University Encounters

I want to share a short background of my university, specifically of my college, the college of teacher education.

During the Philippine-Japanese war, my college served as a hospital to injured soldiers and the field next to it, which is currently the university's wide plaza of carabao grass is the cemetery. (If you browse in the internet, you'll see the same structure building from 1915 until to date.)

I often heard stories of unusual encounters in my college from my fellow students and some even happened during my years in college. One of which, I participated in.

It happened in room 22.

Me and my classmates would mostly spend our classes in room 22 since our major subjects would always be arranged in that room. There weren't any unusual occurrence that had happened prior to the unfortunate date.

However, the class where it happened isn't our usual schedule since it was a make up class.

My professor missed a few sessions of her designated class schedule and she begged us for a make up class, to which she regretted so much. However, mid terms was approaching and basically, we're all occupied and it wasn't the only subject we're getting make up classes.

Alas, we all agreed on a 7 pm schedule.

The college building is huge and there were no night classes, so even if there were few other rooms that were occupied, we still felt alone in room 22. Also, I would reiterate the ambience is too creepy as some parts of the hallways are dimmed already.

We settled in the classroom with no problems and our professor came in 5 minutes late.

She is the kind of professor that would always check the attendance but instead of her usual routine of calling our names, she counted us instead. Prior to that, we had told her 3 of our classmates were absent.

That was where she made a horrible mistake. 'Counting us'.

"So there's 19 of you. My record says there's 21 of you. But if 3 were absent shouldn't you be 18?"

We mentioned the names of those who were absent, and some of us even started counting. Surely, 3 weren't around and our classmates confirmed we're 18.

But my professor's pride took in and she counted us again. She insisted 19.

"Ma'am its 7 pm you shouldn't be making jokes." I remember my classmate said in between lines and some of us even chuckled.

My professor's face was dead serious though and I remembered clearly how she skimmed her eyes around us and said, "Do you mean, I am counting someone you don't see."

We all went silent. Of course, how could we miss something as basic as counting when we are all math majors in the room?

Then my professor said calmly, "We should not continue. Room 22 is already occupied."

I remembered, we only agreed on a 7 pm schedule twice in my life in college, but they all ended before the session even started.

My second experience was not in our college but in campus B, a big lot beside our university connected by an overpass.

It was in the college of science and mathematics, this time it happened in the statistics lab as they call it. There wasn't so much in it but long tables, stool chairs, a white board and an LCD projector.

I don't know the history of this college but what I know, the high school adjacent to it was an extension of another cemetery.

Our professor (God bless his soul) started with no problems whatsoever. Although, we observed he started being anxious as he started writing on the second part of the board. But the most questionable part was his limping leg. He was in his mid 30s and he always meet the class on the designated sched. We know he did not have any injuries when he came in the lab. Another thing was his constant stuttering. He never stuttered.

Finally, 20 minutes in the middle of class discussion he dismissed us suddenly, "I'm sorry, something came up, I need to go."

Although deeply confused, of course we were thrilled that we could go home early.

It wasn't until two days later that he counted the story to his colleagues. Some of them were our instructors too, so the revelation reached us pretty quickly. And it was creepy as hell.

The truth was, my professor was seeing two kids playing around the room. And the limping leg was because one of them is snugging on it and he was carrying that kid back and forth while trying to continue class and be nonchalant about it.