Spooky tales from the most haunted halls

You’d think living a short skip away from The Raz and Nabzy’s in town would ensure you the best possible student life, but if you’re susceptible to spiritual activity, it’s probably not the best idea.

It may already resemble a sort of Shutter Island-esque asylum, but the parties at Agnes Jones House are great, so you’d be forgiven for missing any spiritual activity while you shove various concoctions down your throat and up your nose. But when the partying stops, the spooking begins.

LIPA Graduate, Jordan Wellard, had night terrors of dark figures when living in Agnes Jones, but the discomfort didn’t end there.

Jordan said: “A few of us in our flat had exactly the same dream a few times, where we thought we were awake and could see a dark figure at the end of our beds. We’d then wake up properly and nothing would be there.

“None of us thought much of it, until we all realised we’d had exactly the same ‘dream’. It freaked us out, but luckily we were just moving out at the time.”

Spooky

Who knows what this dark figure’s plans could have been, had they have stayed longer?

Similarly, third year Sound Technology student, Saam Jafarzadeh Khamneh, had a startling experience while living the high life on Upper Parliament Street. The house in question already had automatic lights that followed you around the house – pretty spooky in itself.

Saam reveals: “The lights featured a two second lag between you walking in the room and the lights turning on. I was once halfway down the hallway when I felt a cold rush of air hit my face before the lights came on. When the hallway was illuminated by Thomas Edison’s gift of light, I noticed a giant spider sprinting in my general direction. Boy was I startled.”

Look how big it is

Saam was terrified

This was no ordinary spider. This animagus could have been any poltergeist in disguise.

Before Unite Student Village was home to sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, one building in the village was previously one of the earliest maternity hospitals in town. John Lennon was even born there.

JMU Fine Art drop-out turned tattoo model, Jake Cowley, spoke of his time in the Village of Horrors:

“After weeks of sleepless nights, I would wake up to loud knocking on my window on the penultimate floor. One morning after one of my regular shifts in The Font, I decided to check it out. At first I thought it was a pigeon or seagull, but when I turned around, I realised it was coming from my mirror.”

Jake – not the ghost

Anonymous visitor of Lennon Studios also explained his traumatic experience while staying in the seemingly comfortable en-suite rooms.

“I’d stayed in a couple of different blocks during my first year, and there was always something that would put me on edge. One night, I was awoken by off-putting noises. Once I’d brushed off the remainder of my Nabzy’s chips, I realised the noises I could hear were in fact the faint cries of a newborn. It’s safe to say, I stayed away from Lennon for a while.”

These screeching banshees inhabiting the poor homes in the city centre are pretty unsettling, but some have learned to love their supernatural lodgers.

Community Drama student, Rachael Pirie, has a Scouse Casper living with her.

She said: “It feels like a ‘he’. I call him Michael, but not in front of him. Sometimes you can just feel he’s there, and he does things like waving anything hanging. If I have my hair down, he touches it, which is strange.

“The first night I wasn’t in the flat, he smashed a glass off the table. We thought he didn’t like people being in the house without me, so the next night I told him to behave.”

As you can imagine, even with a friendly ghost, you need your privacy.

Rachael added: “Sometimes if I really can’t be arsed with any of his shit, if you tell him not to bother you he does listen. He’s a nice ghost.”

If only we all had a ghost like Michael.

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