Ghost story in Pullman, Washington

The haunting that I experienced took place over a period of about two and a half years. I was attending classes at Washington State University in Pullman, Washington, and I moved into an apartment with two friends of mine
after my sophomore year. The strange noises started almost as soon as everyone settled down in their respective rooms. My room was off of the back hallway next to the bathroom, so it was very common to hear my room
mates walking by at all hours of the day and night. I even became able to tell who was walking by just by the sound of their footfalls.

After a while, I started hearing someone walking by with a very cautious, slow, and deliberate stride. I knew that this was neither of my room mates, so I went out to investigate. Nobody was there. Sometimes I would even hear
the footsteps in my room while I was there. They would usually only be heard at night, especially after I went to bed. It was all very weird, but not that frightening. After all, nothing of a physical nature had really happened, there was just some noise.

Early the next school year, things changed a little. One warm September day, my room mates and I were sitting around watching t.v. and hoping for a little air circulation to help cool off the place. The air was dead calm
and stilfing. Even keeping the door propped open didn't help matters. Then all of a sudden the door, which was propped open with a small block of wood, swung shut with a slam. There was still no wind that could have blown it closed, and the piece of wood propping it open moved to the side as though someone forcibly removed it. My room mates and I shared a very surprised look. I think that all of us had had some experiences with the strange footsteps but hadn't given it too much thought.

We all started shouting "Hello! How are you doing!" to our invisible guest and and tried to laugh off the experience. Afterwards, not much more than the walking sounds persisted. Maybe the spirit just wanted a little recognition and
was satisfied for a while with our greetings. The same patterns of noise persisted through the rest of the second year
at the apartment and part way into the following semester, which would be my fifth and last in the apartment. Late that semester, we got a new room mate. The level of noise caused by the spirit had slowly increased as the
semester had gone on, and now things started to get pretty hairy. A few days after moving in, my new room mate asked me if I knew that the apartment had a ghost. Neither my old room mate nor I had mentioned this to her, so I was pretty surprised to hear her ask this but also relieved to know that I wasn't slowly loosing my mind. She told me that the previous night that when she turned off her lamp to go to bed that her stereo had turned on by itself. The stereo was on the opposite side of the room from where her lamp was, so an accident was out of the question. She later told me that she and her family had had a history of dealing with hauntings where they lived. Perhaps the increase in activity was somehow tied to her. Not that I'm accusing her of anything. I'm just exploring the possibilities.

Things came pretty much to a head on my last night in the apartment. I had just completed my last final exam and was going to bed early since I had to get up very early the next morning to get ready for the long drive home for Christmas. When I climbed into bed, I was the only one in the apartment. One of my room mates was already on vacation, and my new room mate was gone for a final exam. As I lay in bed, I could hear a faint rattling, clanking sound. As the noise grew louder, I realized that something what shaking the silverware drawers. It grew so violent that I could hear the drawers sliding out and being slammed home. I jumped out of bed and ran to the kitchen. No one was there and nothing seemed very out of place. I looked in the silverware drawer and saw that things had been
thrown all around into chaos in the drawer. I usually kept things very neat, so I knew that something had been going on. I hadn't been just hearing things. I went back to bed and the noise resumed almost immediately with a renewed vigor and fury. I was downright afraid to go back out because I didn't have the faintest idea of what might have been
out there. I laid awake for about half an hour listening to the growing racket when my room mate came back for her final. All of the noise stopped instantly. The relief I felt at not being alone in there allowed me to unwind enough so that my fatigue could overcome me and let me sleep.

My room mate said that she was going to cleanse the apartment when I was gone, and I don't doubt that she did just that. I only went back in there once, and that was to pack up my things for my move to where I was going to
student teach. I hope things went well for my room mates after I left, but I wasn't going to stick around to see. I was more than a little relieved to be out of there after that last night. I know that Washington State University has something of a reputation for being a party school, and I did more than my fair share, but let me reassure you that I was completely in control of my faculties when I had the experiences I listed above, other than being scared out of my wits by the last incident. Everything that I described really happened as I described them here. I was a little skeptical about hauntings before, but
after this, I am a true believer.

by imweasel@olypen.com