This is the kind of scary dorm story that sounds harmless when you first hear it, but not after what happened. The dorm was old. I mean really old. You could tell just by looking at the pipes in the rooms. They made noises at night, sometimes the heating stopped working, and half the windows didn’t shut all the way. Most people complained about it. Stephan mostly didn’t care.
He had heard about the ghost, though. Everyone did eventually. The older students liked telling new people about it, usually when they were sitting around late at night. They called it the “Whispering Ghost.” Supposedly, it walked through the dorm after midnight and whispered people’s names.
Stephan thought it was just one of those stories students made up because they were bored.
Then, one night, he heard his name.
“Steeephan…”
He stopped typing.
For a moment, he just stared at his laptop. His roommate wasn’t there, and the hallway outside was quiet.
Maybe someone had called him from outside.
He waited.
Nothing.
So he went back to his laptop.
A few minutes later it happened again.
“Steeephan…”
This time it sounded close. Much closer than before.
He turned toward the wall beside his bed.
Nothing.
He actually got up and checked the hallway because it was bothering him. A couple of doors were open, and someone was watching a video in one of the rooms, but nobody was standing there.
He went back inside and shut his door.
The next night, it happened again.
And the night after that.
At first, it was only his name. Then it started saying other things.
“Come and see.”
“We have something to show you.”
Stephan didn’t know what to make of it. Sometimes the voice sounded young. Sometimes it sounded like an old person. There were even moments when it sounded almost normal, which somehow made it worse.
He couldn’t find where it was coming from.
Once, he thought it was coming through the vent.
Another time, he was sure it was underneath his bed.
He checked.
There was nothing there except an old sock and some dust.
One night he heard it from the closet.
“The others are here too, Stephan.”
He didn’t answer.
“You can join them.”
He didn’t tell anyone about any of this. Not his roommate, not his friends, nobody.
It sounded stupid when he tried to explain it in his head.
He wasn’t even that close to the people at the dorm anyway. He figured if he told them, they’d probably laugh.
For a while, he tried sleeping with headphones on.
That didn’t help.
The voice seemed to be inside his head when it wanted to be.
The worst night was a Tuesday. He remembered that because he had an early class the next morning and was annoyed about it.
He was lying in bed, looking at his phone, when the voice suddenly said his name.
“Stephan.”
He put the phone down.
“Please.”
He sat up.
“I need you.”
There was something different about it. The voice didn’t sound playful anymore. It sounded scared.
Then it said there was someone downstairs.
“In the boiler room.”
Stephan stayed where he was.
He thought about waking the RA. He even reached for his phone.
Then the voice came again.
“Please, Stephan.”
He don’t know why he listened.
Maybe he was worried someone actually was down there. Maybe he just wanted the voice to stop.
He got dressed and left his room.
The hallway lights were mostly off. Only the emergency lights were still on, giving everything that dull greenish look they had at night.
He walked toward the stairs.
“This way.”
He stopped.
“Downstairs.”
He kept going.
The building made its usual noises. Pipes ticking somewhere behind the walls. A door closing far away. The stairs making that horrible creaking sound every time he put his weight on them.
When he reached the basement, he immediately noticed how cold it was.
He rubbed his arms.
Then the voice spoke.
“You’re here.”
Stephan looked around.
“You came.”
Nothing moved.
“Good.”
There was someone standing under one of the lights.
At first, Stephan thought it was a student.
The person had their back turned to him and was wearing clothes that looked old and faded.
“Hey,” Stephan said.
No response.
“Are you okay?”
The person didn’t move.
Stephan took one step closer.
“Was it you who called me?”
The figure started turning around.
Slowly.
Stephan still remembered wishing, even before he saw the face, that it would just stop.
It didn’t.
The face was wrong.
The skin was gray and pulled tight over the bones. The eyes were completely black. There was barely a nose, just two dark holes.
And the mouth.
It was smiling.
Not a normal smile. The corners were pulled much farther back than they should have been.
Stephan couldn’t move.
The thing looked straight at him.
Then he heard the whisper again.
Except it wasn’t coming from the basement.
It was in his head.
He grabbed both sides of his head.
He tried thinking about anything else.
His mother.
His room.
His phone.
His classes.
It didn’t matter.
His thoughts felt slippery. He would think of something and then, almost immediately, lose it.
The thing opened its mouth.
Something dark came out.
It wasn’t quite smoke. Stephan couldn’t really describe it. It moved through the air without drifting, almost as if it already knew exactly where it was going.
It went straight into his chest.
Stephan tried to back away.
His legs didn’t move.
He looked down at his hands.
They were shaking.
Then his right hand lifted.
Slowly.
Stephan hadn’t moved it.
He tried to pull it back down.
It kept rising.
His fingers curled.
“No.”
He wasn’t sure whether he had actually said it.
The thing was still watching him.
Stephan tried to remember his room number.
Nothing.
His phone password.
Gone.
His birthday.
He knew he should remember it, but he couldn’t.
That frightened him more than the thing standing in front of him.
He looked toward the pipes along the wall.
The metal was dirty enough to reflect a blurry image.
His face looked pale.
His eyes were wide.
Then he noticed something.
His mouth was curved upward.
He was smiling.
Stephan wasn’t doing it.
He tried to stop.
He couldn’t.
His reflection kept smiling at him.
He wanted to scream.
Instead, his mouth opened and a quiet sound came out that didn’t even sound like his voice.
Then he couldn’t remember what his own voice sounded like.
The last thing he saw was his reflection still smiling in the pipe.
The next morning, nobody knew where Stephan was.
His bed hadn’t been slept in.
His phone was still in his room.
And nobody could remember seeing him leave the dorm.
