Jacobus Ghostbusters

This is not a joke. This is an account of true events.

The piercing, constant, high-pitched beeping noise that echoed throughout the gutted halls of Jacobus, in its last surviving weeks should have been warning enough that nothing good was to be found in the decaying carcass of the former student center.

Three out of the four plucky young ghostbusters, Wilding, Alexis, and Squeegee, were deeply skeptical, only agreeing to help with this production out of humor. The fourth, who put the escapade together, was much wiser, having previously experienced the history lingering in Jacobus that refused to rest. Jacobus had been a dorm, a student center, an office building, an event venue, a medical center, and much more over its long history, so that wise fourth student (we’ll call her Yarcy) had the right instincts in thinking it could be harboring spirits.

The group was assembled, camera equipment was attained, and a date was set: one of the last days of finals in Fall 2018, just days before the building was closed off from all or most students. The paranormal investigators made their way inside and quickly filmed an introduction in case something happened to them. The next hour or so was spent wandering through the various empty rooms of the building. By this point, the remains of student orgs littered the halls, pieces of ceilings and walls had fallen off, trash of all kinds was strewn about, and various other relics of unknown origin lay in wait. The entire time, the beeping noise emanated from deep in the basement, ringing in their ears and adding a thick, eerie layer of unease.

After all accessible nooks and crannies were explored, work started on the main event: the Ouija board. Having used one before, Yarcy started to draw one by hand on a large piece of poster paper she had brought while the others set up the camera and watched the door, all while continuing to voice their skepticism. The board was conceived and put to use in the left gym of the Jacobus basement, with a salt circle sprinkled out on the hardwood floor surrounding the hunters (and their camera). Three Sterno cans were used to supplement the one actual candle that was brought along, and an empty shot glass was used as the planchette.

The first hour or so was uneventful. The shot glass was repeatedly heated in the fire of the candle, the participants’ fingers repeatedly placed upon it, but very little happened. The first spirit to respond was a young boy from the 1800s, but his messages were faint and unclear. The next seemed to only send gibberish, and the ghost hunters understood nothing from the seemingly random movements of the shot glass. The glass was heated, the fingers placed, yet nothing. The glass was heated again, the fingers put back, nada. A different person tried the heating and the asking of the question, Are there any spirits in this place? Any trapped souls that want to talk to the living? No movement, so apparently not.

For the rest of the story to make sense, it’s necessary to know a few things about how the camera saves footage. The type of camera that was used records in roughly one hour blocks, automatically numbers the video files, and saves a second type of file for each video segment that is used in a few niche applications. (So if it records for 4 consecutive hours, there should be 8 files on the SD card. Four video files and four secondary files, each numbered from 1 to 4.) Lastly, it’s important to note that this happens automatically. The camera operator doesn’t have to manually switch it over to a new file or number the files.

Eventually, two of the hunters, Wilding and Alexis, had to leave, as it was around midnight and they couldn’t commit too much of their time to ghostbusting during finals. Coincidentally, at around the exact same time, the camera switched to a new file as discussed above. It was shortly after this that Yarcy and Squeegee reported being contacted by a much stronger spirit. Contrary to what most people would expect, this spirit was actually very nice to the two curious souls, talking to them for almost an hour about his life. His name was Juno, and he told them all about his wife, two daughters, and his time at Stevens. After a while, the connection faded away, and the busters were unable to contact any additional spirits, so they packed up and went home.

At this point, Yarcy, unsatisfied by the measly one ghost she got to actually speak to, took off to Europe for another ghost hunting adventure. The others, still skeptical about the night’s events, elected to store the footage somewhere safe and wait for her to get back before doing anything with it. It was Yarcy’s idea to do all this is the first place, they figured.

When transferring the footage into storage, Alexis reviewed it to make sure it came out well. She noticed nothing unusual. Everything seemed to have been recorded fine — there were no breaks in the footage, recording mistakes, etc. A few months went by, and the ghostbusters largely forgot about their Ouija session as they watched Jacobus slowly get torn down. It wasn’t until Alexis heard that the theme for the next SITTV Film Festival was “Found Footage” that she remembered the stored footage and thought she could make a funny short film out of it.

So she pulled up the folder, saved in a place few could access and fewer knew existed, and she got to work editing it into something satirical. However, as she went to put the Ouija board scene together, she noticed something strange; the second video file of the Ouija session had completely disappeared! The secondary file was still there, the files that came before and after it were still there, and everything else seemed normal; but the one file that recorded the conversation with Juno had vanished after months of sitting there in secret.

Alexis was floored. She immediately contacted everyone that knew about the adventure, everyone who could’ve possibly been pulling a prank on her. Nothing. She scoured the computer it was saved on, trying to find any record of the file being deleted. Nada. None of the original ghostbusters knew anything either. But that was the one file that recorded Yarcy’s supposed conversation, she thought. I tracked down everyone who could’ve deleted it and they all know nothing, she thought. What the actual holy fuck, I thought this shit was fake, she screamed to herself, doubting her previous doubt.

She kept trying to find a rational explanation, but to this day nothing has surfaced, nor has that critical section of the footage. She finished the video, albeit without the best part, but the unease lingered in her mind for weeks.

To make matters worse, Yarcy never returned to Stevens as a student. Several students have reported seeing visions of her, in group chats she used to be in, a few scarce OPA events, and even one particularly vivid appearance where most of the attendants of a Podge party claimed to have seen her socializing as normal, but the registrar confirmed that she no longer goes here. Wherever she is, maybe the missing footage is there with her.

But I’m not so sure.