The Broom That Stood

I’m a graduate student in atmospheric sciences at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, and this is about my girlfriend, Maya, and her roommates in Warde Hall. They’ve had a string of strange occurrences in their dorm room, and I’m sharing this with their permission, though I can’t say they’re happy about it.

It started around Halloween. They’d all been out together, and when they returned, their room was exactly as they left it—except for one thing: a pillar candle on the windowsill had a small, dark drop on its wax, like dried blood. They hadn’t lit it in weeks, and the window was locked from the inside. They chalked it up to some weird prank, but the feeling that someone else had been in their space lingered.

A few days later, Maya went into the bathroom to grab the broom. It was standing upright in the corner, perfectly balanced, as if waiting. She froze. There was no way it could do that on its own. She watched it for a full minute, but it didn’t move. When she finally reached for it, it fell with a clatter, and the room felt suddenly colder. She told her roommates, but they laughed it off.

Then things quieted down for a while, and they almost forgot about it. But as soon as the spring semester began, the activity ramped up. One evening, Maya was studying at her desk when her backpack, which was on the floor, began to drag itself across the carpet, leaving a trail in the fibers. She screamed, and it stopped abruptly, as if startled by her voice. The roommates searched the room, but there was no one else.

After that, the noises started. Footsteps in the hallway outside their door, even when no one was there. Voices murmuring in the walls, too low to make out words. And then the rumbling—a low, guttural sound that seemed to come from the floor itself, shaking their furniture for about ten seconds before fading away. They tried to record it, but their phones just picked up static.

Maya became convinced the room was haunted. She started sleeping with the lights on, and the roommates refused to be alone there. They even asked to switch rooms, but the housing office said they’d need to provide evidence of some kind of ‘physical threat.’ So they stayed, trying to ignore the growing unease.

One night, I was over, and we were all in the living area. It was around 2 a.m., and I was half-asleep on the couch. Suddenly, I felt a presence in the room, a weight pressing down on the air. I sat up, and the roommates were wide awake, staring at the kitchen. The broom—the same one from the bathroom—was lying on the floor, but it began to roll, slowly, toward the center of the room, all by itself. It stopped in front of Maya, who was sitting on the floor. We all watched as it slowly stood up, balancing on its bristles, then fell back down. It did this three times, like a pendulum.

Then, from the closet, we heard a single, clear knock. Maya whispered, ‘Who’s there?’ and the knocking replied—three knocks in a pattern, as if answering. We were too terrified to move. After a long silence, the knocking stopped, and the room returned to normal, but we all felt it. Something was with us.

The next day, we decided to do some research. We looked into the history of the building, and we found out that Warde Hall was built on the site of an old asylum that had burned down in the 1950s. Some of the patients had allegedly been trapped in the basement, and their remains were never recovered. The dorm had been built over the ruins, and some people claimed that the ghosts of those patients still roamed the halls.

Maya and her roommates became obsessed with figuring out what entity was in their room. They set up a camera one night, hoping to capture something. In the footage, around 3 a.m., the shadowy figure of a woman appeared in the corner of the room, near the closet. She seemed to be watching them sleep. Then, the figure slowly faded, and in its place, the words ‘HELP ME’ appeared scrawled on the wall in what looked like ash. They scrubbed it off, but it reappeared the next night.

They tried to reach out to the spirit, asking it what it wanted. Through an EVP recorder, they caught a faint voice: ‘Not trapped. Waiting. For you.’ That chilled us to the bone. They hadn’t mentioned the message to anyone, yet it knew they were there.

As weeks passed, the activity intensified. Objects were thrown across the room, lights flickered, and they would find scratches on their skin in the morning. Maya was getting exhausted, and her grades were slipping. She started to believe that the spirit was trying to possess her, to use her body to escape the confines of the building.

One night, I was alone in the room with Maya, waiting for her roommates to come back. We were sitting on the floor, and I felt a cold hand touch the back of my neck. I spun around, but there was no one. Maya gasped, pointing at the mirror on the wall. In the reflection, I saw a figure standing behind us—a gaunt, pale woman with hollow eyes, her mouth open in a silent scream. She was wearing an old-fashioned hospital gown. Then, she vanished.

We knew we had to do something. Maya contacted the local paranormal group, and they came with equipment to investigate. They didn’t find any logical explanation for the phenomena, and they concluded that we were dealing with a ‘demonic entity’ that was growing stronger. They performed a cleansing ritual, but it seemed to make things worse. The entity appeared in a mirror, laughing, and then the room went pitch black. When the lights came back on, the door was ajar.

We were desperate. Maya’s roommate suggested we try to communicate directly with the spirit, to ask it why it had chosen them. We held a séance in the room, using a planchette. The glass started moving on its own, spelling out letters. It spelled: ‘YOU ARE NOT ALONE. I HAVE BEEN WAITING.’ Then, it spelled: ‘YOUR FRIEND IS MINE. SHE WILL JOIN ME.’ The glass whirled off the board and shattered against the wall.

That night, Maya had a nightmare. She dreamed that she was in the basement of the asylum, and all around her were the ghosts of the patients. They were whispering, ‘Let us out.’ She woke up screaming, and when she looked in the mirror, she saw the woman again, but this time the woman was smiling. Maya felt a cold sensation in her chest, and she knew that the spirit had attached itself to her.

Now, Maya is in a psychiatric ward. She’s been having breakdowns, hearing voices, and seeing the woman everywhere. Her roommates have moved out, refusing to talk about it. I’m the only one who visits her. Sometimes, when I do, I see the woman standing behind her, and I know that Maya is fighting a losing battle.

I know this all sounds insane, but it’s real. The broom that stood upright was the first sign. The blood in the candle was a warning. And now, I’m just waiting for the day when Maya finally gives in, and the woman takes her body for good.

If you’re ever in Warde Hall, and you see a broom standing upright, run. Don’t wait for it to speak. Just run.