Young Writers Society

NOTE: This is the fifth entry in what I hope to be a fairly interesting memoir. It's posted in non-fiction, even though most of the story is made up, because this is what we made up as the legend. Enjoy

Ever since I was a young child, I was fascinated with urban legends and stories about haunted places. To this day, I love hearing true stories about haunted places, where things move on their own, a certain room becomes mysteriously cold, and if you look hard enough in a mirror, you can see the face of the former owner looking back at you. The paranormal makes me giddy, and movies like "White Noise", though corny and laughable, make me want to join a ghost hunting crew and listen for mysterious voices in the static and see fleeting figures in video playbacks.

There is a building on the campus of Wartburg College called Players Theater. Once upon a time, this building was a gym. It was then turned into an auditorium, then a temporary library, then a series of classrooms, then back to a gym, and finally in it's current form of storage facility for set pieces and other various lumber. The building is only used for the occasional rehearsal in the fall, and to paint and assemble small set pieces, like walls or furniture, for all plays and other performances that require sets.

It was May 16, 2009. We just finished a three-night run of the play "Rumors" by Neil Simon, and were disassembling the set, which was essentially walls, doors, a giant staircase, and minimal furniture. I was carrying over disassembled wall flats over to Players Theater with my good friend Matt, who was graduating the next week. We talked about what sort of legacy he wanted to leave Wartburg, and he said that it had always been his dream to convince someone that a building on campus was haunted, and have that story spread orally through the ages.

As we were placing the flats into a back storage room, we talked about which building would be haunted. Matt told me that, his freshman year, he made a plan to break into Old Main, the Education and Social Work building, get into the attic, and place a curtain with a silhouette of a man in one of the windows, with a light on a timer that would go off for five minutes every twenty-four-hour period.

"Problem is," he continued, "I could never find the attic. Even when I tricked security in to giving me the key ring that belonged to Old Main, I couldn't find the door that would lead to the attic to install it. So instead of ditching the entire idea completely, I've decided to turn my attention to Players."

We discussed the story, and realized that in order for it to work, we would have to do 80 percent of what we told people. Because I was just a freshman at that time, I would have three more years to spread the story to upcoming classes, who would in turn keep that story going to upcoming freshmen classes, and so on and so forth. After we finalized the story, and gathered the necessary characters, we put the plan into action.

We found a freshman as he was walking his way back to his room from the bar. He had a bit to drink, but not enough that he wouldn't remember what he saw. Matt told Tim, another graduating senior, and me to be in Players Theater at around one in the morning to scare this freshman that he was about to bring in. Matt was going to tell the freshmen the story, and by the time they got to the building, he would have completed the story, and Tim and I were to make spooky noises all around the building. Inside the building, it is easy to move quickly from one side of the building to the other without being detected, which was partly the reason why we wanted to establish a haunting legend in Players.

With the plan in action, I arrived at Players Theater shortly after one. I called out for Tim, using a special code phrase we came up with, and when I didn't hear a response, I assumed I was the first one in, so I grabbed some of the items that I had in my room that were especially heavy and "clangy", and set them up around the building. I heard a door open and close, followed by footsteps going up the stairs across the building from where I was. I assumed it was Tim getting in place, so I thought nothing of it.

Shortly after 1:30 AM, I hear the door open again, and two sets of footsteps, along with Matt's voice, echoed in the small building.

"If you search back issues of the Trumpet," said Matt, "you can see the story of the murder and read all about it. But the best part is, the ghost always comes alive the Saturday after a student run show in May, and the entire murder becomes re-enacted before your very eyes."

I could see the eyes of the freshman from my perch in the rafters. The kid was obviously scared shitless, and I paused for a moment more before I threw my pan across the room toward the scorekeepers box that was now boarded up. The crash from the pan made the freshman jump and scream, and the echo from the crash lingered far longer than it usually would have.

"What?" asked Matt. "Are you scared?"

Before the freshman could answer, I heard another crash from behind them. It sounded like someone hitting someone else, and a body hitting the floor. It was an interesting noise combination, and I made it a point to ask Tim how he did that after this was all over. We started slowly with the noises, making them sporadic and shocking. Eventually, we got to the point where we were throwing shit all around the building, making our running extremely loud and obvious, and watching and laughing as the poor, drunken freshman literally pissed his pants and ran out of the building screaming.

Matt and I laughed uncontrollably for a good ten minutes. It was shortly after two in the morning when we picked up everything that was thrown around when Tim walked into the building. I turned to him, laughed, and asked, "Hey, Tim, remember that noise that you made at the beginning that sounded like a body hitting the floor? How did you do that?"

Tim looked at me strange, "What noise?"

"You know... the noise after my first one."

Tim sighed and said, "Oh, you already did it? I thought Matt said meet here around two. That explains the kid with the wet pants that was running back to the building."

Matt and I looked at Tim, confused at what he was telling us, and hoping that he was joking. That was when a spotlight suddenly turned on. We looked for the source of the light, and saw it was coming from the ceiling.

"Kyle," asked Matt, "did you install a spotlight in the rafters?"

"No," I said. "And I didn't see a spot when I was up there."

We then turned to what the light was illuminating, and saw the biggest, heaviest flat that we shoved in the back standing up, with "5/14/98" and "Never Forget" painted on them in red.

"Did we even use red paint in the set?" asked Tim.

"No," said Matt. "Just green and brown."

I turned to the two of them. "Did you guys do this? You know someone is going to be pissed off when they see that you painted the back side of the flats."

Tim's eyes suddenly got wide. I turned to look back at the flats, thinking I was going to see more writing. Instead, the back side of the flat was completely blank. There was no trace of the red letters anywhere. Spooked, Matt, Tim and I left the building.

The next day, we looked up the date on the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier website, and found a story that sent chills down our spines. Apparently on May 14, 1998, a young man named Brian Glenny was loitering in Players Theater back when it was a classroom building. Security had forgotten to lock the building, so Brian wandered in and was exploring the classrooms, as he had never had a class in this building. Brian was not a well-liked kid, and when some older students found him in the building, they entered it with the intent to harass him and make him cry. They started pushing him, calling him names, trying everything in their power to make him break down. One of the older students, in an effort to scare him as well as harass him, pulled out a carving knife that he was carrying as part of a prank they pulled off earlier. The student flashed the knife in Brian's face and said, "What's the matter, pussy? Afraid of being the next Thanksgiving meal?"

One thing led to another, and one student shoved Brian right into the carving knife, slicing right through Brian's lungs and heart. When they pulled out the knife, blood poured out of the wound, and Brian was dead in a matter of seconds. The older students, not wanting to be caught for murder, booked it out of the building, and called security, saying they saw someone trespassing in the building. Security found the body and called an ambulance, but by then it was too late. The older students graduated and moved out of state by the time a formal investigation was launched, and the killers were never found.

They confessed years later, in 2003, when they came back for homecoming. They went out to the bar, got buzzed, and broke into Players Theater to explore. It was around 1:30 in the morning, and the boys were having fun reminiscing about their Wartburg days, when suddenly, the lights went out in the building. A little spooked, they called out and asked who was in the building with them, but all they heard was a small, scared voice, saying, "You know."

According to their statements, they saw a knife flash briefly in front of them, followed by a mysterious spot light with no source coming from the ceiling, focused on the heaviest flat in the back, with the "5/14/98" and "Never Forget" in bright red lettering. The three men watched in horror as slowly--ever so slowly--the words "Love, Brian" formed at the bottom of the flat. That was when the men ran out of the building and confessed to the police what they had done. They are now spending life sentences in prison.

Matt turned to me, about to say something, when he paused mid-thought and asked, "Have you showered today?"

"Only this morning," I said. "Why?"

"You have something red on your face."

I reached up and touched my face, and my finger found a small pool of blood on my cheek. I had no cut, and had rubbed up against no one all day. Out of curiosity, Matt, Tim and I ventured back to Players late that night, and sat on the floor in front of the stage. After an hour of waiting in the dark for something to happen, Tim let out a yelp.

"I just saw a knife," he said.

I instantly became excited. My fascination with the paranormal was about to become my first real experience. Shortly afterward, the knife flashed in front of my eyes. It was horrific: an enormous, 15-inch blade with a black handle, and blood dripping down the entire length of the blade. The image then flashed to a body with a gaping wound in the chest and thick, dark blood flowing from it. The image was shocking enough to quiet me, but not enough to wipe the smile from my face. It was only when something crashed behind us that I began to think that this experience was not going to end well.

Sure enough, when we turned back to face the stage, we were met with the image of a young boy, blood continuously gushing from the wound in his chest. He slowly made his way toward us, his opaque eyes glowing red, the only words out of his mouth being, "You.... you..."

Weakly, Matt called out, "What about us?"

That's when the boy's face twisted into a grotesque form that made me audibly scream. "YOU KILLED ME!" the boy shrieked. That's when a large, bloody carving knife materialized in his hands, and he lunged toward me. We were up and out of the building faster than we could have moved on our own. We made a promise between us to make it a point to never enter Players Theater late at night unless we had to.

Matt and Tim are now graduated and out in the world, and I've upheld my duty of telling the legend of Brian's horrific murder in Players Theater. To this day, if you stand in Players Theater around two in the morning on the last night of a student-run production in May, you will hear mysterious thunks and crashes that can't be replicated. You will then see a mysterious spotlight coming from the rafters with no source. It will illuminate the biggest, heaviest flat that is stored in the back of the building, and in bright red letters, you will see "5/14/98" and "Never Forget". If you wait long enough, you can see "Love, Brian" appear at the bottom. And if you're brave enough to stay through that, you can see Brian himself, seeking revenge on the three men who were responsible for his murder.

At least, that's what we're going to tell the upcoming freshmen classes.