Lang Hall doesn’t have a 5th floor.
Yet for a whole evening, as my roommate and I lugged our furniture across icy campus sidewalks, I was certain it did.
See, the top floor of Lang was haunted. My roommate and I were moving to the 4th floor of Lang. Therefore, my brain said, the “top” floor of Lang must be . . . the 5th floor.
Nope.
Our third year at Baldwin-Wallace College, my roommate and I landed a room in the swankiest new campus building. But our neighbors—a behemoth lady-Biff and her long-armed flunkey—were 1980s-style bullies. We made the mistake of asking them to keep it down once, and . . . things escalated. Lights flicked off on people in showers. General rudeness in the halls. Parties held next door on weeknights. Celtic classics blasted through a dorm room wall for several hours. (Okay, that last one might have been me. I said things escalated. I’m not proud of it.)
So I pulled some strings via my Residence Life connections, and we got assigned the only room open on campus: room 415 in Lang Hall. Thus my roommate and I moved to Lang . . . to the 4th floor . . . on a dark, snowy evening.
And when I voiced relief about how we were moving to the 4th floor, not the haunted “top” floor, my roommate deftly grabbed another box and changed the subject.
I didn’t realize that the top, haunted floor of Lang was also the 4th floor, our floor, until it was too late.
We were moved in. There was no elevator, so we sure as shit weren’t moving again.
And honestly, the room was gorgeous.
Lang Hall was built in 1928 (hence the lack of an elevator). It felt like living in a preppy wizarding dorm. Our ceiling arched at an angle, giving our room the feel of an old mansion’s mysterious, spacious attic. My roommate promised she wouldn’t let any ghosts get me, and that was that.
For a year, we lived on the haunted (4th) floor.
Among the many Baldwin-Wallace ghosts, Emma Lang is maybe the most clearly identified. She was the dorm’s first house mother and the reason for Lang Hall’s name. She was known for not liking boys on her turf after hours.
While my roommate and I lived in Lang Hall (2009/2010, I think it was), Lang was still a girls-only hall, as it had always been. Stories drifted to us. A foolish male student who lingered into the evening claimed an invisible force had shoved him off the bed he was sitting on. Several boys had “felt uneasy” staying past sundown. At night, girls had heard keys jingling in the empty hallway. A few had seen Emma Lang herself sitting in the lobby, thinking little of the pale woman until they saw her portrait above the mantle.
As for me, I’ve got an ambitious imagination. Worse, my roommate (along with a lot of other girls) went home on weekends.
I confess that late some Friday nights, while I was in the top bunk trying to sleep, I’d sometimes hear a clunk, a creak. A sort of plink, like metal on metal. And I’d opt not to look over the rail. It’s just the old radiator, I told myself. I had zero desire to find a pale woman named Emma looking back at me.
Overall though, I did well. No sightings, no ghost-panic.
However, not long after my roommate and I graduated, Lang Hall went co-ed. And through the grapevine, I heard that the huge oak tree in front of Lang Hall got struck by lightning.
The rumors said it happened within a week of the decision. Boys will start living in Lang Hall, the campus decided. And then, kaboom.
The strike split the trunk down the middle. Apparently, the dead tree had to be removed.
I am sure that room will continue to fuel future stories!