Dorm Ghost

Freshman year of college and I was visiting my friend, Catherine, at University of Georgia in Athens. She lived in Brumby at the time, a girls' dorm. Being underage, we spent our night smoking pot and goofing off in her room with her next door neighbor and another girl, Danielle, who had also gone to high school with Catherine and I.

The night was typical until Catherine's roommate joined us. She had just come back from the shower (they were communal, one for each floor) and said, "You guys have to come with me; there's a girl singing in the showers, and she has the most beautiful voice!" Having nothing else to do, we obliged. And just as she said, there was the most lovely singing coming from one of the showers. There were twenty or so showers lined up on two walls, but only one of them had water running. Pertinent details: The shower curtains were such that they could not be closed even if pulled tightly as possible; there was always an inch or so uncovered on either side. They were almost see-through and also quite short so you were going to see at least ankles if anyone was in there. (side note: what pervert designed these?) There were also no speakers or ventilation system to be seen except for the drains on the floor. The point of all this detail is to tell you that although there was a single shower going with the curtain closed there was no one in that shower stall or any of the other ones. We looked and looked, and all the while this girl is still singing beautifully, the voice reverberating from that one shower. Upon this realization, all of us looked at each other, utterly spooked. A moment later Danielle darted out of the bathroom as fast as a champion sprinter. The rest of us followed her a few seconds later, though not at a run.

Upon reaching the dorm room, we found Danielle sitting on the bed shaking and chain-smoking with an ashtray in front of her. We pressed her as to why she ran. "That was Tracy's voice. She always used to sing," she said. "She's been following me around - I saw her at the creek the other day for just a second, and then she disappeared. I swear that was her voice!"

Tracy was in our junior high school class with us, but she died in hiking accident the summer before our senior year.

*Names have been changed to protect stoners and the introverted.