Creative writing majors have a home on Arizona State University campus. And I don't mean a dorm, I mean a literal home, like a house. It's been there for almost the whole history of the school. Virginia Piper and her husband built this Victorian-style, 3 bedroom home and worked out of it. They hosted poets, authors, and artists of all kinds. When the college became a university, and when Virginia couldn't live there anymore from her advanced age, they donated the house and it's been used ever since as a meeting place for student writers. Guest speakers give small, intimate lectures in the sitting room and parlor, and the bedrooms are offices. Just imagine this house, complete with a garden and a few cats roaming around in the shade. It looks like a serious house right in the middle of the college campus! And it's really haunted.
I didn't know that when I went to turn in a paper for a writing contest. I'd never been inside and they had the submission box right by the door. When I went in to look around, and get out of the heat, I got the creeps. It was kind of like nothing was in focus when I looked around. I knew there were people inside the house, maybe 1 or 2 people upstairs, so I wasn't bothered by noises... Except when the submission box lid clattered. Nothing was in that box except papers, ok? It wasn't locked or anything, but that lid was heavy. There's no wind, no ventilation that could have moved that indoors. Honestly it sounded like someone had just barely lifted the lid with the pad of their finger then let it drop. That box was a full 6 inches away from my left elbow and I was the only person on the first floor.
It was almost two semesters later I was in a writing class and they got to talking about the house. This was the first I'd been told other people thought it was haunted. The room kind of lit up with people mentioning experiences. The professor came in and we all got kind of sheepish, but she looked at us and confirmed what we were saying. She candidly told us she refused to work in there alone after dark, and that she'd been locked in a bathroom upstairs when she was the only one there. She said there were no footsteps coming to or from the door when it happened and I've been up there. The floors squeak something awful. From her experience, she heard the door lock (which shouldn't happen), she tried to get out for about a minute and a half, then she heard it unlock. She told us she left right after that.
I didn't spend a lot of time there, but I personally think this might be Virginia poking around and tending her old house and the students.
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