This past Tuesday, a week before Halloween, my roommate temporarily disappeared. It all started when my roommate, Avery, offered to take the trash out to the room just down the hall. This was a task that we all dreaded after campus police released reports of high-pitched voices coming from inside the trash chutes. Luckily, it was only around 9 p.m. so the middle-of-the-night fear had not set in yet. As Avery stepped out of the room, she mumbled something about going to the library afterward to get in some last-minute studying before the Diffeq midterm the next day, so I didn’t think much of it when she was gone for the next few hours. Around midnight, I started to become concerned and went looking for her.
I searched around the entire campus, including each floor of the library, and found no trace of Avery, so I came back to my suite to get the assistance of our other two suitemates, Annabelle and Diya. They were not taking her disappearance seriously and figured she had just gone to hang out with friends or take a walk by the pier as a study break. Annabelle jokingly suggested we check the tunnels that run underground. I didn’t think it was too bad of an idea since we had searched nearly everywhere else. So, we headed towards Walker to begin exploring the dark, echoey tunnels.
Almost immediately, we were met with signs of Avery. Based on the scrap of her blue shirt and the smell of strawberry perfume, we knew Avery had gone into the tunnel fairly recently. Annabelle led the way since she was more familiar with this area than Diya or me. After 15 minutes of twists and turns, we had become discombobulated and were ready to turn around and leave this job to the police. All of a sudden, there was a yell followed by a series of harsh footsteps. We looked at each other and knew that scream meant Avery needed us. So, we ran towards the action until we came across a tiny set of footprints weaved in between a more average-sized set. It was like tiny elves had been running circles around Avery, except for some reason she wasn’t sticking around to hang out with them.
This alarming pattern continued as we worked our way down the hall. Finally, we came to a small room that had furniture only large enough for an American Girl doll. It looked like a miniature dorm room stocked with food, decorations, and numerous bunk beds arranged in rows. This peculiar sight was immediately pushed to the back of our minds when we heard another yell coming from directly above our heads. As I tilted my head upwards, my roommate’s foot came into view followed by the rest of her body. She appeared to be hanging onto a ledge, barely holding on while a bunch of small creatures stomped on her hands, trying to make her fall. Before we could think twice, we formed a basket, copying the moves of cheerleaders, and prepared to catch Avery when she eventually fell.
As soon as the creatures noticed our presence, they scurried to the other side of the ledge and out of our view. Avery was able to safely drop into our arms and we all breathed a sigh of relief followed by massive feelings of confusion. What were these creatures? Where were we?
After we calmed down a bit and looked around, we realized we were inside the trash chute on the bottom floor of the new residential towers. The only way out was to retrace our steps, following the numerous tiny footprints that had led us to this location.
When we told the police about this experience, they tried to retrace our steps, but there were no footprints and the tunnel no longer existed. Avery couldn’t remember the events leading her to the tunnels that night. Although this isn’t a typical news article because it is a personal experience, I wanted to inform the students at Stevens to be aware of the trash chutes in the towers because you never know what creatures might be living in there.
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