Age: 58
Location: Boston, MA (Tufts University)
Text:
“when I was in college, I worked for the student newspaper, and I pulled a ton of all-nighters. I was always in that newspaper office at like 2 or 3 a.m., laying out pages, fixing articles, doing all the last-minute formatting before everything went to print. At that hour the building was basically dead. There were never really any students, no professors. Most of the time it was just me and maybe a few others from the school paper.
One night I was alone in the office working, and I heard this knocking on the door. I got up and opened the door but nobody was there. The whole hallway was silent. I didn’t really think much of it though I thought it was a bit creepy. I figured maybe someone was messing around or walking by, so I went back to work. But about twenty minutes later, the same knocking happened again. Again, I opened the door and there was nothing there.
At this point I was still trying to stay focused, but I was definitely getting freaked out. Then, sometime around four in the morning, it happened a third time. Same knocks. Same pace. Like someone was trying to get my attention on purpose. Now i was scared.
This time I didn’t open the door. I figured that if whatever it was was trying to play tricks on me, then then now would be the time that there was finally something there. So I didn’t answer it. But then it knocked again. So I got up and opened the door. There was still nothing there!
After the fourth time it never happened again. Ever. No explanation, no ending, no clue what was going on. Just knocks in the middle of the night that stopped as suddenly as they started. It was weird. Part of me thinks it was just someone messing with me. But that room could’ve been haunted”
Context:
This memorate was told to the informant by their father, who experienced repeated unexplained knocking while working alone in his college newspaper office late at night during production deadlines.
Analysis:
This memorate fits perfectly into campus ghost lore, where late-night workspaces become settings for strange and unexplained events. The repeated knocking creates a sense of intentional but invisible presence. What gives the story its power is the lack of resolution: no culprit, no explanation, just unexplained knocks that never returned. The mystery itself becomes the haunting, turning an ordinary college office into a space marked by unease and unanswered questions.
