The Exorcism

The year is 1973. It is a beautiful day on at the University of Oklahoma. Jenna, a freshman who lives on campus, just got done with classes for the day and is heading back to her dorm. Her dorm building is on the opposite side of campus from where her classes are so the walk tires her out quickly. Once Jenna gets back to her dorm building, she sees her hall mate Caroline and they talk for a bit. Jenna tells Caroline, “I am super tired but we should hang out later tonight.” Caroline agrees and they go to their separate rooms.

Jenna goes into her room and gets into bed for quick nap before her plans with Caroline. Jenna thinks to herself before falling into a slumber, “This is about to be the best after class nap yet.” or so she thought. After about thirty minutes into her nap, Jenna suddenly awakens. She cannot breathe and feels like she is being choked. It is now dark outside and she has no idea who is in her room doing this to her. She is trying to yell out for help, but cannot get the air to do so. She thinks to herself, “Lord please help me” and whoever is doing the choking, stops. She runs out of her room and gets into the hall screaming for help. Caroline comes out of her room and her boyfriend is with her. Jenna tells them, “someone was just in my room choking me!” Caroline’s boyfriend Jack is on the football team so he is a pretty muscular guy.

Jack tells the two girls he will go check it out. Jack goes into the room and flips on the light. There is nobody in the room. Since Jenna is so shaken up from the incident, she cancels her plans with her friends. Caroline tells Jenna, “If you need anything, I am one room away.” Jenna responds, “Thanks, girl, I just need to relax for the night.” They once again head back to their separate rooms.

Jenna gets to her room and decides she is going to eat some chips and finish up some homework she has. Jenna gets her chips out and places them into a bowl on her desk. She finishes an assignment about ghosts and goblins for her mythology class. It is now about ten o’clock and she is pretty worn out from the day's events so she decides to head to bed. Jenna sets her alarm clock for her morning class and dozes off. The time is now 3:33 in the morning. Jenna wakes up because she hears her chip bowl fall off her desk. She calls out “Who is in here?” but nobody responds. The response she does get is getting choked, again. She starts to swing her arms which knocks things off of her bedside table causing a commotion of noises. Caroline hears the noises next door and runs to Jenna’s door. Caroline is pounding on Jenna’s door, screaming , “Let me in, Jenna!” Once Caroline begins to bang on the door, whatever is choking Jenna suddenly stops and Jenna runs to let Caroline in. The girls are both panicking because there is nobody in the room. They both decided it has to be a ghost.

The next day the girls get in contact with a priest who is known to do exorcisms. They tell him Jenna’s problems and he agrees to come check out the building. Once he gets to the building, he immediately can tell it is inhabited by more than just one spirit. Caroline and Jenna lead him up to their hall and they reach Jenna’s room. The priest says to the girls, “I can feel the cold air coming out of your room. I believe you may have a visitor in there.” The priest goes into the room and begins speaking with the ghost. The ghost tells the priest her name which is “Nadine” and that she was killed in a car accident in the 1930’s. She says that this used to be her room and she does not want anyone to inhabit. The priest tells Nadine she needs to move on or he will do away with her. Nadine tells the priest “if you try to make me leave, I will harm you”. The priest takes this as a challenge and performs an exorcism on the room. The priest prays and shouts so intensely that the girls could feel the entity leave the room. The exorcism is complete and the priest blesses her room. Jenna is relieved (and a little spooked).

Author's Note: I got my idea for this story by reading the book, “Campus Ghosts of Norman, Oklahoma." In this book, it tells many different ghost stories on the University of Oklahoma campus. This particular story that I chose to focus one is called "The Exorcism." This story is about the old haunted Tri Delt sorority house (which is now torn down). This specific story took place in 1973. It was a building near Zarrow Hall (across from Ellison Hall which was my first story) but it has been torn down for a while. After it was the Tri Delt house, it became a dorm type building. There was a boy who lived there while going to OU and he had been choked on different occasions. He contacted a priest and the priest had to come do an exorcism on the boy's bedroom. Don't worry, though as this building is no longer around (but I can't say that our dorms now are not haunted). I just changed up the story to be from a girl's perspective but what happened to the girl in my story is the same thing that happened to the college boy in the story I read.