When I received my soon-to-be roommate’s information in the mail the summer before my freshman year, I immediately had visions of instant bonding and late-night girl talk. From what little info I had to go on (a name, address, and phone number) she just sounded so normal. Her last name wasn’t Dahmer or Kaczynski, and she was from a town about an hour from mine, which seemed like a decent place to grow up. Everything seemed to be falling into place–until I called her to introduce myself and go over who was going to bring what for our room. First of all, the first thing she told me was that she was a junior. And no, she was not a transfer student. She had been living on campus two whole years already. How was it possible that she did not have any friends to live with?
I tried to play it cool, figuring maybe she had studied abroad somewhere cool and missed the housing deadline or something like that. And once I finally arrived, she seemed normal-ish. At least she seemed to have some friends and she even had a boyfriend. But after several weeks, I walked into our room she proceeded to tell me that our tv has been flickering a lot (mind you, the dorm we were in was ancient so I’m sure the wiring wasn’t too modern), and she was convinced our room was haunted. I simply smiled, nodded, and immediately left to camp out in a friend’s room. The next time I came back, our room was dark with lots of candles flickering everywhere (fire hazard anyone?). In the middle of the floor were my roommate and three of her friends, huddled around a Ouija board. They put their index fingers to their lips, shushing me. They were trying to “communicate” with the spirit in our room. I went to communicate with the housing office to ask for a new roommate. But thankfully, she ended up moving out shortly after that botched exorcism, saying she just “couldn’t live in a room that was haunted.”
Some of my friends also had crazy roommates freshman year:
My friend D opened his roommate’s desk drawer to find a pen, and instead found pictures of his roomies’ “little friend,” if you know what I mean. And we’re not just talking one or two pics. There were at least three rolls worth of film (and who would print such things!) from different angles, etc.
My friend J had a roommate who completely made up the fact that he had a sister. He talked about her all the time, and they were apparently really close. This charade carried on for almost three full years, and after this guy’s girlfriend repeatedly asked to meet her, the truth finally came out after a little research. No one has talked to him in year–he’s probably wearing other people’s skins right now.
So hopefully you hit it off with your roommate, and you become life-long friends. If not, we’d love to hear your roommate horror stories.
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