Chapter 35 (cont.)

 

Take a Seat: Geronimooooo!

 

“At the end of our senior year in Southgate, we needed to get rid of our furniture. It was all used and we had this dog who pretty much ATE most of it. But, since we lived on the third floor, we were too lazy to carry it down the steps. So we loaded it onto our deck and tossed it over the side onto the lawn that faced the pool and 896. We threw two couches, a chair, a bike, and a bunch of other stuff over.

 

There was a young married couple (grad students, I think) underneath us and the wife was telling her husband, ‘I swear a couch just went by the window.’ He totally didn't believe her…until she made him watch...and when he saw the Barca Lounger sail by, he actually came upstairs and offered to help us out! We apologized to him and he said he didn't mind...he was just glad his wife wasn't crazy. When we passed their door she looked out and said, ‘I TOLD HIM!’ It was pretty funny.”

 

- Kathie, UD '95

 

Sleepus Interruptus: The Noises of Newark

 

“For two-and-a-half years, I lived in the Lambda Chi house on West Main Street. We had to deal with all sorts of noise. Never mind the normal noise coming from inside the house at all hours of the day and night. My room faced the street so I could always hear people coming back from parties. The train wasn't too bad, but sometimes you could hear it coming through. Every so often a nice car crash in front of the house would wake you up.  The worst noise was from Harleys. Bikers would leave the Deer Park and drive up the street, almost always getting caught at the light. They'd then rev their engines the entire time. It's bad enough with cars or crotch rockets, but that distinct off-cycle engine will wake anyone up!”

 

- Rob S, UD '03

 

DelaWeather: Blizzard Boredom

 

“During the Blizzard of 2003, my roomie and I made the biggest mess of our University Courtyards’ kitchen, after we walked to Pathmark and cooked up anything we could think of to throw together because we were so bored! We had Pina Coladas and S’mores pie for dinner one of those nights. We also built a snowman on our balcony…23 inches of snow blown up against our door was quite the challenge to get through!”

 

- Randi G, UD '03

 

Here Lurks Lucy

 

“I used to live on West Main Street right over the train tracks, past the Deer Park. The house was two houses down from the funeral home, so that was creepy in itself, always seeing the morgue people coming and going. But anyway, we were convinced we had a friendly ghost. We named her ‘Lucy.’ Both my roommates swore they heard babies crying on occasion, but I never heard any of that. What I did hear, clear as day, were footsteps on our wooden stairs, while I was home alone right before Christmas. I was sitting on the couch facing the steps and I looked up and there was no one...but I was chill, for whatever reason I was not scared at all.

 

Two of us also had dogs that we would bring to the house every now and then (a Rottie and a Doberman). Both refused to go upstairs, but when they finally did, they would just sit at my doorway and stare out into the open hallway (which was the entire second floor) and the hair on their backs would stand up; they would just sit there and growl. But we never saw or knew what they were growling at.

 

The house used to be a dentist's office at one point as well, so there were lots of sinks and cabinets all over the house, as well as hidden rooms with no windows and hidden connections from room to room, even between floors! The cabinets in my room had a label on one shelf that said ‘Occult Blood.’ I kid you not. The only semi-frightening thing was once when a glass baking dish exploded on our kitchen counter for no reason. No one was touching it, it wasn't hot or anything. Just exploded!

 

Summer of '99 is when we moved in, and The Blair Witch Project had come out then. So the smart girls that we were, we used to drive at night back by White Clay Creek on all those back roads and scare ourselves silly, then go home to our haunted house. We even pulled all of our mattresses in to one room, and slept like that for weeks!”

 

- Jen M, UD '01

 

(Digger’s Note: Forget about if the house is haunted. The thought of those girls sleeping in the same room for weeks gives me a boner.)