Everyone Loves a Ghost Story (They Freak Amy Out)

So, the other day I had this thing called scene rehearsal. It was on Sunday, after Thanksgiving break and supposed to be at 7:00. My partner and me decided to meet on the 14th floor of this building where our acting class meets. So, this building is super old, so much so it's pretty much a landmark. They recently renovated the top floors, and are currently working on the remaining floors.
SO! I come into this building on Sunday night and it's really quiet. Nobody is around because it's
a) A Sunday Night and
b) The Sunday night right after Thanksgiving break.
Being alone doesn’t freak me out, the bottom floor is sort of gray and dreary, but still...there were lights on so I wasn't scared. I sat on a bench and talked to David for a while on the phone because I was early. After a while I decided to head up to the 14th floor to wait for my partner.
So, obviously, you have to take the elevator to get to the 14th floor. Well, you don't have to and in fact sometimes I walk because the elevators in this building scare the shit out of me. They're new, but they go super fast and while you go up they sound like racecars and rattle mildly. They also like to stop sometimes and hang out between floors. I just get a bad feeling when I ride in them, so I try to avoid it if I can. BUT seeing as how I was alone, taking a short elevator ride seemed less scary then climbing 28 flights of stairs alone with no one else in the building.
So I get the 14th floor...and there really aren't classrooms up there...it's more or less two big rooms where acting classes are held. So I get up there and the entire floor is completely dark, save for the lights lighting the area directly in front of and adjacent to the elevators. This building is right on the lake, so while this offers a stunning view during the day, at night...looking out the windows to the east, it appears the building is sort of floating in blackness.
Now, as I said. This building is extremely old. It was a women's college before Loyola bought it and actually is a designated Chicago landmark.
Being so old, as one may imagine, there are...stories about this building.
Stories about the 14th floor in particular.
I'm sure you may surmise that I mean to say the place is said to be haunted.
It is said that a student studying to be a nurse was impregnated by a priest and then she either:
a) Hung herself or
b) Was pushed out the window by the priest who was not so keen on his vow of celibacy.
It is said these grisly occurrences happened on the 14th floor. So it is said the ghost of this nurse in particular haunts the 14th floor.
So they've been working on renovating this building for a while and it has only been since this semester that the 14th floor was open to students. There are stories of construction workers turning out the lights, leaving for the night and noticing after exiting the building that the lights on the 14th floor had come back on. There are stories of misplaced tools, ect. There are stories of brave students venturing up the forbidden 14th floor and seeing the very chair by which the nurse hung herself with the very rope still hanging from the closet where the tragedy took place.
Is any of this based in fact?
Or is it all college lore?
I do not know.
What I do know is that these stories were in my head and now here I was, on the 14th floor alone in the dark, with very few people even in the building at all. And it certainly didn't help that I had watched several episode of Most Haunted over Thanksgiving...a show that is both hilarious as it is clearly fake and frightening in a Blair Witch kinda way.
I called David right away and asked him to talk to me until my scene partner show up. Being the fabulous platonic gay boyfriend that he was, he of course, obliged.
So I'm talking with David and he mentions this building on his campus that used to be haunted and tells me he had an "experience" he said he wouldn't tell me now, but of course my interest was peeked and I said, "oh man, you gotta tell me" So he tells me that he was in this building on his campus after a rehearsal, alone. He was closing up or whatever in this building that's known to be haunted. David said he went to use the washroom, and this toilet near him just flushed out of nowhere. He said he wasn't freaked out yet, but noticed it. As he was walking down the hall, he walked by the water fountain and the motor in it suddenly started right as he walked by. He freaked out a little and continued walking. He walked by the Coke Machine and as he walked by that the motor in that started. So, he's kinda freaked now and says he went into the theatre to just pick up his crap and get the hell out, as he went to get his bag, one the blacks (for those of you who don't speak freaky-deaky theatre "blacks" are curtains that hang and mask the offstage area) fell halfway off it's pipe.
So, he told me that story that I asked to hear but really was wishing I hadn't asked because now every little noise on this huge dark floor is making me jump. I'm too scared to even move into the darkness to go turn on a light.
And I start to contemplate...
Ok, if some shit goes down, what the heck would I do? Would I run for the staircase and fly down 28 flights of stairs and through, no doubt dark corridors?? Would I press the button on the elevator, wait for the damn thing to come get me, then jump in the elevator that freaks me out to begin with and hope it delivers me to ground level safely??
So David and I continue to talk and it becomes apparent after about 20 minutes that my scene partner likely forgot about our rehearsal, and dumb me forgot to get her phone number. So, I jump up, fly into the elevator and breath a sigh of relief when I am on ground level once again, the whole way down telling David these elevators scare because they shake and go super fast and I can hear them speeding down the tube. I get really freaked out when I feel things are out of control, and to me...when I step in those elevators they feel very out of control. I know they're not. They're new, they're safe...but still...they unsettle me.
ANYWAY! So I get out of the building and I'm walking back to my car still talking to David, I finally tell him the story of why and how it's said that floor is haunted (I obviously did not want to say it out loud while I was on the floor lest I conjure up some spirit). As I am walking outside I realize that my head is cold. I discover that my hat I was wearing is not in my pockets. Nor is it in my bag. I remember that I took it off on the 14th floor and placed it next to me on the bench. I tell David...
AMY: Oh no, David! I don't have my hat; I think I forgot it up there!!
DAVID: Well, goodbye hat. You are just chancing it if you go back up there to get it.
AMY: I am NOT going back up there. That's like bad horror movie 101 right there.
DAVID: I know, right? You'd go up there and the hat wouldn't be where you left it...or it would be laid out really nicely.
AMY:...or there would be a ghost up there, wearing it.
DAVID: Yeah, you can go get that tomorrow.
AMY: Or I can just buy another one at Walgreen’s for a dollar.

Sorry. That story was really really boring and really anti-climatic.
Um...let me change it a bit...
So, after discovering that I no longer had my hat, I decided, "What the hell?" David's on the phone with me, I'll just go back up there and get it. I like that hat, and it will save me a dollar.
I tell David, "David, I'm going back up there to get it."
He says, "Oh no Magoo (Magoo is his nickname for me, short for "Lez-Magoo") please don't!! I don't have a good feeling about this!!"
I say, "Oh, stop! I'll be fine. You're on the phone with me, it's all good."
So, I continue to talk to David, he all the while is begging me not to go. I step into the elevator and scream.
"OH MY GOD! WHAT HAPPENED, MAGOO???" David screams into the phone. I leave him hanging a few seconds. Then say, "Haha! Gotcha! Jeez, lighten up. I'm only going back upstairs to the supposedly haunted 14th floor and making every cliché scary movie mistake EVER."
David says, "So not funny Magoo."
So I get in the elevator and go up the 14th floor. Cue the dramatic, foreboding music and the camera angle focusing on the floor numbers as they rise.
The elevator arrives at the 14th floor.
With a. "ding" the elevator doors open onto the windows looking eastward into the endless black. I see my reflection in the windows, my phone suddenly cuts out. "David?" I say into the phone. I look down at my phone, while I am looking away an apparition flickering next my reflection in the window. I look up and it's gone. I call David back, as he answers I step out of the elevator, pausing for a moment at the window to look out at the lake. David answers, "Hey, sorry. Must have lost the call on the way up in the elevator. The camera angle (don't ask me why this has suddenly turned into a movie) reveals, unbeknownst to me staring at the lake, that a woman ghost is sitting on the bench where I was, staring at me, waiting for me to see her.
I turn.
I see her.
I drop my phone.
I can hear David on the other line, "Magoo? Magoo??? Is everything ok?? Magoo!!"
The ghost says, "Hi Amy. You forgot your hat."
She picks up my hat that was sitting in her lap and hands it to me.
I scream and punch the down button on the elevator frantically.
The ghost calmly walks toward me.
I scream some more and ball up onto the floor against the elevator door.
The ghost is now upon me!!
She bends down, looks me in the eye and pulls the hat onto my head.
"It's cold outside." She says.
The elevator doors open and I fall inside. I scramble up, she hands me my cell phone.
"Bye." She says and the doors close.

Muhahahahahaa how's THAT for a ghost story??


AMY'S LOVE LETTERS
Dear Giant Plastic Christmas Tree In The Student Center,
You make my heart happy.
Love,
Amy