posted on May, 24 2006 @ 12:19 AM
I recently posted about what I now believe to be an encounter with shadow people. Now that I have posted that, I want to share my other paranormal
experience.
Like my other encounter, this too happened at Drew University in New Jersey.
This happened six years ago before I was a student there while I worked in their professional theatre as an usher.
The New Jersey Shakespeare Festival uses the FM Kirby theatre building. In the early years at Drew, the building was a gymnasium. The following is
folklore on what I've heard about the building's haunting followed by my experience. Like the gym in the movie, "It's a Wonderful Life," there
was a pool in the building that was underneath a retractable gym floor. School folklore has it that a student known as Reggie died in the pool.
Fastforward fifty years. Drew gets a new gym and the building is rennovated into a theatre. It is said that Reggie haunts the facility.
My personal experience is very low on the scale of paranormal. Hamlet was being performed in the theatre and I was there for maybe the thirtieth
night that summer. The audience had already left and most of the actors had too (but they had their own facility separate from that which we used).
I had helped the house manager clear the playbills from the aisles and do some other cleaning. We were both ready to leave but before we left I went
to use the public mens room which was in the basement.
I was the only one in there. It's a very small facility with only one toilet and two urinals. I did my business, flushed walked over to the sink to
wash my hands. As I was washing, I heard another flush. I saw in the mirror that the urinal behind me (which was not the one I had used was running
water) I know that it was not running when I had entered, so it was not a leaky valve or anything. That freaked me out and I ran upstairs.
There are other reports that I have heard from others.
Public Safety officers at the campus have had reports of emergency calls from private stage elevator come in at 2AM. On the phone message it can be
heard "I'm wet. It's cold. Reggie wants to play." Now this can be the hijinks of other theatre students who had access to the building, but no
one was in the building when the arrived a minute after the call. Likewise, there was no record of an entrance/exit into the non-alarmed keypad
entrance door for several hours before.
Other reports from my friends have been seeing a person in the booth on the balcony then going up and no one was there. Similarly lights in the
balcony booth, or on the stage have been turned on and off on their own after people can report to having them switched the other way.
There are other rumors of haunted buildings at several other locations on campus, but this and my other post are the only ones I have ever had
experiences with.