Last year I was out in a village pub having dinner, it was a very old pub & had the kind of atmosphere you tend to watch out for after a few encounters (& believe me I've had more than a few). There was this old bloke sitting at the corner table reading his paper. I didn't really pay much attention to him, except that I noticed no one was serving him - but hey! the service in that place really sucked anyway. Didn't really think about it again until yesterday.

Last night there was a program on TV about a local village & its haunted pub. Apparently Tom, the resident ghost, sits in the corner & quitely reads the paper.

I hate being me. Ghosts always go "ooh she looks fun, lets go mess with her head".

The first time this happened, I was fourteen, my granny had died a few days earlier, & it was halloween (so no one believes me). I was outside my aunt's house, looking through the hedge to the next field & saw a human shaped figure made of bright light. I looked back & it was gone. About five years later I learned that spot was the demolished fort (Celtic burial mound), the Irish equivalent of a bulldozed Indian burial ground, & that nothing would grow near it. I went back this year & discovered my cousin Niamh has built her house smack bang on top of it. My aunt & her family have all had bad luck since moving to that house.

This, however, is nothing to College Hall. The year before I arrived, some bright spark on my corridor decided to raise demons for fun & profit. As the man who lives at the end of Taz' bed will confirm, this was probably a bad idea. Of course at the time I couldn't tell Taz there was a man living at the end of her bed. I just used to tell her it was the pipes, & wait for her to scream in the middle of the night "Tracey the pipes are talking again!" while watching the eyes & eyebrows in the corner, which were all I ever saw of him. Our lights would switch on & off, as would our radio. Things were never where we'd put them. It was exhausting, especially when you'd wake up at night to find something trying to pull you out of bed. Makes me glad we're all out of there now.