Freshman year is the year that we are supposed to “try new things.” I had all types of different experiences from meeting new friends, doing new workouts, new classes, and even paranormal activity.

In high school, myself and two friends would sometimes mess around with Ouija boards, and sometimes we got pretty freaked out, but nothing ever “happened." We would tell spooky stories about the cemetery nearby my childhood home and say “Bloody Mary” three times in dark bathrooms all for fun and sometimes I was afraid to babysit at night, but that was the extent of it.

When I got to college, I had a lot of issues with my skin; it’s extremely fare and very sensitive. My room was old and had old carpet, so I chalked it up to that. It wasn’t until late November that things started to take weird twists. My roommate and our friends down the hall would joke about Jenna the ghost quite frequently. If we couldn’t find something we would say, “Oh, Jenna must have hid that” or “Jenna, give it back!”

However, one day I was being my typical jerky self while eating a Hot Pocket (hello freshman 15). I smeared some of the red sauce on my fork and offered it up as a trade for that week’s missing item. “Hey, Jenna, you want some of my Hot Pocket.” Not one second after the last syllable did my plate, and whole Pocket, flew across the room and smeared on the wall. I was stunned. I had three people witness it and their faces matched mine. That was the turn of things.

Over the next couple weeks, a rash was forming on my neck. First, it resembled a hickey, which I was not having because I would trust people to believe me when I say it was a rash (or burn), but I mean come on, we all jump to conclusions. As time went on, it spread across my neck. The whole front of my neck had a perfectly symmetrical rash about an inch in thickness. It looked just like a ligature mark from a rope.

As I mentioned, I thought it was a rash or dry skin, so I saw my doctor, and he said to switch to non-scented, sensitive skin body wash and apply some lotion on it every night. Nothing changed. I started researching my university. Any old, Catholic building is going to have some urban legends, some may be true and others are just myths. Legend has it, that a priest that worked at my university hung himself in the oldest building on campus, which was just right across from my dorm.

During the night, my roommate and I would often wake up to something banging on the pipes, and we would never see anything. When I would shower, the lights would turn off, but there was only one way into the bathroom, and that door was always locked. I, being the one who always needs answers, decided to research paranormal professions in the area. I came across a Facebook page of a group of women who were fully equipped with Ghostbusters gear. They came to my room one Friday night, and things got freaky. They explained that they had always wanted to come to my college because of the “haunted” background. Being private, they had to be invited by either a student of staff member.

It was late, and my roommate, our two friends from down the hall, and our other two friends from another hall all decided to “experience” this with me. We gathered in my room, and I explained to the women what was happening, sleepless nights, the rash, things going missing, objects moving etc. One asked me if I believed in the paranormal, and I hesitated. I believe in God, and angels, and spirits because I was raised Catholic, but I never would categorize that as paranormal. “If you believe in one, you have to believe in the other.” One being the angels and good spirits, the other being demons and bad spirits.

She asked if I had ever done any séances or Ouija boards, and when I said yes all three of their eyes widened. This is when they set up multiple recorders around the room, set up thermal and night-vision cameras on me, and arranged us to sit in a circle around another recorder. We started asking basic questions, “Are you a girl?” “Why are you here?” “What do you want?” We would allow some time for an answer, and then we would playback and listen closely for a response.

On the recording, you hear me ask the question about its gender, and it replied with a very hard, stern, no. I had chills everywhere. Two of my friends were crying, and two had to leave. Next, one of the women started looking at me through the cameras, and there was activity all around me on the thermal camera. Next, they had me close my eyes and pointed a grid laser at me. This allows paranormal movement to show. When the light blacks out, that means there’s a paranormal there.

It was about five minutes when I heard everyone in the room gasp, and I panicked, and asked what happened. The laser blacked out on my face and my neck. We turned on the lights and the rash on my neck was even redder and stronger than before. Two of my friends were crying, and I was starting to get nauseous. They noticed we were all freaked out, so they just asked if they could take some pictures of me on my top bunk, because I was having trouble sleeping. I sat up in my bed, and they snapped a bunch of pictures with the lights off. In every single picture, there was an orb.

As soon as they left, I hung a Rosary right up next to where I lay my head at night. I refused to sleep in my room for months. Word got around campus that my room was experiencing some visitors from the other side, and an alum of the college told me she lived in the exact room, just one floor above, and the same thing happened to her. This was not one of those things people brushed off as coincidence.

I finally decided to sleep in my room again despite the fact I was still having nightmares that I wouldn’t remember when I woke up. One night in particular, my roommate went to use our bathroom (we had suite-styled rooms), and when she was in the hallway of our suite, she heard me talking. When she came in the room, I was sitting up in bed, facing the corner of the orb, repeating, “No, no, stop it, please leave me alone.”

I toughed it out for the year, and the rash remained for that time. As soon as I returned home for the summer the rash was gone, but every now and again I will have nightmares that I can’t remember. When I spoke to a priest about this, he said that spirits follow people, not places, usually. I hadn’t experienced anything until April of my sophomore year when I came home from work at 1:30 in the morning and saw this on my stairs.

Sleep tight.