When I went to OSU I lived in Canfield Hall. It really is a pretty sort of gothic building from the outside, and when I lived there in '98 it was one of the oldest buildings with no plans for remodeling. We lived at the end of the hall on the top floor, and though our room was unusually dark and creepy, I didn't mind it at first. There was a large mirror across from my bed so if you roll over in the middle of the night awake, you see your face staring back, as well as strange laundry-pile shadows. All of our friends said the mirror was creepy and some people wouldn't even look at it. I hung a sheet over my bed canopy-style and I was fine. As the school year progressed things started happening in the room that were a little odd - my roomate's bible kept being hidden somewhere in the room and she would blame me for it - of course I didn't do it!

There was a large pipe that used to be for steam heat that went along the heads of our beds and at night there would be scratching inside of it - we thought it was mice and tolerated it for maybe two hours before I ran down and got the RA, and of course as soon as she stepped in the room it stopped. This continued for months, and everytime she'd come it would stop. Then eventually it just stopped on its own. Well to me all of this wasn't scary, just the weirdness of an old dormitory. But one night my roomate was out of town and I was up alone in the room. I was playing on the computer until way late and as I went into the hallway I could tell that all the other girls were asleep because it was dark under their doors. I left my door open and when I returned from the bathroom I prepared for bed - closing the big heavy curtains and turning the light off. The room was so small it was the sort of smothering darkness and the curtains dampened the sound so I could tell the distance of all the noises from my bed - the clock ticking, the heater's rumbling. I remember all of this so well, I was almost falling asleep - the type of tired where you are aware of everything, but your body is absolutely still - when I heard the distinct and unmistakable sound of 3 loud, shuffled footsteps on the carpet stopping at my bed near my face! I had the canopy, so I couldn't see on the other side (and I'm almost thankful for this). I laid paralyzed and burning all over because I was so panicked for nearly ten minutes waiting for whatever/whomever to come when I finally burst through the canopy and turned the lights on. There was nothing there. The carpet was entirely free of even a pair of socks. But the sound was unmistakeable; I can still hear it when I remember this story. I explained it to myself that it was a plastic bag shifting in my closet. Of course in the morning when I checked there was nothing in the closet that could have fallen or was made of plastic. I wrote it off to my imagination or some blood pumping in one ear.

A couple of months later we had some friends come visit from out of town, and one girl needed to change her clothes in my room for privacy. I left her in the room alone but it took only two minutes before she came out with her face pale and she wouldn't look anyone in the eye. She just said "I can't go in that room, it's evil." I was offended, assuming she was talking about how messy it was. About fifteen minutes later another girl went into the bathroom and came out without going. She told us, "I saw a ghost in the bathroom!" She couldn't describe anything about it, only that it was a shadow that passed behind her as she looked in the mirror. Both girls were entirely freaked out about our hall, and both wouldn't even set foot in my room because of its "presence." I wrote this off as crazy wiccan-punkgirl stuff and/or snobbery at my messy room. But definitely there was something sinister about that room - even our phone number spelled out an upside down cross and we would get crazy prank phone calls at all hours of the day!