I was working as the caretaker of a campus ministry near the University when these experiences happened. It started my first night in the little apartment near the basement of the old, Frank-Lloyd-Wright-esque building; there had been a meeting earlier in the evening, and I locked up the building a little after midnight.

I had been asleep for only a little while when loud noises startled me awake. Not only did I hear people laughing and talking, but I could hear kids running up and down the stairs, and I remember feeling really irritated when someone flushed the latrine (the men's room was on the other side of my living/bed room wall). Which reverberated loudly throughout my room. I left my apartment and went to get the stragglers out of the building, and was shocked that when I opened the door, the Great Room was still and dark. I thought it was odd, and thought that maybe some people were hiding and playing a joke on me.

I locked up again and returned to bed. After listening to the noises start up again and going into the Great Room twice more, I was getting really wigged out; each time I went to get the people out of the building, I only found darkness and silence. The last time I went inside, I got scared, as the whole building was quiet except for the steel poles that held the stone stairs aloft. The stairs were ringing and vibrating, as if someone had just run hard up and down them. I locked the door and ran back to my bed, thinking whomever it was had to be just absolutely crazy.

I had finally almost drifted off to sleep again, when I heard what sounded like my shaving cream being squirted all over the bathroom. The window to my bathroom opened at the level of the sidewalk leading into the side entrance, and I thought the pranksters might have reached in through it to continue their joke. I lay there listening to quite a mess being made and then heard my toothbrush drop into the sink. The foamy squirting sound continued and I could hear my toothbrush being thrown repeatedly into the sink. I could not believe that people would act so freaky, so I jumped form my bed and flipped the light switch. I yelled as I turned on the lights, trying to scare my tormentors, and was confronted with not only a closed and locked window. But an immaculate bathroom-- my toiletries exactly as I had left them.

There were similar activities in the weeks to come-- anything from sudden, disembodied laughter to frantic whispers-- but the worst of all was when I was up rather late working on a paper in the computer room. I had the building locked up tight, and was pretty well focussed on my paper when I heard the door open in the basement, and footsteps coming up the stairs. I stepped out into the hall to see who was coming at such a late hour when it hit me: no one could have gotten in because the doors were all locked! By that time, the footsteps reached the ground floor landing, and I froze in stark fear.

Because the whole building was built with an open plan, you can pretty well see all over it, and anybody walking up the stairs would have been visible at that point, with only a turn to make and five more steps to climb before being directly in front of me. I just stood there trying to rationalize what has no reason when I heard the slow and heavy footsteps reach the top of the stairwell. They continued toward me, and I jumped back into the computer room and slammed the door with a prayer for protection. Every hair on my neck was standing straight out, and I thought my chest would explode from not being able to breathe. There was no phone, or I would have called security. All I could do was stand immobile in the little office, hearing the footsteps scrape across the carpet as the ghost or whatever it was paced back and forth in front of the door. I don't think I have ever been so afraid or freaked out in my life.

After what seemed like a long time, the footsteps stopped and I was able to go to my apartment, vowing to finish the paper when people were in the building with me. I get creeped out to this day whenever I drive by that place.