It’s late at night. You’re in the university library, burning the midnight oil to prepare for tomorrow’s exam. Your stress and anxiety levels have never been higher.
Suddenly, as you’re deep in focus, completely absorbed in your notes — thump. Maybe you brush it off without giving it a single thought, but before you can lock back in to your studies, another thump follows.
Once is a coincidence, twice is a pattern, so you look back, but there’s nothing — you’re the only soul on this library section.
But the noise continues. And while you can’t figure out where it’s coming from, it feels as though it creeps closer and closer by the second.
And whether you’ve got less courage than the Cowardly Lion from “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” or Fear from “Inside Out” has taken over the control systems, this might be a sign to pack up and head to a different study location.
Whatever the case is, this is often how ghost stories begin.
Respecting the local ghosts and legends
Repeat “Bloody Mary” three times in front of a mirror, and a bloody Queen Mary would appear.
This is one of the popular urban legends you’ve probably heard growing up.
According to Merriam-Webster, an urban legend, or urban myth, is often a lurid story based on hearsay and widely circulated as true.
They’re often captivating as they contain elements from everyday life, such as looking into the mirror, walking down a street, or driving down a road alone.
While it’s not factually accurate and is used as a form of entertainment, it holds significance to certain communities, as it’s often rooted in real-world events or fears, making it important for understanding human psychology and social dynamics.
The same goes for ghost stories.
When it comes to universities, their communities sometimes tell horror stories to scare the freshmen, but also to pass down a story that has been haunting the community for years.
Moving abroad for your studies means you’d be a victim of one of the stories.
Some advice we can give you is that it’s always better to be safe than sorry. Just because the stories are unfamiliar doesn’t mean you should dismiss them and go about your day. It’s always best to respect it, even if you don’t understand it.
While there aren’t any consequences for disregarding urban legends, some believe in them and take them seriously.
Here are some of the scariest horror stories you’ll probably hear when moving abroad.
6 scariest horror stories that have happened on university campuses
Seguin, Texas, has a haunted past. In 1874, the Magnolia Hotel gave shelter to one of New Braunfels’ worst murderers. Source: AFP
1. Crying, talking, and running water
Just a couple of miles outside San Antonio, Texas, Texas Lutheran University (TLU), with approximately 1,358 students, has a tale to tell.
Among its 11 residential accommodations — seven residence halls and four apartment complexes — one has never failed to give students the creeps.
“In the 60s or 70s, a female student took her own life in her room at Trinity Hall,” says a Buzzfeed user.
Students living at Trinity Hall often hear banging, crying, running water, and talking from the room; however, there’s no electricity or plumbing, and no one has ever been in or out of the room since the incident occurred, well, except for resident advisors.
“One day, I heard a ton of banging, and I informed the RA; they opened the door with the help of maintenance,” the user shares. “We were expecting it to be a raccoon or a couple of squirrels, but there were very human-like scratches and blood-looking stains all over the walls. The roof tiles were also completely black, and there was an inch-deep puddle; it was definitely not a squirrel.”
The only spider we would ever want to see is Spider-Man. Source: AFP
2. ‘She was completely charred and clung to the wall’
Thai horror movies hit different. But the real deal is even more terrifying.
One Reddit user shared a chilling experience during a visit to a Thai university for a swim meet. The campus was infamous for an incident years prior: a girl was murdered in her room on the now-abandoned sixth floor of the female dormitory.
“After swim practice, I decided to shower first and took the elevator up alone,” writes the user. “That’s when it got stuck and the lights went out.”
Suddenly, the elevator door slid open, and they found themselves on floor number six. Panic set in. “I rushed to the fire exit door, but it wouldn’t budge.”
Then came the sight they’d feared: one half-burnt door surrounded by charred walls, which, according to the tale, was because the girl was set on fire by her bullies inside.
And then, the door opened, revealing the horrors beyond it.
“She was completely charred and clung to the wall like a spider. Then, she turned her head vertically upside down to look at me. She had bright red eyes and a bunch of cockroaches in her mouth,” says the user. “As soon as our eyes met, I rushed out of the room and slammed the door.”
It was a scene out of a movie.
The user ran until they spotted a small balcony past a sliding glass door. When they noticed there was a bigger balcony on the floor beneath them, they ripped the mattress from the bed and tossed it under — much to the surprise and shock of the tenant below, who shouted at them to stop.
Too late though, for the user had already made their leap.
Fifteen minutes later, they found themselves watching their coach apologising profusely to the dorm manager. What struck them most wasn’t the scolding, but that everyone believed their story.
Some places need their own exorcists. Source: AFP
3. ‘Haunted AF’
It is said that the ghosts roam Donovan Hall at the University of North Georgia.
A Buzzfeed user shares, “A couple of girls wanted to talk to the ghosts of Donovan Hall, so they brought out an Ouija Board. They made contact with a spirit and started talking to it — it was a female who lived in the dorms in the 1900s.”
When asked her name, their hands were dragged across the board, and it spelt “A.L.I.C.E”. The girls knew exactly who it was; the woman the dorm was named after, Alice Donovan.
In the same hall, you’d often hear laughter and a ball bouncing down the hallway. It belonged to a little girl who was babysat by a resident a few years ago. The girl was taking a bath in a tub and drowned.
Over at Lewis Hall, rumours say that it’s haunted by a girl named Lisa who took her own life after finding out her fiancé, who was drafted, died in the war.
She would torment any girls who had pictures of their boyfriends hung up in their room, often knocking the pictures off the wall or desks.
“I hung up pictures of my family, friends, and fiancé, and left for class one day,” shares the Buzzfeed user. “When I got back, all the photos were still there, except for the one of my fiancé. Several girls in the same hall have experienced this.”
During the Hungry Ghost Festival, hell opens its doors and ghosts come out to explore. Source: AFP
4. Whose red shoes are these?
In many Asian countries, the seventh month of the Chinese lunar calendar is a “spiritual” month. However, it’s more commonly known as “Hungry Ghost Festival” when the “gates of hell” open, allowing restless spirits and the “hungry ghosts” to roam the world of the living.
During this month, a student at a Singaporean university noticed a red pair of shoes outside his dorm, and knowing that the shoes belonged neither to him nor his roommate, he sent out a message to the dorm’s group chat, asking who they belonged to.
No one claimed it.
Knowing it was the seventh month, the student decided to leave the pair of red shoes, as he wasn’t sure if there were “spirits” attached to them. However, his roommate thought otherwise and passed the shoes to someone in the same hall to locate their owner and mess with their neighbours.
A couple of days after passing the shoe around, the student dreamed of waking up to a knock on his door and seeing a little girl. She was looking for the red pair of shoes. He was then awakened by the sound of glass breaking in his room; the wine ass was broken into two pieces.
Creeped out by this, he told his roommate about his dream, and they both decided to retrieve the shoes and place them back where they found them. The next morning, the red shoes were gone.
You know something’s wrong when your dog starts growling at nothing. Source: AFP
5. Hey, there’s something on your shoulders
In Malaysia, three students experienced a spine-chilling encounter in their rented apartment near their university campus. One night, as they were watching a horror movie to celebrate their move into the apartment, one of the student’s dog, who is noted not to bark often, started growling nonstop at the ceiling.
Upon checking, they found the ceiling panels were open. Having no ladder but wanting to close the panels, they informed the building’s security guard to help. The following Sunday, the puppy was growling at the ceiling again, and the panels were once again opened.
The security guard helped for the second time. This time, when he climbed the ladder, he looked into the hole in the ceiling and said a Muslim prayer. He stopped abruptly, climbed down the ladder, and left with a blank look.
Shocked, one of the girls decided to climb up the ladder and take a look. The same happened to her — she didn’t speak and just stared into the distance.
The next morning, she returned to normal and told the others what had happened.
“I felt strangled by a rope when I put my head into the ceiling,” the student shares. “I felt the rope on my neck the whole time. Something got onto my shoulders and came down the ladder with me. When it finally went back into the ceiling, I was released.”
Some schools have libraries, others have ghosts. Would you still enrol if your classroom came with a grave? Source: AFP
6. ‘So… My college is haunted’
You know a campus has history when students claim it’s haunted, and one Reddit user says their university in South Carolina fits the bill.
According to them, the school’s first president and his wife were buried beneath the campus’s very first building. Some say he still walks the grounds at night.
The building’s origins are no less grim; it was reportedly built by prisoners, whose shackles still remain in the basement. Plenty of students have reported hearing strange noises and have seen shadowy figures walking through walls.
The Reddit user had also worked in the student centre, handling behind-the-scenes setups for campus events. During that time, they witnessed several unexplainable occurrences.
Their favourite — and perhaps the most unsettling — involves the old auditorium.
“The light switch is located near the stage and we had to walk through the dark theatre to reach it,” they say. “On more than one occasion, when the lights flicked on, entire rows of seats would suddenly snap upright, just as if people had been sitting there and abruptly stood up.”
