A Paranormal Tale for the Modern Age

Please note: this piece contains content that some readers may find upsetting.

There's one thing that probably a lot of people don't know about me is that I am very heavily interested in the paranormal. I will lap up anything I can get my hands on that has even the vaguest thing to do with ghosts. I will read anything and watch anything recommended to me. I can't tell you why, though, or where this interest initially stemmed from, to be honest. It's just something that has always been there throughout my life and fascinates me.

I must say that I have been lucky enough to have had a paranormal experience while I was at college. Okay, I've had quite a few experiences, but the first one that always springs to mind is the story I'm about to share now.

I studied music at college, and the building where my classes took place used to be an old grain mill. Of course, it had been converted long ago into a college building, and there is no sign (internally) nowadays of what its original provenance had been.

I must admit, even before I knew that the place was in fact haunted, I knew that something was amiss. You can always tell, can't you? An odd shiver down the spine, an odd creeping sensation on the skin or the back of the neck - just something otherworldly and ethereal that clings to the very fabric of a building's skin, which leaches onto anyone sensitive enough to walk through the door.

Before I knew the place was haunted, I was with a few friends (who also happened to be classmates) in one of the practice rooms upstairs. I was playing the piano while a couple of the others were singing. I can't remember the song that we were practicing at the time, although I wish I could. It probably doesn't matter anyway - I just thought that it would add some colour and flair to the story, I suppose.

The practice room that we were situated in comprised the aforementioned piano that I was seated at, a table, a few chairs, and (rather bizarrely) an empty harp case. The door to the studio led out to a type of landing, which then descended into a concrete stairwell. As such, it was obvious whenever someone climbed up those stairs because their shoes always scraped on those concrete steps.

There was also a double set of doors, which was immediately to the right of the door to the practice room when you stood on the landing facing the stairwell. Those doors made a hell of a clatter and noise when opening and shutting.

I specify the noises for a reason. As far as my friends and I knew while we were messing about in this particular room, we were the only ones on that floor at the time. No one had come up those stairs, nor did they come through the double set of swing doors. Everything was silent except for the noise that we were making ourselves. And yes, we would have heard noises outside of the studio despite what we were doing. We might have been loud, but not loud enough to cover the passage of people passing outside. Also, the practice room was small and not soundproofed (at the time).

All of a sudden, the door handle jiggled up and down several times all on its own. There were about four or five of us in the room at the time, and we all saw that handle moving of its own volition. We stopped what we were doing and watched that handle in complete stunned silence until, all of a sudden, it stopped.

Outside the room, all was silent.

We were left staring at one another in surprise.

Another fellow and I were the only ones brave enough to leave the room to find out whether there was anyone else on the other side of the door. There wasn't. No one had had the time to bolt away down the stairs or to throw themselves through the double set of doors that shielded the corridor. We would have heard the passage of their hurried footsteps down the staircase if that had been the case.

Duncan (the fellow with me at the time) and I soon explored the rest of the floor we were on. We checked every room and the landing up there, but there was no one else except us and the friends that we'd been practicing with.

Upon our return to the practice room, Duncan and I found that the others had still not left the room. They still looked pretty freaked out by the occurrence, yet Duncan and I were pretty sanguine about what had occurred. If either of us had been on our own while exploring, maybe things would have been different. It’s always OK when a friend is there to watch your back, isn’t it?

No one could explain what happened to that door handle. All the explanation that we had at that time was that it was a ghost!

I thought that this was the coolest thing to have ever happened to me.

It was some time later, actually, that we found out the story of the college hauntings - and I mean it was several months afterwards that I found out. The friends that were with me in that room were not with me at the time that I heard the story of that ghost, and even then, I heard it second-hand from someone else.

It turns out that the ghost came from the time when the Music Centre was a grain mill and one of the employees was hanged right over the technician's office. Of course, the office was not an office back in grain mill times, yet it was over that modern-day location where the hanging occurred. Whether the man had hung himself or whether it was purely an accident, I have no idea. I don't think it was specified at the time that the tale was told, or the person telling me the story didn't tell me that part. I didn't ask either, for some bizarre reason.

Again, it explained so much about the atmosphere of the place and what had happened to us in that practice studio all those months before.

I can verify that this tale is true, and the friends that were with me who saw that door handle move would undoubtedly back me up on this.

So! A true-life paranormal activity tale for the modern age.