I absolutely love Halloween. I love dressing up. I love watching scary movies. I especially love the book I recently purchased titled The Big Book of Ohio Ghost Stories. And up until recently, I thought I loved being scared. But for all the ghost stories I had loved reading, I myself had never lived one.

Until now.

It isn’t news to anyone (including me, the first-year who is naive when it comes to just about everything else) that Kenyon College is a haunted campus. I embraced this fact, and initially even opened my heart to interacting with spirits myself. I mean, there was a period of time during which I was down to make friends with anybody (see above: naive first-year).

But haunting hits differently when it happens to you. And it happened to me, so here’s my story.

It was a shadowy and cloudy (no, I didn’t just look up synonyms for dark and stormy. Shut up) Gambier night. In a sleep-deprived haze, I was traveling back from The Market cradling my newly purchased carton of Goldfish like it was my baby son. The grip required two hands, so once I arrived at my humble abode (Lewis Hall), I opted to use the automatic door. I unlocked the door with my K-card and let my finger hover over the button. But without me even touching it, the door swung open. I thought to myself, huh. That was weird, but I’m not going to put up a fight about exerting less energy than I have to. So thank you dearly, Lewis Ghost.

Once inside, I took out my Airpods but kept on humming Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Run Away With Me.” I would like to take this moment to note that, while I self-identify as having a ~refined~ music taste, I’m not too pretentious to admit that this woman has done far more for our nation than “Call Me Maybe.”

And as I found out that night, I’m not the only one that thinks so.

So I was humming. But all of a sudden, I began to hear a voice that wasn’t my own join me. And I refuse to believe that this was another person in the hallway, or Carly Rae’s voice stuck in my head, or any other reasonable excuse. Nope, it was Lewis Ghost, and they share one of my best opinions.

Maybe you’re not totally convinced of my story. Maybe you’ve read this and are trying to rationally explain away my magical night with my ghostly companion. But I’m here to remind you that it’s Halloween, so you have no choice to believe me. There is a ghost living in Lewis.

And Carly Rae Jepsen is good.

Have a safe, fun, and moderately scary (if that’s what you’re into) weekend everybody. If you see me out, I’ll be dressed as early 2000s Avril Lavinge. And if you see Lewis Ghost, tell them to hit me up. I feel like we vibed really well.