Room 314
By Mary Josephine Clare V. Bautista
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When I was in college, I went to a university in the Philippines called Ateneo de Manila University. The university was ran by Jesuit priests and was fairly new when you compare it the Ivy League schools in the USA. The land where the university now stood was apparently either a prison camp or a war hospital during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines back in World War two. Now that fact may or may not have anything to do with my story. I only know what me and my roommates experienced.
It was summer and I was dorming in Cervini Hall with three other girls - Michelle, Kat and a girl who didn't really attend the university but was just their for summer classes and therefore I can't remember her name. For the sake of the story, I will call her SummerGirl.
Michelle, Kat and I knew each other pretty well after having lived in the same dorm for the past few terms. We usually lived in Eliazo Hall the girls dorm but during the summers, we had to make do with living in the third floor of the boys dorm. This is how ended up in Room 314.
From, the beginning, there were some strange occurrences in Room 314. It wasn't really any big deal in the beginning. It was just things like door locking themselves, hair standing on end in the middle of the night over nothing. Stuff like that.
But there were two occurrences that really marked our summer experience that year. The first one involved Michelle. Her bed was by the door. And the wall of the door had wooden window jalousies. The jalousies at the bottom half would not close. One night while Michelle was studying French, she suddenly bolted out of her study desk and ran outside. Kat and I looked at each other in surprise when she did this. Upon her return, we asked her what made her bolt like that. According to Michelle the reason that she did was that while staring off into space while studying, she had seen someone through the open jalousies walking very slowly in a long white nightgown. The pace of the person's walk as well as the what she (Michelle referred to her as a she) was wearing made her curious and that's why she ran out. Kat and I asked her then what she found outside. Michelle replied that there was no one outside. But she was sure she had seen that person in a white nightgown walking slowly.
She even went next door, she said, because at the rate the person was walking she would have just been next door - but when she opened the door to the next room, no one there was wearing a white nightgown. We never did find out what that thing was, but I remember Kat, Michelle and I praying that night for the unrestful souls.
The second incident in room 314 was even scarier. This time it involved me and Michelle. One night, I was experimenting with my new curling iron. I had a mirror positioned on my desk and I was curling my hair. From behind me through the mirror, I could see NewGirl sitting on her chair in front of her desk studying or reading at least. Kat was on her bed next to New Girl's bed Michelle was again across me sitting by her desk studying.
As I curled my hair, I could see NewGirl from her back in my mirror. A few moments on, I thought I heard her crying as well as reading a letter or something like that. The thought should I approach her and comfort her crossed my mind, but then I thought, I shouldn't be so nosy after all, I didn't know her at all. So that decided, I continued curling my hair and eventually got tired of doing so and started to straighten my hair again. She was still crying then. As I turned around to talk to Michelle, I suddenly glimpsed NewGirl sleeping on the bed next to Kat's. In the split second that I've seen her through my mirror crying and reading, there was no way that she could have gotten to the bed from the chair that fast. I suddenly realized that the person that I've been seeing in the mirror was not NewGirl. I glanced at Michelle and she told me, I saw her too! I jumped from my bed and Michelle and I ended up sleeping in the same bed that night.
When Kat saw us lying in the same bed the next day she asked what happened. And we told her. She said that NewGirl had gone to sleep the same time as her. I was curling my hair and seeing that girl in the mirror for a good 20 minutes. And all that time, it wasn't her.
From that time on, we resolved to pray for the restless souls in our midst before going to bed at night. I think we helped them, because we had an uneventful rest of the summer in Rm.314.
