The tale – or tales – I am about to tell is, fortunately, not my own. However, I have a loose connection to the events, and it still gives me the creeps just thinking about it.
I spent my four years of undergraduate studies at the University of Kansas living in the Pi Kappa Phi fraternity house. During my time in this large dwelling, I experienced some truly horrifying things. Scary things. Disgusting things. Downright sickening things. But none of those ever involved a ghost. Mostly what my spooky encounters involved were naked dudes, dirty bathrooms, decades-old mold, and Scott Rosell.
Though our fraternity’s chapter was only but a few years old when I was an occupant, our actual physical house had been standing since the 1940’s. Needless to say, it had a lot of history attached to it. Some of this history we knew about. For example, we knew it was originally used as an ROTC barracks. We knew the property was formerly occupied by a different fraternity before we leased it. But, there is some history about the house that still remains a mystery…
During the summer of our chapter’s initial year of occupancy, a few of the founding members were enrolled in summer classes. Eager to make the house their new home, they began moving in. Since there were only a few of them staying there at this time, they occupied rooms that were close to each other so they could enjoy each others company more easily.
The house was four stories tall and also included a basement – And hot damn that was one creepy basement…like something out of a Stephen King nightmare or a Charles Manson-inspired play room. Anyways, it was a very large property with enough space to comfortably-ish house 80 or so young men in suite-style rooms. Though it was a big building, it was also very secure. The front and back doors were basically huge wooden barricades that could only be entered with a security code. The other entrances consisted of sliding doors in the dining area. If someone wanted to break through the glass, they could probably do so fairly easily. But as far as picking a lock or opening them from the outside, it would take some sort of expert – not some dumbass college kid trying to play a prank (this set up has a purpose, I promise).
After a long day of moving in, the exhausted brethren decided to take a load off and have a few cold…sodas…in the common room of one of the newly occupied suites on the third floor. Directly above this suite was the study room.
As these fine young gentlemen were relaxing, they heard the loud and almost violent sound of footsteps seemingly going 100 miles per hour from the room above. After giving each other a round of confused looks, they hopped out of their seats and bolted upstairs to investigate.
There were a few odd things about this noise. First of all, the place was locked up, and they were the only ones in the house. Secondly, at that point, the study room was nothing but a glorified storage room. It was absolutely packed full of crap that had been left behind from the previous tenants, and it wouldn’t become a functioning study until later. There was no possible way that anyone could be stomping around on that floor.
When the guys reached the door of the study and opened it up, they found…absolutely nothing. No boxes had fallen over, nothing was out of place, and there was no trace of anybody…living or dead. From there, they quickly raced down to the first floor to make sure none of the entrances had been breached. They found all the doors locked and secure. They simply had no explanation for what happened.
But that wasn’t the only weird thing that happened in that room. Not by a long shot. Months later when the house was fully occupied, one of the guys who lived in the suite had quite the disturbing experience.
As the story goes, well after this gentleman had fallen asleep, he was awoken by something he couldn’t quite explain. (It’s probably important to note that this was a night that hadn’t involved any extracurricular activities with state of mind altering beverages). As he rose from his slumber to see what it was that had caused him to cease sleeping, he sat up in bed and rubbed his eyes. It was a dark bedroom and it took him a few moments for his vision to adjust. But when it did, he saw something that scared the bejesus out of him. At the end of his bed, he saw what appeared to be an older looking man donning a suit that looked to be from the earlier half of the 20th century. The man, or whatever it was, simply looked right back into his eyes with a cold, expressionless stare. After a few seconds of what I’m sure felt like a terrifying eternity, the being stood up from the bed and walked through the guy’s door. Not through the doorway, but through the thick, hardwood door. It had passed right through it and disappeared.
Now, one could take this as a case of someone who must’ve simply still been dreaming. And that would be a fair thing to say if this had been the only sighting of this mysterious man in the suit. But it was not. Some time later, another member of the fraternity spotted the same figure in a different part of the house when he had his full, non-sleepy wits about him.
This other gentleman had just returned from class or some such and was going through the mail to see if anything was addressed to him. A big mirror hung in front of the spot where they kept the mail. As the man browsed through the various envelopes, he quickly glanced up in the mirror and caught something out of the corner of his eye. Unsure of what he just saw, he looked back up into the mirror straight on and saw an older looking man in a suit that looked to be from the earlier half of the 20th century standing behind him in the mirror staring at him. It was the exact same thing that the other member had described.
This dude had no desire to stand there and figure out what the hell was lurking behind him. Instead, he raced up the stairs to the room of the original witness and hysterically stated what he’d just seen.
That made it two sightings of the exact same creepy entity. And three total occurrences that simply could not be explained. Two of which revolved around one suite.
And a few years later it just so happened that another fraternity member that you all may know occupied a room in the suite where all this activity was centralized. His name was Mark Curtis Shonka.
I’d be lying if I said that I ever experienced anything paranormal in that room. But abnormal? Oh, you bet your ass I saw a lot of that. When you live in the same household as Jack Walstien and 70+ other degenerates, you’re bound to see some interesting things. But I never saw anything that involved ghosts or inexplicable sounds – other than whatever the hell it was that my roommate, Doug Williams, did in his bedroom. Seriously, man, we need to talk about some stuff.
I don’t know who lives in that suite now. And I’m unsure if there’s been any paranormal activity since my time there. But if you do happen to find yourself on the third floor of Pi Kappa Phi in Lawrence, Kansas…BEWARE...of the Frat Room of Doom!