And now it’s 2007. I’m a senior at the University. I just watched the film “The Others” and it scared the hell out of me, launching me into curiosity about the paranormal. I netflixed all the more-realistic ghost-story films I’d ever seen like “The Sixth Sense” and “What Lies Beneath”. How could so many people write about ghosts and how could there be so many ghost stories, so many unexplained incidences and sightings if they didn’t exist?

There was a Ghost Society at our school. I showed up to one of the year’s first meetings.

“My name’s Tasha and I’m new,” I told them, feeling like I was introducing myself at an AA meeting. I was still standing in the doorway of the meeting room it took me forever to find (208 in the Quinn’s English building). I ended up ten minutes late.

“Come in, come in,” a tan girl with red hair beckoned me with a crooked finger. I went in, wondering if she could be a natural redhead. “Do you believe in ghosts?”

There were only four other people in the room. Some society. “Yes…”I answered slowly. “I do believe in ghosts.”

The redhead jumped excitedly from her seat to my side, “You’ve come to the right place!”

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Let’s flash back to three years ago when I was a freshman on this campus. I used to wander around at nights in an almost-trance state, thinking about my life and what I wanted to do with it. I had been practicing classical voice since I was eleven and had always dreamed of being an opera singer. Problem was, I had a deathly fear of the stage and every time I had even an audience of one, my voice would pop and I would imagine myself naked in front of that person.

On one of these steamy summer nights, I had to use the bathroom and decided to see if one of the buildings was open. I tugged on a heavy door that was twice my height, and to my delight, it opened. I went in, found my bathroom, and came out with a somewhat pensive and crazed look on my face. How many of these buildings were open to exploration?
That night, I followed my course schedule and went to the buildings all my classes were in. Along the way, I spotted a majestic looking building – historic looking with a mysterious light within it. I ran up to it as Julie Andrews ran up to that hill in The Sound of Music just before she spun around and sang “The Hills are Alive with the Sound of Music”.

I tried the door and, predictably, it opened. Read the rest of this entry »

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It was impossible to hate Lauren – she was bubbly, generous, fair, and had always been nice to me. But it was difficult to reconcile how she came to be manager of our little coffee shop when I was the one who trained her two years ago. I wanted to hate her.“Lauren’s the manager now,” my boss told me matter-of-factly. “If you have any questions, problems, or need any help with anything, Lauren’s your girl.”
1) Lauren was no one’s girl; you couldn’t even call Lauren your woman. She wasn’t even her boyfriend’s woman – the last time he held open the door for her at the Sistine (a posh restaurant downtown), she glared at him with her hands on her hips and did a fairly accurate imitation of Jessie from “Saved by the Bell.” She was like a feminist on speed, “What are you? Some chauvinistic pig who thinks women can’t open their own freaking doors?” There was more, but at that point, I excused myself to go get a table.
2) I know I already stated it, but I was the one who trained Lauren. I was the oldest employee and I had always kept up to speed with smoothies and syrup protocols – I didn’t need any help and the boss’s inference that I needed any was enough to make me cross my arms over my chest and make faces at him every time he turned around. Read the rest of this entry »

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