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Stony Brook University 1996:

There have been some interesting happenings here on Long Island. I was not sure which one to share and maybe I'll share them all. This particular tale takes place on the Stony Brook University Campus. I attended school at SUNY Stony Brook. Me, my future husband, and my best friend all lived in the same dorm building.
It all started one night when I was up in my friend Darcy's room chatting on the Internet around 2AM. She had just gone into the bathroom when her computer went dead. I looked up when her room lights went dead but I could still see the hall lights under the door were on. Then they went dead too. Now the weird thing is I happened to have a flashlight in my pocket and I had been about to ditch it before I went to her room but for some reason unknown to me I put it back in my pocket. It was bulky and a bit uncomfortable. I turned on my flashlight as Darcy screamed, having found herself in a dark bathroom all alone. I went to go get her with my light and we went back to the room.

Now if you know anything about dorms, you will know that students are up at all hours of the night and you would expect heads to pop out of doors at the blackout. The halls were dead quiet. We became uneasy sitting in a dark room so I suggested going downstairs to the lobby as there was a generator and more students would be around. We made our way down the stairs and noticed all the other floors were out too. Everything was so quiet you would think you were lost somewhere in the twilight zone. As we reached the bottom of the stairs we heard a middle to high-pitched male voice say "Meow". I thought it was some sort of prank so I yelled back up the stars "Hey there are you out up there too? There was no response. I asked it who it was and a few more silly remarks. Darcy was absolutely petrified for some reason and started backing away calling me to come with her. The man or thing started walking down the stairs real slow you know like "thump" "thump". I didn't like the way it sounded and his feet were really heavy.

Needless to say we bolted through the lobby (no one there of course) and ran up the other stairway. We got to Darcy's room and found the door ajar. We were pretty sure that had been locked so I went in and checked all the corners. There was no one there. We got in the door and had just locked it when we heard those footsteps again. They echoed down the hallway and stopped outside our door. I could see the shadow of feet underneath the door. After what might have been a few minutes of fright I yanked open the door. At that point the footprints were still visible under the door but when I swung it open no one was there. It was at that moment that the lights all came back on and about 10 students came out of their rooms asking if the lights had gone off for a second.

Nothing happened the rest of the night and it was at least 6 months until another episode took place. This was the one with my future husband John. John and me were sitting in his dorm room talking and playing chess at around 4AM. I had just net him a few weeks ago and we were sharing ghost stories and the like. I was telling him about this phenomenon that had happened to me before that I termed Mr. Meow. Anyway as I was relating this story, which also happened in the same dormitory, we both heard a scratch at the door. This was a rather loud and forceful scratch. Then the phone rang. After a few rings the scratch would start again and it went on like this over and over. On the third scratch John opened the door, right in the middle of the noise. The scratching continued for a split second but no one was there. I then picked up the phone. There was a man on the phone literally chanting something strange and rhythmic. I handed John the phone and he told me he heard the chanting stop abruptly and there was silence. He gave the phone to me and it started again. After some time went by with no scratches we decided that we were going to make a run for my room as I had a test in the morning and needed sleep somehow. Being the protective big guy he is he volunteered to run with me. We sprang out of the room and made it to mine with no obstacles. The halls were empty.

I turned in and went to my bed. My roommate was snoring and it made me feel a little bit better to hear normal noises. I lay down and within seconds heard the clicking of my magnetic closet door being opened and closed. I knew that sound well from being a student. I then felt, by my feet a huge weight sit down on the bed. I felt its rear end (I guess) touch and lean on my feet like someone sitting at the foot of the bed. I sat up a bit and actually saw the depression it made in the bed but without anything to fill it. Too scared to scream I threw my blanket over it and it hung in the air with the approximate shape of the figure. I grabbed my keys and my book, both lying near the door and bolted. Needless to say I spent the whole night downstairs in the lobby studying.

Well actually that is not entirely true. I did intend to study, or at least to distract my mind a bit. There was maybe 1 person in the laundry room down the hall and the rest of the lobby was empty. It was 5AM so this was not altogether strange. After a few moments I started to get the creeps again, you know that feeling if you have ever experienced anything yourself. Everything got really quiet. There were 2 doors, one on each end of the lobby. They both opened and slammed shut at the exact same time. I froze in place for a few moments but felt increasingly like I was being watched. It was coming from behind me against the wall. Quickly I jumped up and turned around.

The only interesting thing of note was a weird balloon shaped shadow that I could not explain. I tried to find what was making the shadow. It was huge like a balloon half my height. I stared at it, trying to figure out its source. It began to wiggle back and forth faster and faster until it was a blurry frenzy. It was much like Jacob's ladder but without a face. I ran out of the building as the sun was starting to come up and ended up walking around campus the rest if the night. When I got back it was around 7 AM and things just felt safe, I do not know what it is about daylight and ghosts but it usually seems to work.

The next morning I spoke to John and he said he had been hearing strange things in his room too but he did not have nearly as rough of a time. Later on that day I was alone in my room and I called up another friend of mine to tell her about the story. As I was talking to her I hear, inches above my head, squeaking noises as if someone was rocking an old and creaky rocking chair. It got louder the more I spoke until I was sure I would see one right over my head doing a ghostly back and forth. As soon as I stopped discussing the events the noise died down. At this point I was cowering on the floor in pieces between the sleep deprivation and the events being fresh in my mind.

I am actually getting a chill writing this down, as I have been rather selective with when and where I tell this story. There were other little things that happened, I had some shells on my desk and I would see them being moved around in the evening whenever I was alone. It would start slow and get faster ad faster until I got so scared I would leave the room. I also had something happen outside the dorm. I was returning to my room late one night and as I was walking through the parking lot I heard a rather high pitched female voice say "Meow" at me from somewhere in the parking lot. It was exactly the same inflection and tone used in the original Mr. Meow incident and it was coming from just a random woman in the lot. None of these "meows" were cat meows; it was like a human mimicking the noise. I could not se anyone around but it felt so eerie that I ran straight in and upstairs to my room. No sooner did I get in but I heard a scratch at my window. This time it sounded like someone was setting a ladder up against my window. I was on the second floor. I rushed over to the window thinking it was a break in, but there was no one there. I also checked for trees that may have made the noise, but there were none nearby and only concrete below me.

Anyway I got so sick of this that I finally talked to it despite warnings from my mother and friends that it could somehow hurt you. It was on the night of a very important exam and it was moving the shells again, I had nowhere to go and desperately needed to sleep so I finally told it that I would try to leave a part of the room alone if it cuts that noise down to a minimum because I needed to sleep. It seemed to work and the episodes really calmed down. Eventually they went away altogether. Of course there have been other strange occurrences but none related to what I now term the "Mr. Meow Saga".