The Dormitory’s Empty Bunk

It was the tail end of August when my best friend Callum and I decided to make the trip from our small hometown in Cornwall to the sprawling campus of Millford University for a weekend anime festival. Money was tight for both of us, being fresh out of sixth form, so we booked a single dormitory room in the old accommodation block, the one that the university had promised to renovate but never quite got around to. The building was a relic from the 1960s, all grey concrete and narrow windows, and the air inside of it smelled faintly of damp and floor polish.

We arrived on the Friday evening, just as the light was beginning to fade and a fine drizzle was starting to fall. The festival had been a plan for months, but the moment we stepped into our dorm, I felt a sudden unease. The room was small, with two single beds pushed against opposite walls, a rickety desk, and a wardrobe that kept creaking open on its own. The window overlooked a disused courtyard, overgrown with weeds and scattered with the remnants of old cigarette butts. Callum, ever the pragmatist, laughed at my nervousness and threw his bag onto the bed closest to the door, claiming it was the better strategic position. I took the other bed, the one that had a mysterious dark stain on the pillowcase that I tried my best not to think about.

That first night, the festival had a midnight screening of classic horror anime, and we stayed out until nearly two in the morning, stopping off at the campus kiosk for chips and coffee. When we finally returned to the dorm, the corridor was so quiet that our footsteps seemed to echo in the emptiness. We crashed into our beds, exhausted, and I remember my last thought before sleep was how oddly cold the room felt, despite the stuffy August air.

I woke up suddenly, startled by a sound that seemed to come from right beside my head. It was a light, rhythmic breathing, like someone was standing over me in the dark. I held my breath and listened, but the sound faded. I tried to rationalize: it was just the pipes, or Callum’s breathing from across the room. I turned over and pulled the thin blanket up to my chin, but the feeling of being watched grew stronger. When I finally managed to fall asleep again, I dreamt of a young woman with long, dark hair, standing at the foot of my bed, whispering something in a language I didn’t understand.

The next morning, Callum woke up irritable and complained that he’d had a terrible sleep because of his allergies, although he’d never mentioned allergies before. He complained about a musty smell and said his eyes were itchy and watery. I didn’t mention my dream, but I noticed that the wardrobe door was slightly ajar, and the chair had been moved from under the desk to face my bed.

We spent the day at the festival, losing ourselves in the paranoia of sword fights and the beauty of animated landscapes. But by the evening, I found myself dreading the return to that dorm room. Callum, sensing my mood, suggested we stay out late again, which we did, this time attending a panel on Japanese folklore that touched on the idea of leftover places and lingering spirits. The speaker told us that some places become like a palimpsest, layer upon layer of memory pressed into the walls, and that old buildings, especially those filled with transient students, often have echoes of their past occupants. I laughed it off, but I couldn’t shake the image of that woman from my dream.

That night, we returned to the room, and I decided to take a shower to calm my nerves. The bathroom was at the end of the corridor, a communal affair with chipped tiles and flickering fluorescent lights. As I stood under the hot water, I heard a faint sound above the rush, a child-like giggle that seemed to come from inside the drain. I turned off the water and stood there, dripping, listening. Nothing but the hum of the pipes. I quickly dried off and sprinted back to the room, the cold of the corridor leeching into my bones.

When I got there, Callum was already in bed, facing the wall, his breathing even. I checked the door was locked and climbed into my own bed, pulling the covers up to my chin. Just as I was about to close my eyes, I saw it: on the ceiling, directly above my bed, there was a dark patch that looked almost like a face, but it was indistinct. I blinked, and it was gone.

I must have drifted off, because I was rudely awakened by a violent jerk of my mattress. I sat up, heart pounding, to see the room bathed in a sickly pale light from the streetlamp outside the window. The wardrobe door was now hanging wide open, and the chair was overturned, lying on its side in the middle of the floor. Callum was still asleep, or so I thought, but when I called his name, he didn’t respond. I got up and walked over to his bed, and that’s when I saw that his face was pale and contorted, as if he was having a nightmare. I shook him, and he woke with a gasp, his eyes wild. He looked at me and whispered, ‘She was in my dream, telling me to leave.’

Neither of us slept the rest of the night. We sat on the floor with the light on, backs against the wall, exchanging stories of what we each had experienced. For the first time, I told him about the breathing, the dream, the shadow. He admitted that he had seen a woman in his dream, not menacing, but sad, and she had pointed at the window. When we finally dared to look out of that window at dawn, we saw that the courtyard below was not empty. Someone had drawn a large spiral in charcoal on the cracked paving stones, and in its center, there was a single, faded photograph of a group of students from the 1980s, all smiling at the camera except for one, a young woman with long dark hair, who was staring not at the lens but off to the side, as if she was looking at something just out of frame.

We were so shaken that we checked out of the dorm that morning, despite having paid for the entire weekend. The festival organizers were understanding and let us crash with a friend who had a spare room in the newer student village. We never spoke about what happened again, not even to each other, until years later, when I was on my honeymoon in Bath and went on a ghost tour of the old Roman baths. The guide told a story about a young woman who had drowned herself in the town’s river in the 1800s, and that ever since, her spirit had been seen wandering, seeking a place to rest. It was then that I remembered the dormitory, that old building with the restless spirit, and I realized that what we had encountered might have been a soul that was just as lost as the one in the story, only trapped in a place that had no memory of a death, no ceremony, no marker.

I’ve been trying to find out if anyone else has ever felt something in those rooms, but the university has since torn down the old block, and the student forums are full of chatter about more mundane things. Callum, now married and living in Canada, insists that we must have fallen asleep and dreamt the whole thing, but I know that what we saw was real. I wonder, sometimes, if she is still there, in the dust and the rubble, her story left untold, waiting for someone to finally listen and give her the peace she never had. But I doubt anyone will. The universe has a way of burying its secrets, and we are the only ones who carry the weight of that place.