The Ivy-Choked Lantern

Before I get into this, you should know that weird things have always been a part of my life. I’m no psychic, but I’ve got what my grandmother called ‘the sight.’ It’s not something I asked for, and it’s not something I enjoy. It’s just there, like a bad habit that follows me around. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve seen things that other people can’t see. Mostly, they’re faint, faded things – echoes of people who used to be alive. They cluster in old buildings, along forgotten paths, in places where strong emotions soaked into the ground. It’s not usually scary, more like watching a grainy film loop of strangers’ last moments. I’ve learned to tune them out, to focus on the living world and let the dead be part of the background noise.

But a few years ago, something changed. I started college at a place that was beautiful on the surface – manicured lawns, brick buildings covered in ivy, and a clock tower that chimed on the hour. The campus was built on the site of a former plantation, and I could feel the weight of that history everywhere. There were whispers of tragedy here, but nothing I couldn’t handle. I was used to it. Then I met Elodie. She was a theology student with a calm, serene presence, and she had a gift similar to mine, though less constant. She didn’t see spirits as often, but when she did, they were vivid, almost solid. She was also devout, a Christian, while I’m more… spiritual, you could say. We hit it off immediately, bonding over our shared weirdness and our love of late-night coffee. We’d talk for hours about life, death, and everything in between.

One October morning, Elodie found me before our first class. Her face was pale, and she was clutching her leather journal like it was a lifeline. ‘There’s this man,’ she said, her voice shaking slightly. ‘I saw him near the old oak tree by the library. He looked so real, not like the others. He was wearing old-fashioned clothes, like a professor from the 1920s, and he had a lantern, not an electric one. He just stood there, staring at me. And then he pointed towards the clock tower.’ I felt a chill run down my spine. ‘That’s unusual,’ I said, trying to sound calm. ‘Maybe he’s just a residual haunting. Some of them are harmless.’ But Elodie shook her head. ‘No, he felt different. He felt… angry. And when he pointed, I saw the tower clock change. It showed the wrong time. It showed 3:13, but it’s not even 8 AM.’

I was skeptical. Residual hauntings, the ones I usually saw, were like recordings. They never interacted. But this was different. Elodie described the man with such detail that I felt like I knew him. And the clock changing was something I’d never heard of. Over the next few days, I started paying more attention to the campus’s history. I went to the library and dug through old archives. That’s when I found the story of Professor Nathaniel Hale, a brilliant history professor who had a passion for folklore and the occult. In 1923, he vanished under mysterious circumstances. His office was found ransacked, his books scattered, and his prized antique lantern – a brass, oil-burning thing – was missing. The last person to see him was a student who claimed she saw him walking toward the clock tower late at night, muttering about a ‘hidden door.’ The case was never solved.

The more I read, the more I felt a pull towards the clock tower. It was the oldest building on campus, built in the 1850s, with a narrow spiral staircase leading to the top. A week after Elodie’s vision, I decided to go up there myself. It was late afternoon, the light going amber, and the tower was deserted. I climbed the steps, my footsteps echoing in the gloom. At the top, there was a small room with a massive clock mechanism. The air was cold and stale. As I looked around, I noticed a strange mark on the wall – a symbol I didn’t recognize, like an interlocked circle and triangle. And then I saw it: the lantern. It was sitting on a dusty shelf, tarnished but intact. I don’t know why, but I reached out and touched it. The moment my fingers made contact, I felt a jolt, like static electricity.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I kept seeing the symbol. I searched my mind, and it came to me: it was a seal of binding, something used in folk magic to trap a spirit. I realized that Professor Hale had been trying to bind something, or someone, and something went wrong. The lantern was his focus, a vessel for his power. And the man Elodie saw was not a ghost – he was a guardian. The true horror was that he was guarding something evil that was still trapped here.

The next day, I told Elodie what I’d found. She was trembling. ‘We have to do something,’ she said. ‘Maybe we can communicate with him, ask what he’s guarding.’ Against my better judgment, we decided to go back to the tower that night, with his lantern. We lit a candle and placed it inside the lantern, as if honoring the old tradition. We waited. At exactly 3:13 AM, the clock tower began to chime, though the time was wrong. A cold wind swept through the room, and the air grew thick. A figure materialized – Professor Hale, his eyes hollow, his form flickering. He pointed again at the wall, at that symbol, and then he spoke, his voice like dry leaves: ‘You must not release it. The door is sealed, but your curiosity is a key.’ He faded, and the symbol on the wall began to glow.

We left the tower, shaken. Elodie suggested we find a way to reinforce the binding, but as days passed, the campus began to feel wrong. People started getting headaches, feeling watched. A security guard reported seeing a shadow with two red eyes near the tower. One night, I woke up to find the lantern in my room, even though I’d left it in the tower. I knew then that something had taken an interest in us.

A week later, Elodie disappeared. Her roommate said she went out for a walk and never came back. I was frantic. I searched everywhere, but it was like she’d vanished into thin air. I returned to the tower, the lantern in my hands. I called out to the professor. He appeared, more solid this time. ‘Where is she?’ I demanded. He looked at me with sorrow. ‘He took her, the one I bound. He’s been growing stronger over the years. The seal is weakening, and he used her as a catalyst to break free.’ ‘Who is he?’ I asked. ‘A collector of souls,’ the professor said. ‘He was a powerful sorcerer in the 1800s, buried under this ground. I bound him to keep him from rising, but I was arrogant. I used a ritual that required my life, and I ended up trapped here as well. Now, you must finish what I could not.’

The professor gave me instructions. He said I needed to recite an incantation over the lantern, using his blood – but he was a ghost. ‘Use your own,’ he said. ‘You have the sight. You have a connection. It might work.’ I was terrified, but I had no choice. I followed his guidance. I cut my palm, let the blood drip into the lantern’s base, and recited the strange words. The lantern flared with an eerie blue light, and the room shook. The wall cracked, revealing a hidden chamber – a small vault filled with bones, and in the center, Elodie lay unconscious. She was alive. As I dragged her out, I heard a roar of fury behind me, and the tower began to collapse. We barely made it out before the clock tower crumbled.

Since then, I’ve kept the lantern in my possession. I don’t know what I’ve done, if I bound the sorcerer again or if I’ve merely delayed him. The professor is gone, his spirit finally at peace. Elodie and I recovered slowly, but we changed. I can see more now, and sometimes I hear whispers from the lantern at night. The campus is being rebuilt, but I know that the clock tower will always have a pull. I cannot rid myself of the feeling that this isn’t over. That the sorcerer is still there, waiting. And I wonder if I’ve merely become the new guardian, tethered to a brass lantern that refuses to let me go.