The Terror in Todd Hall
“Gross.”
Maya shone her flashlight across the infamous Todd Hall bathroom. It was just an average bathroom, dirty, cramped, and smelly. The five kids stood close together quietly looking around the unremarkable room. This particular room was proportedly the residentiual suite of Jessica Todd, the old school marm of the Oregon Normal School, long before the college became Western Oregon University. Todd was a woman remembered for her stern and sometimes cruel approach to discipline, particularly when it came to boys in her dorm in the company of promiscuous girls. Armed with a Ouija board, a case of beers, and flashlights, the students hoped to find her lingering spirit.
“Bro, this place seriously gives me the creeps,” Anderson said, shining his flashlight up at the ceiling.
“Seriously? It’s a bathroom,” Sarah chuckled, “the scariest thing in here is the germs!”
Nate had laid out the Ouija board they picked up at Walmart earlier on the bathroom floor. Next to it he lit two small candles with a match.
“Gather ‘round my children,” he said in his cheesiest creepy voice, “let us begin the seance.”
Jack flicked Nate in the head. “Keep goofing off, dumbass and you’re gonna bring a demon home with you.”
“Oooh, is it a hot demon?” Nate taunted.
Jack rolled his eyes and sat down on the other side of the board. The others followed and soon they had formed a circle on the floor.
“Ok, Mr. Ghost Expert, what’s the proper way to use this thing?” Nate asked sarcastically.
“Everybody put two fingers on the planchette, don’t take them off. If it moves in a figure eight, close the session. If it moves in a repeated arc, close the session. If it spells out Lucifer, immediately close the session. Whatever you do, don’t take your hands off the planchette before the session is closed. Also don’t ask any stupid questions, definitely don’t ask if there’s anyone out there, Nate.”
Nate pretended to look offended. They all placed their hands on the planchette. They sat in silence for a moment exchanging excited and nervous glances over candlelight.
Sarah cleared her throat and spoke, “We wish to contact the spirit of Jessica Todd! Are you here?”
The planchette seemed to shiver under their fingertips before slowly moving to yes. Maya gasped.
“Holy shit,” Anderson whispered.
“Someone ask something!” Sarah whispered frantically.
“Ah! Okay, um,” Maya stammered, “Why— why are you here?”
The planchette moved slowly across the board. D. It stopped and turned. U. back to a T. It moved again. Y. It stopped. Duty.
“Yeah no shit!” Nate scoffed.
The group hushed him as the planchette began to move again. Faster this time, but sharp and precise, like it was angry. It jumped between letters the group sat transfixed on the planchette trying to piece together the message quickly.
“L-E-A-V-E B-O-Y,” Jack spelled, “I don’t think she likes you, Nate.”
“Whatever, man, wasn’t that her thing, or some shit, she didn’t like boys?” Nate replied.
“Okay, well I’m a girl, so I’ll ask the next question,” Sarah said.
She leaned over the board, but before she said anything the planchette began to move again.
“What the hell? I didn’t say anything!”
The group shushed her as they watched the planchette move across the board. It moved slowly. W-H-O-R-E. Sarah gasped and brought her hands to her chest. At that moment the two candles flickered out and the room began to feel suffocating, like all the air had turned to water, and they were all slowly drowning.
“Close the session! Close the session!” Jack panicked, “Goodbye!”
They quickly moved the planchette over to goodbye, and everything seemed to settle. They sat silently for a moment exchanging glances, before Jack broke the silence.
“I said don’t take your hands off the planchette,” Jack said, shaking his head.
“Dude, leave her alone,” Anderson said.
“Yeah, come on, Nate was probably just moving it to freak us out,” Maya said, casting an accusatory glance in his direction.
“I most certainly did not!” Nate said, taking a swig of beer, “but the thing’s bullshit regardless.”
“Then why did the candles go out?” Sarah sniffled.
Nate shrugged. “A draft? They’re old? Jack was mouth breathing? I don’t know, have a drink.”
Nate passed around beers and the group started to mellow out again. Having grown less frightened, they moved on to other topics of conversation. Before long they started to get bored. Nate threw back the rest of his drink and tossed the empty can behind him.
“Are we gonna see a fucking ghost or what?” he asked, drawing the Ouija board towards him, “Think if we piss her off she’ll appear?”
“Nate, stop,” Anderson warned.
“What? What do I have to do? Say her name thirteen times in a mirror? Sacrifice a virgin? I wanna see a ghost!”
He made a big show of flipping off the room, before placing both his middle fingers on the planchette.
“Come on you old hag!”
“Nate stop it!” Maya yelled.
“You there? ‘Cause I don’t believe you are! Do something! Turn on a sink, flush a toilet, slap me!”
“Nate!” Jack yelled.
The tension rose in the room as Nate kept yelling out to the other side and the rest begged him to stop. The air got that thick, suffocating feeling again as the chaos swelled. Then it stopped. And Nate started laughing.
“Aw, man you guys are wimps!” he mocked, “oh look out I think it’s the boogeyman! Ooooohhhhhh!”
Maya slapped him on the shoulder.
“Come on, there’s no ghosts! She didn’t do anything, it’s just a scary story to give the campus some culture.”
As the group berated Nate for being a dick, Sarah turned around as she noticed a steady drip. drip. drip. coming from one of the faucets.
“Hey guys?” she turned around, “was that faucet leaking before?”
The group stood to look. Sarah leaned in close to the faucet, and then the knobs turned fully and scalding hot water poured out of the faucet splashing into her face. The sink was gushing; boiling water filled the room with steam. Sarah screamed as the water burned her face, she looked into the mirror to find her face red and steaming. Her skin started to peel and burn, covering her face with blood and blisters. With a shrill cry of pain Sarah collapsed onto the floor. The group backed away as the scalding rush of water began to cascade over the counter and onto the floor. The bubbling tide of water sped across the linoleum. The water soaked into their shoes burning their feet. Jack let out a scream.
Anderson leapt across the floor, slipping in the water as he landed. He grabbed the door handle rattling it back and forth furiously but the door wouldn’t budge. The water was up to their ankles by now. Anderson slammed his substantial weight against the door repeatedly. With a loud crack signifying the splitting of the door frame, it swung open. Anderson fell onto the hallway floor, the water pooled around his head as it spread into the hallway. Anderson got to his feet as the rest of the group scrambled out of the bathroom.
“Wait!” Jack gasped, “What about Sarah?”
Sarah lay in the water as it mixed with her blood. Her flesh was marred and burned by the heat of the water. Bits of flesh fell into the steaming water as it swirled and spun around her blood drenched hair. Aside from this, she was completely motionless.
“Oh my god!” Nate groaned, “let’s just go, we need to go!”
Jack nodded slowly. The four of them ran down the hallway, it was very dark, there were no lights on, the emergency exit signs had gone dark, and outside the windows were black as pitch. The only light by which to see was the light from the bathroom that was slowly fading away. Anderson led the way down the hallway, he ran without thinking and then his foot went right through air. He was falling. Maya grabbed the back of his Jacket, screaming for Jack to help her. They pulled him up to the top of the stairs.
Anderson froze, gazing down at the dark steps. He could have died. After a pause they started down the stairs slowly, being far more careful than they had been. They had barely taken three steps when Maya stopped them.
“Where’s Nate?” she asked in a low voice.
A muffled scream sounded from behind them. They turned around to see Nate floating just above the floor held aloft by the ghostly form of Jessica Todd. She had one hand over his mouth and one around his neck. Maya’s eyes locked in terror with the spector’s as she took her hand away from Nate’s mouth and pressed her finger to her lips. Then she—and Nate—vanished.
“Nate! NATE!” Anderson shouted in a hoarse voice.
“Please, oh god,” Jack sobbed, “let’s just go, oh my god!”
“Okay, okay,” Anderson said in a shaky voice.
He turned around towards the stairs and the already dark hallway became as dark as a starless sky. He couldn’t see anything, he heard nothing. He called out into the darkness for his friends, but even his own voice could not permeate the void. With a flash the pale face of Jessica Todd appeared in front of him. Her sunken decaying eyes gleamed with malice. Like a loud hiss her voice echoed in his skull.
“You should have fallen!”
Anderson’s neck was twisted around with a sickening snap as he crumpled to the ground. Maya screamed. Jack stared in shock, one moment his friend was fine, the next he was dead. They didn’t see it happen and yet they were watching the whole time.
“Oh my god!” Maya shouted, “She wasn’t even there, we didn’t see her! She just— Oh my god, oh god! We’re gonna die!”
“No, fuck that! Let’s run, we can make it,” Jack started to hyperventilate, “We have to.”
Maya grabbed his hand and led the way down the stairs. They ran as fast as they could, their feet were like thunder in the deathly silent halls. Jack slammed into the main door grabbing for the handle, he shook the door violently, but it wouldn’t open. Maya placed a shaking hand on his shoulder.
“What about the emergency exits?” she said.
Jack nodded. They turned and ran back down the hallway. Maya’s breathing was getting heavier and heavier. They reached an exit, again Jack tried to open the door and again it stayed shut. Maya was gasping for air in a panic. Jack looked around. A window. A shock of pain went through his elbow as he repeatedly bashed it against the glass. He felt Maya’s hand grip the edge of his shirt.
He looked down to see Maya sinking to the floor, clutching her throat as her breaths became strangled and far too scarce. Her eyes bulged and her face began to turn blue. He grabbed her before she hit the floor. He pulled her hands away from her throat and saw it continue to collapse as an unseen force slowly strangled her. Her skin bruised and folded in on itself as her windpipe collapsed and she took her last mangled breath.
Jack wiped tears from his eyes as he turned back to the window. He beat upon the glass as his blood rushed in his ears, his desperate heartbeat grew louder and louder as it echoed in time with the beating on the window. And as the beating of his heart grew louder his vision faded to black.
“The Todd Hall murders of 2002 lead to the deaths of Maya Perez, Anderson Mayfield, Sarah Greene, and Nathan Hastings. The suspected murderer, Jack Fisher, was never caught, seen, or heard from after that night. Some contest that the ghost of Jessica Todd was the real killer and Fisher was killed along with the rest of the students,” Elliot read the passage out of his book on local folklore. “Sounds pretty creepy.”
He shone a flashlight up at a second story window, and for a moment he thought he saw something move. Just a trick of the light, he thought. He turned around to his friends with a grin.
“Want to check it out?”
There are few experiences more isolating than transitioning from military to civilian life. This experience can be even tougher when transitioning to something as alien as academia. You can redouble that feeling of isolation once again now that these sane former service members are now actively social isolating creating something of an isolation within the preexisting isolating condition. This is the world our veterans now live in, one with unprecedented levels of isolation for an already at-risk population. Within the university system, veterans along with LGBTQ students are those who experience the greatest levels of isolation and ultimately have a much higher rate of completing suicide; we are now taking these populations and having increasing their isolation levels, making the risk of depression and other mental health concerns even more real. We all need to do a thorough job of checking in on each other, but we cannot always rely on other to check in on us, so we need to check in on ourselves.
For me, jumping on my Harley and getting my fists in the wind can completely push the reset button on my metaphorical stress meter and make me feel like a whole new man. This is just one example of a self-care activity and I can scarcely think of a person who would refer to a bearded, tattooed man pulling back on the throttle of his iron horse as froofy or hippy-dippy. This is not to say that everyone should go out and by a Road King as their sole means of destressing (I’m also not explicitly stating that you shouldn’t), I’m just using my riding as a way to illustrate that self-care is not simply constrained to baths with aromatics, yoga, or mediation (all of which actually sound really nice to me, “froofy” or not). It’s all about doing something for yourself, by yourself, and leaving the trials and tribulations of life behind if only for a moment.