When I was a sophomore at Mount Holyoke, I lived in Pearson's Hall. I lived in a double on the second floor that had a large window that looked directly out over the rear sun porch. One night, I awoke to see that my roommate's closet had opened and her closet light was on. I thought she had come into the room when I was asleep, but realized she was not there. Suddenly I became aware of a figure standing between my bed and Julie's closet. It was female, in white robes and a full head of hair. All at once her arms extended down and out from her body. My sense was that this figure did not wish me any good. I turned on the lights and screamed...even ran and told my friends, who told the head resident, who frankly thought I was nuts. Some professors from the theater department even spent some time in my room trying to see if they could pick up some trace of this ghost. She appeared in my room repeatedly over the year, eventually with a new behavior of swirling her arms in the air in front of her. Over time, I would wake up and see her face in front of me...she once tapped me on the back. I was terrified. Oddly enough, when I moved to Wilder Hall the following year, she appeared to me there as well, but never did I see her off campus. On one particularly frightening night in Wilder, I awoke to see her swirling her arms and experienced myself suffocating, as if she were drawing my breath into her and out of me. This happened a few more times over the two years I lived in Wilder. I slept with the lights on throughout the rest of me MHC days.
[April 29, 2007]
