Haunted Rooms

I think I mentioned how my dorm room on 10th & Broadway had a door to the roof of the building in it. We were in the Penthouse. When you exited the elevator you almost walked directly into the study lounge for the dorm. In that room, to the left, were two floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, framing a fireplace. These bookshelves once served as the entrance and exits to a speakeasy. You could see the hinges that had been painted over thousands of times. Now, three dorm rooms lay behind there but reached by a separate, not-as-sexy corridor.

On the day I moved into this room on the 16th floor, my roommate did not happen to be there with the roof key. So Mom, Dad and I climbed up onto the toilet, on to the sink and shimmied out the window and on to the roof. We, all three, were skinny enough that we didn't suffer a Marilyn Monroe-stuck-in-the-porthole-window moment. But it was a small window and it was 16 floors up and it was narrow.

I loved it out on that roof. We had to be very careful though because other residents could see us out there if they looked out the window at the right time.

I tell you all of this to establish the history of the dorm. It was a hotel at one point. Speak easy, etc...

So one night, I'm alone and sleeping peacefully when I'm awoken by....well, by a sense that I'm not so alone any more. The Texan liked to mess with me and I was convinced he was up to something. Always the first to declaim himself straight, he was also always trying to climb into bed with me. And too many nights among friends were spent playing truth or dare with the Texan and I locked in a closet together.

Anyhow, I'm lying in bed facing the wall and convinced that I am not alone. I call out the Texan's name. No response.

I turned over in bed very quickly and was glad that I had left the bathroom light on. I saw a shadow race across the wall of my room and into the bathroom hallway and then disappear. I waited for the door to slam shut. Or something. I call the Texan's name again. No answer. Once more. No answer. So I turn the light on next to my bed and get out and go into the hallway. There's no one there. There's no one in the Texan's bed. There's no one in the hallway. There's no one in the closet. (Well...) There's no one in the bathroom. I start shaking, uncontrollably.

I race back to my bed and pick up the phone and call the Texan at his "girlfriend's" room a few floors down. She answers.

"Is the Texan there?"

"Yes."

"Has he been there all night?"

"Yes."

"Are you guys fucking with me? "

"No. What are you talking about?"

"Put him on the phone right now."

So the Texan picks up and he's there and there's no way he could have gotten from our room down to hers so quickly. So I tell him to get his ass up here pronto and he's sleeping with me that night because I ain't staying in that room alone.

That wasn't the last time I slept in a bedroom with ghosts I couldn't define haunting me.