What’s up, pal-a-normals? It’s your “boo,” Paranormal Investigator in-Residence Sue Dounim. I’m your one-stop shop for what makes all the others drop: The spooky specters squirming around this haunted-as-hell heckhole.

OG Cryptophiles, you probably noticed I changed up my writing style a little since last year. Short story shorter, I started hitting up a speech therapy clinic after getting in hot water with the man last term. Needed to change things up so they don’t catch me again. 

After I escaped from them the first time, I spent the rest of the summer hiding on campus. Mostly Three Oaks—I don’t think security knows that place exists yet. But the things that go bump in the night don’t stop bumping when you’re not around. One night, while I was chilling in the trash bin on the third floor of the Libe, I noticed something odd.

Last year, most of the study rooms were locked up and the windows were papered over, probably because of the ‘rona. This term, they’re all open again. Except one corner room is still blocked off. Even the windows are still papered over, just like they were last year. 

Why open all the study rooms but one? Right away, I was like, “oh, it’s obviously COVID-21.” Because there’s no vaccine for that yet, so they had to keep the door locked like a giant wooden mask. I wouldn’t be able to open the door until we were all vaccinated again.

But if that were really the case, they wouldn’t have had to paper over the windows with those thick black sheets. So they must’ve been hiding something worse. Something so bad, they didn’t want anyone to even see it. Some kind of book-gobbling boogeyman, maybe, or a disgraced Stevie P. Obviously, I had to find it. So after the sun went down and all the summer stowaways had gone home, I used a card to pick the lock. I peered inside and turned on my flashlight.

Turns out I got this one wrong. There aren’t any cryptids in there. It’s just where they keep the Twilight books. 

I haven’t gone back to that room.