First of all, I want to get something straight— I don’t believe in the ghosts. The Shining is far more confusing than scary to me, and my mental image of a ghost is that of my neighbor in a white sheet on Halloween. The reason I am here, furiously typing these words under my bed, is not because of a ghost.
It started yesterday. The cold, crisp October air left my face raw during my afternoon run. Desperately attempting to return my ragged and uneven breathing back to normal, I rounded the corner of South and East University in a slow jog. A freshman at University of Michigan, I was still in the process of the college transition; however, I had sunk into a fairly stable exercise routine. The smells and sounds and sights of downtown Ann Arbor washed over me: cars honking, coffee brewing, and friends huddling together for warmth. Up ahead, a dark-haired woman struggled to open the door to one of the East Quad dorms, juggling textbooks and a coffee in her hands as she reached for her keycard. Slipping into the doorway after some jostling, she accidentally dropped a small book in her wake. By the time I reached the door, she was gone.
The book was extremely worn, the cover faded and yellow with age. Dense writing completely flooded the pages, but I failed to find anything to identify the author. Instead of turning the book in to the lost-and-found box, I decided to keep it in the hopes that I would run into the dark-haired woman. My curious (and often nosey) roommate, Jennifer, spent the rest of the evening poured over the passages in the book like they were pieces of a puzzle. Near midnight, while I was half-asleep at my desk cramming for a biology exam, she broke the silence with a shriek and dropped the book on her lap.
“How to conjure a ghost,” Jennifer read, “A step-by-step guide to make your wildest dreams come true.”
“Jennifer, don’t read that nonsense. It’s—” I began, but she cut me off with another shriek as she continued reading. Like I said before, I don’t believe in ghosts. My beliefs, rooted firmly in the physical world, don’t leave room for the paranormal. On the other hand, Jennifer is whimsical and creative; stories of the unimaginable draw her attention more than any scientific theory could. Getting off the bed, she rummaged in her closet for a while, eventually pulling out a vintage “Mr. Potato Head” toy that she found in an antique shop a few weeks ago.
“The instructions say that I need a vessel for the ghost to inhabit,” she explained to me. Too tired to argue, I stood up and trudged into bed, falling fast asleep almost immediately. With the upcoming exam on my mind, I had the usual test anxiety dreams: sleeping through my alarm clock, losing my pencils, forgetting my pants. Weirdly, Mr. Potato Head flitted in and out of my dreams, leering over my professor’s shoulder or crouching under my desk. In the middle of a distinctly odd dream concerning the toy waving my pants in front of me during the test, I woke up with a start. The sun blinded me as it shone through the window, and I stretched my sleepy limbs in the cozy sheets. As I rolled out of bed, something caught my attention.
My water bottle, cap open, was tipped over onto my biology notes. Feeling as though I was still caught in a nightmare, I gingerly lifted my soaked notebook off the desk and laid it on the windowsill to dry. I successfully mopped up the leftover water with a roll of paper towels, but I could not shake the feeling that something was amiss. Fairly certain that I closed the bottle tightly before bed, I saw no reason why it would have opened or tipped over during the night. My backpack, usually under my chair, laid in the middle of my room with its contents strewn all over. In essence, it looked like a tornado had swept through my dorm. And there, sitting on the floor next to my desk, was Mr. Potato Head. Its beady eyes seemed to be staring right at me, and I shivered reflexively. Jennifer was still sleeping, letting out soft snores as her blanket rose and fell with her breathing. I convinced myself that she must have left the toy on my side of the room as a practical joke, and I decided to play along. Taking a rubber band off of my wrist, I used it to tie Mr. Potato Head’s arms together. Laughing quietly to myself, I left the toy on her desk with a note that said: “Caught in the act! Now I’m cuffed and incapacitated!”
My biology exam, thankfully, went well. Despite this, I felt uneasy throughout the day. Even if Jennifer wanted to joke around, it didn’t explain the spilled water or my backpack. Did she really conjure something inside of the potato? I recalled hearing her recite silly Latin incantations as I fell asleep, and I scolded myself for even thinking there was any truth to the instructions inside the weird journal. After my last class of the day, I headed toward my dorm to change into running attire. Immediately, I realized that something was wrong.
It was four o’clock in the afternoon, and Jennifer was still asleep. This was extremely unusual— she avoided missing class at all costs. In fact, she was usually up way hours before me, tiptoeing around our dorm to make sure I stayed asleep. I leaned against my door with my head spinning. Mr. Potato Head sat on my bed, the rubber band tying its arms broken on the floor. In front of the potato, the worn journal was open to the conjuring instructions. Shaking and more than freaked out, I turned to open the door to find someone, anyone I could, that would assuage my fears. I frantically wrestled with the doorknob, finally realizing that it was locked from the outside. Breathing heavily, I turned back around to face the spine-tingling scene before me.
Like I said before, I don’t believe in ghosts. But here I am, hiding under the bed, and I know that there is something above me— something inside of that potato that is definitely animate. I can hear muffled laughter and the bed creaking, the rotting stench of food infiltrating the thick comforter draped over me. I don’t believe in ghosts. It’s not a ghost… right?