👻 A Night School Haunting
When Emma set out on her cross‑country photography project, she expected ivy‑covered buildings, quiet libraries, and late‑night study sessions. What she didn’t expect was how many students whispered about ghosts as casually as they talked about exams.
Her first stop was a small liberal‑arts campus in New England. The tour guide mentioned, almost offhandedly, that the oldest dorm had a room no one wanted — lights flickered, doors locked themselves, and residents swore they heard someone pacing above them even though the attic had been sealed for decades. Emma laughed politely, but she kept glancing up at the windows as she walked away.
At a Midwestern university, she met a group of students who insisted on showing her the old music hall. “Listen,” one of them said, standing perfectly still. Sure enough, faint piano notes drifted through the air, even though the building had been closed for renovations. “It happens every night,” they said. “We think it’s the composer who died here in the 1920s.” Emma felt a chill that had nothing to do with the wind.
Down South, she visited a campus built on the grounds of a former hospital. A nursing student told her that sometimes, during late‑night clinical labs, the motion‑activated sinks turned on by themselves. Another swore she saw a woman in an old‑fashioned nurse’s uniform walking the hallway — and disappearing through a locked door.
On the West Coast, a film student invited Emma to explore an abandoned theater on campus. Dust floated in the projector beam as they stepped inside. “People say the lead actress from the 1940s still performs here,” he whispered. Emma raised her camera just as a cold breeze swept across the stage, rustling the curtains even though the air was still.
Every campus had its own story — a librarian who never left her stacks, a chemistry professor seen wandering the lab long after his last experiment, a shadowy figure who appeared in dorm mirrors when students were alone.
By the time Emma reached her final stop, she realized something important. Haunted or not, these stories weren’t really about fear. They were about memory — the way a place holds onto the people who pass through it, the way history lingers in corners and stairwells, the way a campus becomes more than buildings.