I live in the Honors House at the University of Tulsa. This building used to be a frat house during the early eighties, until a hazing ritual ended in tragedy. A freshman named Leo was tied between two mattresses and thrown from the second-story roof. Of course, the mattress sandwich is supposed to land flat. But the throw was awkward, and Leo landed head-first. His neck snapped on impact, and he died instantly.

The frat was disbanded, and the house stood empty until the university built an addition onto it, renovated it, and turned it into the Honors House. Room 208, Leo’s old room, is supposedly haunted. I haven’t seen anything in there, but I’ve been in there three times this year. Usually someone occupies it, but this year it stands empty.

Two years ago, one of the housemates was in the room with her boyfriend. The curtain supposedly blew into the room, though the window wasn’t open. Then it happened. Those downstairs heard a scream, and the girl, white-faced, rushed down to the first floor and started sobbing in one of my friend’s arms. There were burn marks on her neck. She confessed that she’d told her boyfriend, laughingly, that she didn’t believe in the whole Leo story. We in the House believe, however, Leo is not a mean spirit.

I mean, wouldn’t you be a little pissed off if someone told you they didn’t believe in you? We like to believe, since Leo was murdered by the stupidity of frat boys, he would take the side of the geeks–those who live in the Honors House. He visit his room on rainy nights, tell ghost stories, which give way to conversation and laughter. It’s not a trivialization of Leo… more of a tribute. We don’t want him to be lonely. So we visit him from time to time. We make donations in his name to charities. Et cetera. I don’t know if I’d ever like to see Leo.

But then again, maybe I would. I can neither say, nor can I decide. Whether he shows himself to any of us is (as far as we know) his decision. ~ Not all presences on campus seem to be friendly, however. Although I’ve only heard mention, the fifth and upper stories of the McFarlin Library are supposed to be a “bad place.” They’re locked off to the general public, presumably because they keep rare books and other such commodities there. They discontinued construction of those chambers, though, because the dean whose offices were supposed to be contained therein died before construction could be completed. Or so the story goes.

Why they wouldn’t have just kept building escapes me. But apparently those spaces were converted into storage units instead. Can you imagine, though, if the dean chose those spaces as his soul’s final resting place? A force of inordinate power, lurking like a brain at the top of that imposing building, peering out through windows resembling those of a castle: narrow slats through which to fire arrows. Never a light shines in those windows, only impenetrable darkness. My goal, before I graduate, is to explore those chambers. When we moved in the house was in pretty bad shape (which explaind getting it for only 28,500).

We moved in and were there for about a week when we started noticing strange things happening. cupboard doors opening up overnight, toilet flushing by itself, closet doors being opened, every once in awhile our television would change channels by itself. Some pretty freaky stuff but nothing too freaky, so we just dismissed it and thought nothing much. Then we watch dan episode of Sightings. In this episode a guy left a tape recorder going and said “if there is anything here that wants to make itself present feel free to do so..” So we decided to do the same, set the recorder in the attic, went to the movies. We came home and listen to the whole tape. It was a 90 minute tape. we went through a good 85 minutes and there a whispering level voice breath into the recorder, it sounded like the noise made to put steam on glasses to clean them. Then nothing for a minute and then it sounded like the tape recorder was being thrown about the room for 2 minutes. then it stopped.