Tag Archives: knocking

Late Night Newspaper Room Ghost

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.

Siblings tapping though walls to talk to each other

Nationality: Vietnamese
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/29/2015
Primary Language: English
Language: Vietnamese

“D” is a 19 year old female student at The University of Southern California. She is a Chemistry major and interested in pursuing Pharmacy after college.  She is Vietnamese on both sides of her family and describes herself as very close with her sister, whom she shares many Folkloric traditions with. She played soccer up through high school and is currently active in the rugby community.

 

Transcript:

“D: So uh… me and my sister our rooms used to be right next to each other so we would knock on the wall, and each time you knocked it corresponded with a different meaning. So like three knocks was asking if you were awake, two was yes, one was no, and than from there four was like ‘come to my room’, there was just a whole bunch of different signals we sent to each other. So from there, when we didn’t live next to each other we would just say “ONE” or “TWO” during conversations and we would know what the other person meant. It’s one of our things now.

Me: Do you guys still do that?

D: Yeah!

Me: Do you remember about how old you were when you started doing that?

D: Uh… we were about my sister was probably 10 and I was 8.

Me: So why the knocking, where you trying to hide that you guys were talking from your parents?

D: Yeah haha, they caught us sneaking out to talk to each other a few times, and the knocking made it so they couldn’t find out about it. ”

 

Analysis:

As “D” pointed out, she had a desire to speak to her sister and had previously been caught sneaking out of her room, and used the system as a way to avoid detection by her parents, while still allowing her to communicate with her sister. The fact the code is still used today even though they do not live near each other anymore, shows they still remember the system they had previously used while using it in a manner that allows them to accommodate for their current state of affairs.