Nosy Bathroom Ghost

If ghosts exist, how do they spend their time? Are they mindless apparitions, reliving the last moments of their lives, or self-aware, watching us live ours? I think they may watch us.

Last week I posted about seeing a shadowy figure in Old Main. That wasn’t the only unsettling experience I had while working in that building. There seemed to be a presence in the bathroom, which makes the idea of being watched all the more unnerving.

The ladies restroom on the ground floor of Old Main was small–it only had two stalls. The one furthest from the door was larger, designed to be accessible for people with disabilities. On the surface, there was nothing spooky about the room. There was a tall window set in the exterior wall, where the larger stall was. The window was frosted for privacy but still provided plenty of light. There was nothing visibly creepy about the restroom–the walls were painted a pristine white, so there were no dark and gloomy corners where something could hide.

However (and there’s always a however, isn’t there?), whenever I used the smaller stall, I always got the sense that the larger stall was occupied–that I wasn’t alone in the restroom, even though I could clearly see that no one was using the other stall. Still, the feeling of someone being there was so tangible, I’d find myself peering down, looking for feet in the other stall. It was an odd feeling, but one I kept to myself out of fear of appearing paranoid.

Then, one day, a co-worker came into my office and said, offhand, “You know, it’s the weirdest thing…” and went on to describe exactly what I’d experienced. We decided, given that our experiences corroborated with each other, and considering other ghostly rumors we’d heard about the building, that there could indeed be a nosy bathroom ghost, à la Moaning Myrtle. You would think the idea of being watched while doing our business would have caused us to use the upstairs restroom instead, but it didn’t. Hey, when you gotta go, you gotta go.

© Melissa Eskue Ousley 2015