At University
By Trisha J. Wooldridge

I was an Orientation Leader (OL) at UMass Dartmouth about 12 years ago. One of the duties of OLs is to prepare suites for the week long orientation stay of freshmen students. I had had already been told by previous OLs that the suite I was assigned to was haunted, so I was a bit nervous staying there alone. It was early evening, just before dinner, and I was hanging up all of my "Welcome" and informational posters for the next day when our freshmen would arrive. I was the only one in the suite, and besides me, only the head orientation leader had the keys to my suite. My first experience in that suite was the Curious Moving Scissors and Tape. Again - I was alone. I was standing on the sofa to hang three posters above it. I pre-cut my tape and affixed it to the poster corners first, then put the scissors down while I hung up the poster. When I reached for the scissors again, they weren't on the back of the sofa. I put my remaining posters down on the sofa and moved it to see if they had fallen behind. Not the case. I turned around and saw them in the kitchen table. Feeling chilled, I retrieved them. When I returned to finish my job, the posters were on the chair, not the sofa. I quickly finished hanging posters, keeping all my tools on my person, then had to use the rest room. It was still in the suite and just around the corner - and I wasn't in there long. I returned to the living room to find all my posters moved around - some even upside down! - and the scissors and tape back on the kitchen table (not on the way to the bathroom)! At the time, I was a devout Catholic, so I did the only thing I could think of: I went around the entire suite making crosses of holy oil (from a trip to St. Joseph's Oratory in Montreal) and blessing every single doorway to and from the suite, from the common area to the hall with the bedrooms, over every bedroom, and over both bathrooms. It seemed to work because after that, I had no other unexplained incursions nor did any of my students complain of anything... but sharing this experience with them certainly helped keep them all in line and made our suite a good location for all the team "spirit" meetings!

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