeline Hayes, student, took her own life…

But it doesn’t end there.

To be continued…