ghosts

There are probably ghosts at my university. I don't believe in ghosts, per se, but the evidence stacks too highly in their ethereal favor for me not to at least make a note about it.

For one thing, Patrick Swayze dies of pancreatic cancer and then the same week Shwayze comes to Iowa City. Coincidence? Yeah, coincidence like "accidentally" renting both Ghost and Dirty Dancing on the same night.

There's also the fact that there's a bookstore called "The Haunted Bookstore" in Iowa City. In that phantom-friendly establishment, there's a desk with a drawer labeled "for ghost use only." There's also a piano. I played part of "Downtown" by Petula Clark on that piano. In one of my classes today, the professor played a clip from 32 Short Films About Glenn Gould that had the song "Downtown" in it. I told the guy I was sitting next to about how I can play "Downtown" on the piano. That guy interviewed Shwayze when they visited. I shit you not.

I can see what you're trying to pull, Universe, and I don't like it one bit.

But this shit gets realer. It gets eerie. It gets creepy as fuck.

Late at night, like when it starts approaching three, four in the morning, we've been hearing sounds. People running. They don't talk; they don't speak; they don't make a noise but that of feet connecting with floorboards. They just run. I thought I was imaging this. I thought I was probably making it up. I thought I was delusional but then my roommate asked me, nonchalantly, when we were both quietly hunched over computers at our respective desks in the study area:

"You know those people at night?" she asked.

"What?" I responded, taking off my headphones.

"Those people... what do you think they're running from?"

That was the first and only time my roommate has come close to truly astounding me. Ghosts can do that to a relationship.