True story. Back in college at the start of the second
semester a new girl moved into our sister dorm the floor below us. She was
quiet, kept to herself, hardly ever ventured outside of her room. I don't even
think she was enrolled in the school. She never ate in the dining room; you
weren't 'allowed' to take your food to your room but she did anyways. And we
started to notice a change in our sisters. Stuff began to go missing. They
started to fight amongst themselves; and not the good chick fights we dreamt
about. There was this really dark and heavy mood in that dorm. Then one day
this new girl just got up and left. Not a word. Gone. When the resident
supervisors opened the room they found trays upon trays of dishes and rotten
food. All the stuff that went missing was in there. And then there were the
pentagrams. Lots of them. All over the walls. Turns out this girl was getting
herself involved in a bad crowd, possibly the occult, so her parents figured
the best place to ship her to was our Christian college. I don't think she
liked us. The room was cleared out, cleaned up and exorcised (I guess) and
everything returned to normal. So if you ask me if I believe in the
supernatural I am inclined to say yes.
Right now potential fresh-eyed college frosh are gearing
up for a summer to remember before they ship off to embrace the world of higher
education. Once they are there they will be regaled tales of classmates before
them; the legends of the campus. Or, there were the parties where 'you just had
to be there'. And what of the campuses that have an urban legend or a haunted
house? With educational institutions as old as national constitutions surely
there are things that go bump in the night.
And on that note SyFy will kick off the six episode
docu-series School Spirits tomorrow night at 10pm EST. The series highlights supernatural happenings at six campuses
across the United States. Mixing first-person accounts with dramatizations each
episode explores these haunting tales hoping to give viewers the
heebee-geebees. We were provided the first two episodes for review. The first
episode, University of Michigan, recounts the tale of a girl's sorority that
moves into a ramshackle old house and awakens a malevolent spirit. The second
episode, SUNY Geneseo, recounts the tale of a promising young track athlete
singled out by a ghostly presence.
I'll be the first to say that the first episode gets a
bit hokey in some parts of the dramatizations. Never have I seen evidence of
apparitions, especially on episodes of SyFy staples like Ghost Hunters and
Destination Truth, so I am always doubtful of that. And to see ghosts hovering
over beds for effect just seems to take away credibility. But the dramatizations
are also equal parts creepy too. Two of the executive producers are Seth
Jarrett and Julie Isogna Jarrett and their production crew do a decent job with
the re-enactments. Admittedly I was creeped out a couple times; specifically
during the second episode, SUNY Geneseo, airing on June 27th.
All schools have their tales. Whether they are made up or
real you may never know. But there was enough of a story at these six campuses
to obligate tales of haunting spirits and misadventure. There is a decent
entertainment value to School Spirits that may provide you with a laugh or a
scare on a lazy summer night.
