Scary Urban Legends

Old campus

I attended a  women's college in Pennsylvania  in the early 90s. Just before my sophomore year, a friend and I decided to explore all of the nooks and crannies in the various dorms around campus, so that we'd have a better chance of requesting a decent room or suite for ourselves.

The campus is beautiful, with Gothic buildings, many of which were built around the late 1800s/early 1900s. After exploring many of them, we found our way to the oldest dorm on campus. This had four floors, but only one half of the fourth floor had been renovated. The rooms are gorgeous, I'm talking stained glass windows,fireplaces(non functional but still),transom windows, the works.

There were four dorm rooms on the fourth floor, and they were huge. The had dormer windows with sweeping views of the green. Two of the rooms were empty, and I couldn't understand why. The students living there recommended that I "see what's on the other side of the hallway".

My friend and I went through a small wooden door to the unrenovated portion of the building. It was creepy as hell. Wallpaper hung in strips from crumpling plaster walls. Facing the greem were tiny, closet-sized rooms, and the hallway along the other side was lined with derelict wooden lockers. I got a bad feeling from the place, but my friend just laughed at me.

Then we got to a dark, cramped, windowless room. It was the size of a large walk in closet. The room was empty except for an old-fashioned, iron clawfoot bathtub

As I looked at that bathtub, I felt cold all over and started shaking. I had the overwhelming feeling that I needed to get out of there. I ran down four flights of stairs. The shaking and the terrible feeling didn't lift until I was outside.

The following year, I told a junior about the bathtub I'd seen on the fourth floor of that dorm. She told me that in the early 1900s, a student had been studying in the bathtub by candlelight with petroleum jelly facial mask on.. that she got too close to the candle and the petroleum jelly ignited... and that she ran down the hallway, engulfed in flames, and jumped to her death from a window. Ever since then, students have complained about paranormal events on that floor, and some used to find her ghost hiding in the lockers that lined the hallway when they were still in use.

I've heard various stories since then, but they all circulate around a female student dying after catching fire in the bathtub.

I've been back to the campus since they graduated and that portion of the hallway has been renovated since. The rooms are beautiful, but I wouldn't want to live there.