I am now a senior in college, and this is mainly a story
about one of the roommates I had during my freshman
year. Because of what happened, I have not lived with
her since then. In case she (or someone close to her)
stumbles onto this page, I'll go ahead and call her
Carrie for the sake of her privacy.
Carrie and I got along well, for the most part. She was
an elementary education major because she loved
children, and she was friendly and outgoing. She was
also blonde and had a clear, beautiful complexion, so
she was well-liked on campus, especially among the
guys. No one had any reason to wish bad luck on her.
Carrie was also a member of the school dance team
and worked out almost every day, so she was very thin
but physically fit. She never had any health problems
that I can recall, which is why the things that happened
to her came as such a surprise to me. Before I get to
that, though, I should explain the background that may
have led up to it.
About a week after we moved into our dorms, one of the
R.A.s (Resident Assistants) told me a very sad story
about a little boy who had died before the building had
been finished. About forty years ago or so, he had
apparently crept onto the construction site for the dorm
while it was still unfinished. He must have come on a
day when no one was working on the building, because
while playing around he fell somehow and broke his
neck. Nobody found him until the construction workers
came back to the site, and by then it was much too late.
He must have been climbing up through the wood
frames of the building, and fallen through a space or an
unsteady piece of lumber.
Anyway, according to the R.A. who told me this story,
ever since our dorm was completed students had
complained about this kid. Many people had spoken
up about their closet doors and bathroom doors
opening and shutting on their own -- even though the
windows of the students' rooms are usually closed
tightly when this happens, leaving no possibility of a
draft or breeze. Other students had supposedly
answered their doors after hearing knocks, only to find
that no one was there when they looked to see who it
was. The strangest complaints of all, though, came
from students who insisted that they would hear the
sounds of a child laughing, playing and running
through the hallways, sometimes during broad daylight.
They would step into the hallways to see who would be
letting their child do this, and although the sounds
would continue -- even while these students would be
standing right there watching, and following the sound
-- no child could ever be seen.
I was skeptical of these tales at first, so I told Carrie
and my other two roommates (we'll call them Sara and
Jane), thinking that it was just a very interesting legend
that the R.A.s had made up in order to scare us
freshmen. Instead of being intrigued or taking it lightly,
all three roommates were terrified. They were angry
with me for having told them the story... especially
Carrie, who became convinced that this little boy would
come for her one night. I kept my cool and tried to
explain to her that it probably wasn't true... and even if it
was, it was only a child who would mean us no harm.
What danger could a little boy bring?
At least, I certainly hoped that it wasn't true -- it would be
horrible if a little boy really had died that way. Sadly, as
time went on, everyone in our building came to realize
that the story was indeed true. It turned out that Carrie
had good reason to be afraid.
Within a month of our moving in, the knocking started.
Several times we would be reading or doing homework
when we would be interrupted by a loud knock at our
door. The strange thing about these knocks was that
every time this happened, the knock seemed to come
from the lower to middle portion of the door, like a very
short person was knocking on it. And naturally, every
time we answered the door -- which was IMMEDIATELY
after the knocking was heard, since our beds and
desks were right next to the door -- nobody was there. I
should also point out that this was not unique to our
room. As the weeks went by we spoke with neighbors
who lived in the same hallway, and even with students
who lived all the way on the other side of the building,
and they would have the same experiences. Everyone
in the dorm was starting to wonder who could be
knocking on our doors.
We would have known if it were a fellow student or an
R.A., because the entire building was set up in such a
way that all our doors led into a single, long hallway.
There were no corners or trash cans for someone to
hide behind, and there were no elevators for anyone to
retreat in. The only way into our particular hallway was
by a set of stairs in plain view, right in the middle of the
hall. Since all our doors have peep holes, and since all
our rooms are so small that our beds, desks, etc. are
right next to our doors, we would be able to instantly
catch anyone who tried to knock on the door and run.
There was simply no way anyone could get away fast
enough without being seen. Even if the person had
made it to the stairs, we would have seen his or her
back. So you can imagine everyone's confusion and
bewilderment at the fact that this "short, invisible door
knocker" could never be seen or caught.
We became just as confused whenever we heard the
high-pitched, childish laughter that started echoing
through the hallway, along with the sounds of rapid little
footsteps and breathing. Sometimes several doors in
our hall would open up at once (since the whole
building could hear it, loud and clear), and all of us
students would look out at each other in shock as we
watched... absolutely nothing... running and laughing,
nonstop, up and down the empty and well-lit hallway.
My three roommates became more and more nervous
as this continued, but none more so than poor Carrie. I
have no idea why this affected her so badly, especially
since she loved children and had spent a lot of time
working with them for her major. Well, either this
mischievous little boy figured out that he could mess
with her, or something more sinister must have come
to the same conclusion, because one day in
mid-October, Carrie's student ID went missing.
She had always kept it in the same exact place -- just
inside our walk-in closet, in plain sight on a neatly
organized shelf, right next to her ironing board. We
asked Sara and Jane if they had seen it, but neither of
them had. We tore both our rooms, as well as the
closet and bathroom, completely upside-down for a
week straight. We left no stone unturned trying to find
the ID card, but it was no use. It had simply
disappeared. We asked the R.A.s and all our
neighbors and friends, and none of them knew what
could have happened to it. No one would have had any
motivation to steal it from her, and even if someone
had, we always locked our doors when we left our
rooms, and those doors were the only way to get
inside. There wasn't any way for someone to break in,
because no one had a skeleton key -- not even the
R.A.s -- and this dorm was so secure that just to get
into the building we had to scan our IDs through a
sensor in the main entrance.
With all this in mind, Carrie gave up and decided that
she must have lost it somewhere else on campus
during the last time she had it on her. She paid the $25
replacement fee to have a new one made, and the very
day she did that, she shrieked when she found her old
one! I asked her why she was so frightened.
Apparently her old ID had been placed neatly into her
pencil holder on her desk, where everyone could see it.
The only problem was that we had completely emptied
out that pencil holder several times during the course of
that week, and it had never been in there before. If it
had, naturally, we would have seen it and there would
have been no need for Carrie to get a new one. It must
have been placed there after we gave up looking for it,
when we all went out with her to get the new ID. But
again, no one could have gotten into our room while we
were gone because of the reasons I've mentioned
above.
Carrie started to scream, "It was the little boy! He's after
me! He's going to kill me!" Then Sara and Jane started
screaming with her. I just stared at them; I didn't know
what to think.
Then one night in November, I came home late to find a
note attached to our door. It was addressed to me, and
it read, "Please don't turn on the lights. I'm sleeping.
Thanks! Love, Carrie." This wasn't unusual, since I was
a night owl but Carrie was an early sleeper. So I
unlocked the door, snuck in as quietly as I could, got
ready for bed and got under my covers -- all without
turning on the lights.
I was still wide awake and had just gotten comfortable
in my bed, when I suddenly heard a voice coming from
across the room. Specifically, it came from Carrie's
bed. But it wasn't Carrie's voice.
What I heard scared the living daylights out of me. The
only way I can describe it is that it sounded like
something out of The Exorcist. The voice was low,
gritty, animalistic, and sounded male -- if it was even
human. Worst of all, it was growling something in a
language I could not understand. It definitely wasn't
English, and I knew that Carrie didn't speak anything
else. She had told me so at the beginning of the year,
during an academic conversation when we were
thinking about taking foreign language classes. (When
all was said and done, Carrie had decided not to sign
up for any.)
I was afraid to look across the room or even move.
Every urban legend I had ever heard about, "Aren't you
glad you didn't turn on the lights?" was racing through
my mind at the time, since my first thought was that
someone must have found a way to break in. I was
half-expecting to find a serial killer or a lunatic where
Carrie should have been, so after a minute, I prepared
myself for the worst as I quietly got out of bed and crept
toward the door. I kept my eyes glued to the direction
that the voice was coming from, and got ready to run out
the door in case "it" came after me.
My eyes had adjusted to the darkness by then, and I
was shocked to find that Carrie was fast asleep in her
bed and completely alone. I was also deeply disturbed
to find that she was above the covers, lying flat on her
back with her arms crossed over her chest like a
vampire. Her head was tilted back toward the ceiling,
as though she had been that way for a hundred years.
Her breathing was very shallow.
This was totally unlike her. She was perfectly healthy...
she had no chest cold or asthma, or anything of the
kind that could have made her breathe the way she did.
She also never slept on her back, or above the covers.
She always slept on her side or on her stomach, curled
up beneath all her quilts, and she usually tossed and
turned. But on this night she was dead still, like a
mummy. She would have to be crazy to sleep above
the covers like that in the middle of November! And as
for that horrible voice I heard... Carrie had mumbled in
her sleep once in a while before, but it had been her
own voice then! I KNOW what I heard that night, and it
was NOT her.
But just in case, I asked her the next morning if she
remembered having any bad dreams the night before.
She said that she never remembered her dreams.
When she asked why, I told her about what had
happened, and the poor thing went completely pale.
She was very alarmed about it, maybe even more so
than I had been... if that were possible.
Meanwhile, just about every day during the entire
semester, the knocking and laughter continued out in
our hallway. It seemed to happen more and more often
as time went on. By now, Carrie wasn't just
uncomfortable with it... she HATED it. And every once in
a while in the middle of the night, that horrible voice
would show up again, startling me awake while Carrie
never seemed to hear it. There was no way it could
have been her, because there was a distinct difference
between Carrie talking in her sleep (which was actually
kind of cute) and this nasty male "thing" growling like a
beast in some strange dialect.
The worst episode of all came about a week before
Christmas vacation. I had slept through the night just
fine, but I woke up at about 6:30 the next morning to the
sound of Carrie screaming. It sounded like someone
was attacking her.
I sprang up and ran to her side, and Sara and Jane ran
in through the bathroom from next door. All three of us
were astounded when we found that Carrie was once
again alone in her bed... lying flat on her back, with her
head tilted up towards the ceiling and her arms
crossed over her chest. She was once again above the
covers. She was very pale and there were tears
streaming down her face, but this time, she wasn't
asleep. Her eyes were wide open, staring wildly up at
something none of us could see.
All three of us asked her what was wrong. She shouted
that she was dizzy and felt like she was going to throw
up, and she screamed that she couldn't see us and
she couldn't move, but that it also felt like something
was trying to "get" her. She said she felt like she
couldn't breathe and that something heavy was on top
of her. There seemed to be so much going on with her
that we didn't know what to do first! We tried to get her
to sit up or at least loosen her arms, but she was stiff
as a board.
We were about to send someone out for an ambulance
when she started to go back to normal. Eventually the
color came back into her face, and her breathing got
better while she started being able to move her arms
down to her sides. She slowly sat up with Sara's help,
then dried her eyes and took a look around the room.
Then she got up quickly and went to take her morning
shower, as though nothing had happened. This left the
three of us wondering what the hell we had just seen.
When she came out of the bathroom, we asked her if
she was feeling all right, and if she thought it would be
a good idea if she stayed home from her classes that
day. She declared that she was feeling just fine, but
added, "That was so scary back there! It felt like a truck
was running over me. I thought I was going to die!"
Then she uttered a fake-sounding laugh that chilled me
to the bone. She was trying to pretend that it had been
no big deal, and that made me all the more worried for
her. I have no idea if she did that just because she was
embarrassed, or because she was in denial, or even
because she already had little to no memory of it.
Whatever the case, her reaction to what had happened
struck me as dangerous.
I know that on this last frightening occasion, Carrie may
have suffered from sleep paralysis or sleep apnea.
Either of these conditions would explain her fear and
her feelings of being suffocated, as well as her inability
to move. But how in the world would that render her
blind, while her eyes were wide open and she was
sobbing? Carrie did not wear glasses or contact
lenses, nor did she need them. Her eyesight was
normally as good as anyone else's, whether or not she
had just woken up.
And why would either sleep apnea or sleep paralysis
make her feel like she was about to vomit? I've never
heard of any other cases where nausea was involved,
and as I've stated before, Carrie was always very
healthy. She ate well and took good physical care of
herself. She was not suffering from any flu or stomach
pains when this was going on. I should also mention
that Sara felt Carrie's forehead after the ordeal was
over, while she was helping her sit up. She claimed
that Carrie did not have a fever.
And of course this leads me to another question: how
in the world can anyone explain the terrible, ugly voice
that came from her bed last time? If it was a human
voice (and it sure didn't sound like one), it was low
enough to be a man's voice, yet no man was in our
room at that time -- let alone in Carrie's bed. And what
was with the foreign language?
The only explanation that seems to make sense is that
either the voice was disembodied, or it actually did
come from Carrie because it took over her sleeping
body. None of us ever caught an intruder in our room,
and there was no evidence of anyone tampering with
our locks. I never met anyone in our building who had a
voice (or a language) like the one I heard. Again, the
only time in my life where I've ever heard that kind of
voice was in The Exorcist, and that is not an
exaggeration.
And other than being terribly afraid of our resident ghost
boy, Carrie never appeared to be a mentally unstable
person. She was kind to people, and a good student,
and never got into any trouble during the time that I
knew her. She seemed like a completely normal
human being until all this happened to her. So that
rules out the possibility of insanity, in my opinion.
I believe that she was possessed by... or at least very
sensitive to the presence of... either the little boy or
something much worse.
If it was the boy, he may have just tried to jump up on
her bed and say hello. He might not have understood
what he was doing to Carrie, and he may even have
been amused at getting such a violent reaction out of
her. After all, children love attention, and this one
clearly didn't have enough of it when he was still alive.
But if it was something else... may God help whoever
has stayed in our room since we moved out.
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