We asked the BuzzFeed Community to tell us their tales of living in haunted dorms. Here are the terrifying results.
1. The morning routine:
"I woke up at 5 a.m. to see my roommate preparing for school. She was already in her uniform. I sat up and asked her if she had a spare uniform I could borrow, and she nodded and opened her closet to show me. I thanked her. She smiled, waved, and turned to go, and I spent 30 minutes more in bed with my phone. I got down from the top bunk to start preparing for my day, and looked over and saw my roommate sleeping soundly in her bunk. WHO WAS IN HERE AT 5 A.M.?!"
2. The greeter:
"My roommate sat up in her bed one night, looked toward the corner of our room, and kept saying 'hello.' She did this for about three minutes. After saying 'hello' several times, she slowly turned her head as if she was watching someone walk, and then looked under the bed. Her head shot up so quickly and she looked at me. I have never seen someone look that terrified in my life. Suddenly, she fell back on the bed and went to sleep. I ran out of that room so fast."
3. The motivator:
"I'd heard rumors that my freshman dorm was haunted, but dismissed the stories. One morning, I was sitting alone in my room, no desire to go to class, and said out loud to myself, 'I think I deserve to stay in bed today.' Clear as day, as though someone were sitting on the bed next to me, a male voice replied, 'Just stay.' I jumped up to check the hallway of my all-girls floor, and then out the window onto the roof next door, but there wasn't a person in sight. I definitely didn't stay."
4. The trash thrasher:
"My dorm last year was next to the tiny campus theatre. Rumor had it a guy hung himself in there 20 years ago. We consistently had doors and windows lock and close on their own. One of my neighbors was sitting at home one night and heard the lid of their trash can hitting the wall repeatedly. She looked out the peephole into the living room to see who was doing it, and no one was there. The sound stopped every time she checked. When she sat back down at her desk, the lid started again. This happened about four times. She was seriously in a panic."
—o45
5. The visitor:
"I lived in the oldest residence hall on campus my freshman year. It used to be a hospital for people during an influenza outbreak years ago, where quite a bit of people died. There was even a room in the basement where the morgue used to be. I was in my room one night, trying to sleep, when I heard my door open and shut by itself — even though I lived alone. I tried to ignore it and tell myself I was imagining things, but seconds later I felt something grab my leg and I looked up to see this dark thing floating by my feet. It looked like the top half of a body. When I looked away to turn the lamp on, it was gone."
6. The haunted hall:
"My dad went to Whittier College in California in the late '60s, early '70s, and his dorm, Wanberg Hall, has many legends. It's been rumored to be a former syphilis ward, hospital, and mental asylum. He would hear women screaming in pain and babies crying when he was alone during holiday breaks when the building was practically empty. He is also positive there was a presence in his room. It gives him chills to this day."
7. The creepy chair:
"In my mom's friend's dorm, she and her roommates would use a squeaky chair to reach the top shelf of their bookcase. Sometimes at night, when everyone was in bed, the chair would just start squeaking, like there was someone standing on it. Creepy."
8. The spooky shadow:
"I was an RA, so we spent a lot of time alone in the dorms before students arrived for the year. One time, my door shut and locked itself from the inside... even though it was a latch lock. Another time, I was standing in the hall talking to my friend. Behind her, I saw a shadow walk toward the stairs, but no actual person followed. And another time, I felt a solid poke on my shoulder in my sleep. It hurt, and I was too afraid to turn over because I was sure someone would be standing over me."
9. The case of the chalkboard:
"My roommate and I had a spirit in our room who we named 'Lilly.' Lilly didn't like confrontation, so whenever anyone got into an argument or was angry in our room, things would go flying across the space. I woke up one night to my roommate's chalkboard thrown to the other side of the room... while my roommate was out of town."
10. The nighttime nun:
"There was one time when my mom went to a camp at a college, and all the seniors told her to be careful in the residence hall near the park. If someone knocked on the door past midnight calling her name, she was told to not open it, because it'd be the ghost of a nun. At midnight the first night, someone knocked on her door, calling her name. My mom opened the door and saw a shadowy figure zoom past her door toward the direction of the cemetery across the park."
11. The desk debacle:
"I had two desks across from each other, with solid oak chairs tucked under the desks. One time, I left the room for five minutes, locking the door behind me. I came back to both chairs pulled out, put next to each other, facing my bed, with all my closet doors open. I lived alone."
12. The tale of the toiletries:
"I lived in an on-campus sorority house. There was a legend of 'Jenny,' a child who died in the house before it belonged to the college. There were all these stories of furniture being pushed around and people waking up with scratches. One night my first year, while laying in bed talking to my roommate, we heard a crash. In our bathroom, we had shelves on the wall where we kept toiletries. When we went to investigate, the toiletries had been thrown across the bathroom floor while shelves remained intact. No one else who shared that bathroom was in there."
13. The devil's deed:
"I went to Saint Louis University in Missouri, and my dorm was across from the place where the original exorcism took place that inspired The Exorcist. For a while I would always wake up at 3:30 a.m., feeling like I was being watched, and would see shadows out of the corner of my eyes. Turns out, that's the 'devil's hour.' For a long time, I had to sleep with the lights on until my roommate would come back for the night."
14. The student situation:
"A friend of mine was lucky enough to get an on-campus house during the second quarter of his freshman year. I stayed over there more all the time, and odd things would happen. Drawers would be flung open in the kitchen, the curtains would flutter without wind, and most strangely, two of the other guys who lived there were woken up one night by a camera flash in the middle of their room. Both are still adamant that their doors were locked, and that neither of them took a picture. We found out later that an older student had lived in that home, and had sadly committed suicide the quarter before, hence the opening."
15. The impostor:
"I used to stay in a 70-year-old Catholic school dorm. One day, this girl Ellie was walking down the corridor when she saw her friend Katie coming out of the bathroom — she was positive that it was Katie. Ellie didn't think much about it, but she was later informed that Katie had been away that week at her parents' house. This story is very popular among students, because apparently this type of incident (where a person who's not supposed to be at the dorm was seen at the dorm) had happened many times for years. Supposedly there's a spirit who likes to mimic people who live in the dorm, messing around with people."
16. The nicest nurses:
"I went to Wells College in upstate New York, one of the most haunted campuses in the country. A floor in the main building was once an infirmary, so supposedly if you're sick, the ghosts of the nurses will take care of you. One night a friend and I were staying in that building, and my friend was sick, so he threw his blanket off before he fell asleep because he was too hot. Around 6 a.m., we were frantically awoken by a fire alarm. My friend was perfectly tucked into bed, with the blanket he'd thrown off. The blanket was all the way up to his neck, and his arms were under the blanket. I'm convinced it was the ghosts of the nurses, taking care of him."
17. And the electric lady:
"My first year in college, my dorm was haunted. I lived alone and would hear knocks on my window in the middle of the night, even though I lived on the fifth floor. One night as I was sitting in bed doing my homework, my electricity went out — but when I opened the door, I saw the lights in the hall were still on. I went back into my room and saw a woman sitting on my bed. She didn't have much of a face, and her clothes were torn and bloody. I screamed, and when I tried to open my door, it wouldn't budge. Three different people came to my door to see what was wrong, and in that moment the lights turned back on. I moved the next week. No more living in buildings where people have died."