The Campus Arboretum Incident

My first semester at Stonebridge University, nestled in the foothills of the Cascades, had been a blur of rain-slicked sidewalks and cinderblock dorms. I chose Stonebridge for its forestry program, not its ghost stories, but a week before Halloween, a thread on the campus forum caught my eye: ‘The Arboretum’—a network of trails behind the science buildings, rumored to be haunted. According to the posts, a grad student had vanished there in the 1970s, and hikers sometimes heard footsteps crunching on leaves when no one else was around.

I was in my dorm, Holbrook Hall, a squat brick building that smelled of mildew and instant ramen. My roommate, Jenna, had gone home for the weekend, so I had the room to myself. As I scrolled through the forum, a sudden clatter made me jump. Jenna’s bookshelf—a flimsy particleboard thing—had tipped over, spilling paperback thrillers and a chipped coffee mug across the floor. It did that sometimes, whenever the heating pipes groaned. I sighed, knelt down, and started stacking the books back, my mind still half on the forum. When I finished, I noticed the bookshelf was now leaning slightly against the wall, and a cold draft crept from the window, even though it was shut.

I needed air. And company. My friend Marcus lived in a house two miles off campus, past the arboretum’s northern edge. I grabbed my jacket and keys, planning to drive. The evening was crisp, the kind of cold that bites your lungs, and the parking lot was half empty. As I walked toward my beat-up Civic, I heard it: footsteps. Crunch, crunch, crunch on the gravel behind me. Not hurried, just steady, matching my pace. I figured it was another student, maybe heading to the library. But the steps got closer, each one louder, until I could feel the vibrations through the soles of my boots. My heart hammered. I spun around.

Nobody. The lot stretched empty under the orange sodium lights, the only movement a stray leaf skittering across the asphalt. The footsteps had stopped the instant I turned. I stood there for a full ten seconds, scanning every shadow between the cars. Then, a new sound—a soft, deliberate exhale, right by my ear, as if someone were standing inches behind me. I yelped and sprinted to my car, fumbling the keys twice before the lock clicked. I threw myself into the driver’s seat, slammed the door, and engaged the locks. The engine turned over with a shudder. I didn’t look back as I peeled out of the lot, my hands shaking on the wheel.

The drive to Marcus’s place wound along a tree-lined road that hugged the arboretum’s boundary. Bare branches clawed at the sky. I tried to calm myself with logic: wind, an animal, my own imagination. But the memory of that breath, warm and moist on my neck, refused to fade. I switched on the radio to drown out the silence, but every station seemed to cut to static as I passed a certain mile marker, a gnarled old oak with a rope swing that kids had probably left years ago. I glanced at it and saw a figure—tall, dark, standing perfectly still under the branches. My foot pressed the accelerator, and the car surged forward. The figure didn’t move. It just watched me go.

Marcus’s house was a ramshackle Victorian on the edge of town, its porch light flickering. I parked and practically ran to the door. Marcus opened it, hair disheveled, holding a beer. ‘Whoa, you look like you saw a ghost,’ he joked. I told him about the footsteps, the breath, the figure. He laughed it off, said the locals were always talking about the arboretum, but it was probably just a deer or a prankster. I didn’t feel reassured. I stayed until nearly midnight, drinking cheap coffee and trying to forget. When I finally drove back, the campus was dead quiet, the only lights coming from the dorms’ windows like empty eyes.

I parked in the same lot, now nearly empty. I had to walk past the spot where I’d heard the footsteps. My legs were jelly, but I forced myself forward, keys sticking out between my fingers as a makeshift weapon. The moment my foot hit the gravel, the footsteps started again. Closer, faster this time, like something was running at me. I broke into a run, but the sound matched my pace, then overtook it. I felt a cold hand on my shoulder, and a voice, low and gravelly, whispered: ‘You forgot something.’ I spun, and the world tilted.

I woke up in my dorm, sprawled on the floor near the bookshelf. The books were scattered around me, and the shelf was tipped over again. My phone showed 3:17 a.m. The forum post was still open on my screen, and at the bottom, a new comment had appeared, timestamped just minutes ago: ‘Don’t look behind you.’ I heard the door creak open, and the hallway light spilled in, but no one was there. The footsteps, soft and deliberate, padded across the carpet toward me. I looked at the bookshelf, and for the first time, I noticed that amidst the chaos, one book lay open on its spine. It was a forestry textbook, and on the page, a map of the arboretum. A red circle had been drawn around a spot near the old oak—the same tree I’d seen. And beneath the circle, in handwriting that wasn’t mine: ‘You left this.’.