Warwick University Ghost

The following event happened to me some years ago, the reason I am now submitting my story to this site is that due to going on a recent Ghost Walk around the City of York on my honeymoon (romantic I know) what happened has been brought back to the forefront of my mind and has been playing on my thoughts quite a lot recently. Ideally I'd like to hear back from anyone who has had a similar experience in the place where it occurred, the dorms at Warwick University, as this would reinforce my belief that it actually happened (and perhaps convince my friend that I didn't imagine it).

My best friend and I were around 18 at the time and we had travelled to Warwick from Manchester to attend a Japanese Convention over the weekend. I couldn't give the exact dates but I know it was in August sometime - I'd ask my friend but she's currently away in America and it's a little hard to get hold of her.

Instead of spending more money on a room each we decided to book just a single room and share the cost of that, being best mates we had stayed at each others houses plenty of times top-and-tailing in a single bed. The dorms were modern, the room small, simple and like every other room in the country meant for student living. As you walked in there was a bathroom door to your left, past that on the right a desk running along one wall and opposite that a single bed. It was a normal space, I didn't feel an atmosphere, it didn't feel cold and there were no unexplained smells.

The first two days passed without incident, absolutely nothing out of the ordinary occurred.

On our final night we had been out at the local student union having drinks with the people we had met, having a good time. We had been walked back to our building (not because we were too drunk, we spent a lot of time chatting about the convention and joking around with these guys). We went to bed as normal and promptly fell asleep.

At some point, I couldn't say what time, I awoke for some reason to find my friend had moved in the bed and was lay beside me (she moves around a lot so this didn't strike me as unusual). The only light in the room came from under the door as the lights on the outside landing were kept on through the night so I couldn't say whether or not she was facing me in bed. She then proceeded to get out of the bed and in those few split seconds between getting out of the bed and standing up I noticed something beside me. I was lay on my left side, against the wall and I could feel with my right arm something against my legs. I looked up only to see my best friend still lay where she normally would be, fast asleep. So what had been next to me?

Like I said, all this occurred over the space of just a few seconds, and after that realisation my body went cold. I looked up to see it backing away towards the end of the desk closest the door, all the while holding itself, moving its hands up and down its arms in the same way you might rub your arms when you're cold... And yet it wasn't the same, it was unnatural, it's whole body was shaking, twitching. I could only see its outline from the light from under the door - I couldn't tell you if it was male or female, what it was wearing, what its face was like, only that it was probably about 5 and a half feet tall and skinny.

Terrified, I turned away as far as I could and covered my face with my hands saying "Oh my God, Oh my God, Oh my God" causing my friend to wake up. I don't remember our conversation, only that she was half asleep and didn't pursue the matter when I wouldn't tell her what was wrong. I must have stayed like that for a long time and fallen asleep again.

The next day I was teased mercilessly by my friend, who forced me to recall what had happened to our other friends there who were creeped out by it and didn't really make fun.

Recently I've tried to go through it again in my mind, trying to rationalise it. I had had a few drinks, yes, but in the 8 years that I've been with my husband we've been on countless nights out and he has never known me to talk in my sleep, nor do I tend to have such vivid dreams (I usually fall into a deep, dreamless sleep after drinking) and I have never dreamt of anything while in this state that has terrified me so much.

That is not to say that I haven't had dreams which have scared me, of course I have, but I have always on reflection known that they were not real, there is always something that doesn't quite fit, like places or people being different. I was lay in the place where I fell asleep, so was my friend, the room was exactly the same and by freaking out because of what I saw I woke my friend up.

I've always been interested in Ghost Stories, I used to read them all the time when I was younger but on that weekend away ghosts couldn't have been any further from my mind.

Whatever it was, it seemed very unstable, like it was extremely paranoid or anxious - I thought maybe it was a former student that had perhaps committed suicide. However, I did a little bit of research on google and apparently at the Gibbet Hill Halls of Residence at Warwick University people have heard the sounds of someone sobbing hysterically and that it has been reported that these halls were built on a demolished building which had housed the bodies of people who had been exectuted (Gibbet Hill is so named as it is close to the place where people were hanged using a 'gibbet'). I therefore believe what I saw was a person sentenced to hang, cold and starving in a cell awaiting their fate.

When I think of it I still get that feeling of horror, I feel almost as if I'm about to cry and I get a sick feeling. I've never seen anything like it in my life and although I do believe in ghosts it is only to a certain extent - I just can't put it down to a bad dream, or being drunk, I truly believe that what I saw that night was a ghost and I really, really hope that I never experience anything like it again.