Are you eager to make connections at university but have no patience for the live heartbeats and corporeal bodies of your classmates? Are you exhausted by the chatter of Courtyard café? Overstimulated by the lights and amorphous alcoholic substances of Manning? Don’t worry, I’m the same.
Thankfully, we are both inhabitants of a deeply haunted campus with a million forgotten corners and empty courtyards. Here, in these quiet places, you’ll find some folks more worth your time.
The Cellar Theatre (Gutter)
Many unfortunate souls have come a little late for a SUDS show and found the doors closed on them. This is not, as many suspect, to punish you for missing the bus. No, the doors must be shut before every performance to stop one particular visitor from coming inside.
At 7:15pm, on every show night, a ghostly figure rises out of the paint-streaked gutter outside the theatre. He’s tall and thin, with a mop of black hair that covers his face, except for his glowing yellow eyes. If he’s feeling confident, he’ll knock, but don’t let him in! He’ll watch from outside, fingers clutching the barred windows, and try to catch your eye while you’re having your make-up change done. Legend says that one brave stage manager once cracked the window and threw a fake candle at him thinking he was a Masters of Moving Image student, but this is hearsay.
(3/10) Romantic but clingy.
Anderson Stuart Courtyard
Only a very shy ghost would take up residence here, so step lightly. Hidden amidst the creepy echoing corridors of the Anderson Stuart building is a perfect gothic hideaway, complete with a fountain topped with a raven statue. A stone spiralling staircase, stained glass windows, and odd crooked spires peer down from the walls.
Also peering down at you is a shy grey woman, stained with all the colours of rain after so many years in the courtyard’s damp embrace. She’s a good listener, but when her turn comes to speak, all I can hear is the fountain gurling. It doesn’t get in the way of us though. Silence flourishes in the spell of this forgotten place.
If you’re tired of being surrounded by blazing ambition, then come sit with her and look at the specimens on display nearby. Feel yourself becoming still like them, a calm dead thing surrendered to the eyes of science. Oh, lord, I feel a chill.
(9/10) Hazchem.
Old Teachers College
Approach this little bastard if you dare but be warned — he can sense when you’re in any kind of hurry. Forget whiling away the last ten minutes before tutorial to seek him out, wait until you have a few good hours to be properly and gloriously lost. The OTC is home to a very bored poltergeist, who gets his kicks by moving the corridors around and throwing in fake rooms to send the Psychology students round in circles. Good luck exiting the building using a different staircase to the one that brought you in. It was a poor decision to trust the numbering of the rooms… I once found a whole art exhibit lost in the endless pockets of this building, and it has since vanished into its ever-expanding depths, presumably never to be seen again.
I’ve never seen the poltergeist so to speak, but whenever I find myself tricked by the backwards numbers in the elevator, I can feel his grin coming out of the walls.
(5/10) A bold choice.
Great Hall Alcove
Next time you are in the Great Hall, look up and you will notice a little windowed lookout high up on the left. Accessible via the adjoining upstairs section of the quad and concealed from within via a red curtain, it is private, elegant, and vastly unnoticed. Sitting there most nights is a man smoking a cigarette. He died laughing one night in 1911 while dropping thumbtacks on the bald spots of academics who are long now deceased. His mouth is worn away from all the chatting he’s done, but sit there long enough and he’ll give you a wink every now and then. Watch the proceedings of that ancient hall from high above, safe and superior.
(10/10) Dinner and a show.
A final resting place (to be determined)
I would like to think I have at least a few years left. But if I am to pass away someday soon, no doubt my spirit will find a quiet place to settle down on campus. Maybe I’ll wander the Vice Chancellor’s garden until I dissipate into fragrant mist. When everyone eventually forgets Courtyard, maybe I’ll take my residence in the Bevery. Who knows? The possibilities are endless.
(?/10) Come and visit, won’t you?
