It did not take long for the stories to begin circulating about campus. Stories about candles in the chapel that would ignite or extinguish all by themselves. About doors that would inexplicably swing open or closed. The wooden steps of the staircase, people claimed, would methodically creak in sequence from bottom to top, with no one there to make them creak. And on it went. Eventually, the legend of the ghost of Abigail Elizabeth Hargraves took hold, and after a handful of years, that legend gave birth to a tradition: every year on Halloween night, the students would gather outside the chapel for a retelling of the events of October 31, 1911.
This year’s production began, as it always did, at 10:00 P.M. Nathan Harding, one of Thomas’s classmates, stood before a microphone on the landing at the top of the steps that led to the chapel entrance. A set of speakers sat off to his left and his right to amplify his voice, and the two wooden doors behind him were open wide. The building was fully lit. He raised his hands to quiet the crowd, and without any introduction he began retelling the story of Abigail Elizabeth Hargraves in somber but bracing tones.
As Nathan spoke, the crowd noticed the methodical switching off of the individual lights within the chapel. At the conclusion of the story, the final light was extinguished and the organizers of the event walked out of the front doors and onto the landing, flanking their leader and his microphone on either side. Nathan explained that the other students had completed a thorough search of the building to ensure that it was empty, and that all of the doors and windows were locked. It was now pitch-black inside. He shut the two wooden doors and, after raising his arm skyward to display the key he held in his hand, locked them from the outside.
A growing murmur ran through the crowd as he stepped back to the microphone. “The chapel is now empty and locked,” he announced. “But we’ve also placed a microphone inside with a wireless connection to these speakers,” he said, gesturing with his hands. “If the legend is true, perhaps Abigail will pay us a visit—” He was cut off by the sound of a loud wooden creak that burst through the speakers. It was followed by another, and they continued apace, the unmistakable sounds of someone making her way through the chapel and up the spiral staircase.
After a few moments, the creaking came to a stop and was replaced by a gentle sob. The more attentive students noticed a flickering light emanating from behind the round, stained glass window of the choir loft. Suddenly, there was a high-pitched, terror-filled scream, followed momentarily by the thud of a falling body crashing onto the floor below. The crowd of students had been frozen in place, listening with rapt attention, but now there were shrieks. Sophia’s grip on Thomas’s arm tightened, and the student organizers all bolted at once from the landing and disappeared into the night.
At that moment, the lights atop the lampposts that lined the sidewalks all went out at once, throwing the campus into darkness and eliciting a collective scream from the crowd. For about 30 seconds, what had been mere commotion turned to pandemonium. And then, just as suddenly, a bonfire erupted to life in a large fire pit at the center of the quad. Nathan Harding, grinning from ear to ear, triumphantly held a torch overhead. A cacophony of gasps and sighs was followed by an eruption of laughter. The lampposts were reignited, beer cans began emerging from coolers, and the students spontaneously burst forth into conversation as they coalesced into small groups.
Thomas was duly entertained. He judged it the best performance of his four years at the school. At the same time, there was a nagging sense of irritation that threatened to erode his good humor.
He was a hardened unbeliever in anything but the tangible and the scientific. No matter how good the performance, the screams and the shrieks were signs of a doltishness that had no place at a reputable school like this. Some of the students had even been talking about having a hard time getting to sleep that night. Really?? he wondered to himself. How did some of these people get admitted to college?
He then reminded himself that he shouldn’t be surprised: most of these students were spending over an hour each Sunday inside that chapel, something he found no less fatuous. But he clamped down on his irritation. Sophia was one of those students. Sophia. Thomas’s thought process was interrupted by a sudden awareness that she was no longer with him. He surveyed the crowd but caught no sight of her. She’ll be back, he thought to himself.
Shaking off the distraction, he jumped into the nearest conversation, soaking in both the beer and the warmth of the fire as the outside air cooled. Sophia eventually returned and joined him, but the look on her face told Thomas that something had left her shaken. She nevertheless entered the fray and chatted amiably with their friends. Thomas made a mental note to ask her what had happened, but by the end of the evening he had forgotten about it entirely.
