Things I experienced never happened before this series of events, and none have happened since. Years have gone by and this inexplicable story still doesn’t make full sense to me, and I lived it. I’m hoping others might be able to glean some insight into what was going on.
In 2016, I moved into a college dorm at Concordia University in Irvine. There was always a heaviness to the room. Full disclosure, I was in a pretty dark and stressful time in my life, but still, something about this room felt particularly suffocating. Maybe it was my intimidatingly controlling roommate, or maybe it really was something about that place… being there felt like mourning, and for what, I didn’t know. But it seemed the room knew, and it held an unnamable sadness I’d come to know all too well.
The room was located on the taill-end of the dorm building, right near a culdesac.In a lot of ways, it was situated on a dead end. The back window opened up to the softball field, the front window opened up to the corridor, and there was a constant cacophony of chatter from teens who were likely far less troubled than I was, but I digress.
After the first night sleeping in the dorm, I awoke to find something strange- On the big school-issued desk, There was a small pile of what appeared to be gray ash, just sitting a few inches away from my pack of cigarettes. It boggled my mind. It wasn’t like I was smoking indoors. Plus, It didn’t look like cigarette ash, anyway. It was a fine powder. More like… Cremated remains or something. I didn’t give it much thought, and wiped it away.
Then, when I awoke the 2nd night, I found another quarter-sized pile of ash in a slightly different place on the desk. This time, prior to sweeping it up, I told my roommate about it. She saw it, too. We checked everywhere for where the source could be coming from and couldn’t figure it out. There was seemingly no cause for it.
The 3rd night came, and when I woke up again, there it was. This time, there seemed to be an even bigger pile of finely powdered ash. Every time, it was in the same general spot, but in slightly different locations on the right side of the desk.There was nothing that could have explained it- Different friends came into the room, stood on chairs to examine if it could possibly be falling from the ceiling, we wondered if somehow a draft was carrying it inside somehow, but nothing made sense. There were no vents anywhere nearby. It was just a very strange growing pile of ash on my desk. I’d check the desk prior to going to sleep, and every night, there would be nothing, but come morning time, the pile would be there. For 3 nights in a row. My roommate fell asleep before I did, and I woke up before she did. No one else had access to the room. It wasn’t being done by human hands.
I had a really hard time sleeping in this room every night. I’d stay up, feeling wired, unable to fall asleep. I can’t tell you the amount of times I’d be drifting on the brink of sleep, and then feel myself jolted awake, like when you feel you’re falling. One the fourth night, I finally managed to fall semi-asleep, but had a torrid of the worst nightmares I’ve ever had in my life.
In the nightmare, most everything was a blur and it was like I wasn’t there. I was someone else, or I was watching a scene unfold from afar. The overall sense of terror and dread and pain was palpable. I only retained bits and pieces. There was an asian girl and a white guy, and there was some type of fight between them. I was afraid for my own safety, which seemed to be her safety. As i was coming out of the dream, the name “Pham” kept ringing in my head in a bunch of different voices, like people were calling to me. Aside from the sheer terror of the dream, the biggest takeaway from the nightmare was a single name: Pham. Pham. Pham. I couldn’t remember much, but I remembered a girl being in danger and I knew her name was Pham. When I woke up, I found myself sweating bullets, and for the first time in my adult life, I had wet the bed. Literally, for the first time in my adult life. I chalked it up to just adjusting to a new foreign environment, but still, bedwetting isn’t something I’ve ever done. Something about it all scared the crap out of me. After I had that dream, the pile of ashes stopped appearing on my desk. A few days later, I learned about something that chilled me to the bone.
I was sitting in my cultural communication class, and the professor was talking about how culturally we are all very afraid of death. She started to tell us how a few years prior, there had been a su*cide on campus. A Vietnamese foreign exchange student had offed herself in the bathroom in the same dorm hall we were living in. The school was very hush-hush about it. They didn’t want the association of a suicide with their upstanding christian university. Apparently, they were able to move the body off campus easily and privately, as the room she was in was right near the culdesac…. At this, my blood ran cold. Our room was the closest to the culdesac. The pile of ashes. The dream, where the name Pham kept ringing in my ears. It had to have been her.
The remainder of the semester, nothing majorly alarming happened. If something fell off the walls, we’d say “must’ve been pham” and it kind of turned into a joke between my roommate and I. We went off to winter break, and the day before I got back, I got a frantic call from my roommate. She had arrived at campus before me, and nothing seemed amiss. Then, she returned to the room after a cigarette break with a friend, and on her desk, there was a neatly packed, HUGE pile of ash. Like, a foot long. Just chilling on her desk. She freaked out. Not only was the pile bigger than ever before, but it had moved. To her desk. Again, no scientific explanation could explain the pile. After that, she spoke with her aunt who’s “gifted” so to speak. She recommended we write a letter to Pham explaining that we’re her friends but she didn’t have to stay in that room any longer.
Simultaneously, we got a new next door neighbor. The dorms shared a bathroom (remember, the girl who had unalived herself did so in the bathroom). This new neighbor was a foreign exchange student from (coincidentally) Taiwan. Eventually, her roommate moved out, and the girl was alone in the room. I could often hear her talking, almost arguing and crying. We became convinced that Pham had attached herself to this new girl. I tried talking to the girl to befriend her, but she was very shy and reserved and kept to herself.
The following year, those two dorm rooms were converted into a storage room… I have a feeling the school was aware of what had happened in that room, and wanted to nip any rumors of supernatural goings on in the bud. But who knows?
I was not able to find any formal information on who the girl in the room was. There was no public report traceable about the incident, no obituaries, nothing. And I’m still wondering what on earth those ashes could have been. Does anyone have any idea about this kind of haunting? How could I go about finding more about her? And what were those ashes? Make it make sense! Ahhh!
submitted by /u/HeatherDora
[link] [comments]Things I experienced never happened before this series of events, and none have happened since. Years have gone by and this inexplicable story still doesn’t make full sense to me, and I lived it. I’m hoping others might be able to glean some insight into what was going on. In 2016, I moved into a college dorm at Concordia University in Irvine. There was always a heaviness to the room. Full disclosure, I was in a pretty dark and stressful time in my life, but still, something about this room felt particularly suffocating. Maybe it was my intimidatingly controlling roommate, or maybe it really was something about that place… being there felt like mourning, and for what, I didn’t know. But it seemed the room knew, and it held an unnamable sadness I’d come to know all too well. The room was located on the taill-end of the dorm building, right near a culdesac.In a lot of ways, it was situated on a dead end. The back window opened up to the softball field, the front window opened up to the corridor, and there was a constant cacophony of chatter from teens who were likely far less troubled than I was, but I digress. After the first night sleeping in the dorm, I awoke to find something strange- On the big school-issued desk, There was a small pile of what appeared to be gray ash, just sitting a few inches away from my pack of cigarettes. It boggled my mind. It wasn’t like I was smoking indoors. Plus, It didn’t look like cigarette ash, anyway. It was a fine powder. More like… Cremated remains or something. I didn’t give it much thought, and wiped it away. Then, when I awoke the 2nd night, I found another quarter-sized pile of ash in a slightly different place on the desk. This time, prior to sweeping it up, I told my roommate about it. She saw it, too. We checked everywhere for where the source could be coming from and couldn’t figure it out. There was seemingly no cause for it. The 3rd night came, and when I woke up again, there it was. This time, there seemed to be an even bigger pile of finely powdered ash. Every time, it was in the same general spot, but in slightly different locations on the right side of the desk.There was nothing that could have explained it- Different friends came into the room, stood on chairs to examine if it could possibly be falling from the ceiling, we wondered if somehow a draft was carrying it inside somehow, but nothing made sense. There were no vents anywhere nearby. It was just a very strange growing pile of ash on my desk. I’d check the desk prior to going to sleep, and every night, there would be nothing, but come morning time, the pile would be there. For 3 nights in a row. My roommate fell asleep before I did, and I woke up before she did. No one else had access to the room. It wasn’t being done by human hands. I had a really hard time sleeping in this room every night. I’d stay up, feeling wired, unable to fall asleep. I can’t tell you the amount of times I’d be drifting on the brink of sleep, and then feel myself jolted awake, like when you feel you’re falling. One the fourth night, I finally managed to fall semi-asleep, but had a torrid of the worst nightmares I’ve ever had in my life. In the nightmare, most everything was a blur and it was like I wasn’t there. I was someone else, or I was watching a scene unfold from afar. The overall sense of terror and dread and pain was palpable. I only retained bits and pieces. There was an asian girl and a white guy, and there was some type of fight between them. I was afraid for my own safety, which seemed to be her safety. As i was coming out of the dream, the name “Pham” kept ringing in my head in a bunch of different voices, like people were calling to me. Aside from the sheer terror of the dream, the biggest takeaway from the nightmare was a single name: Pham. Pham. Pham. I couldn’t remember much, but I remembered a girl being in danger and I knew her name was Pham. When I woke up, I found myself sweating bullets, and for the first time in my adult life, I had wet the bed. Literally, for the first time in my adult life. I chalked it up to just adjusting to a new foreign environment, but still, bedwetting isn’t something I’ve ever done. Something about it all scared the crap out of me. After I had that dream, the pile of ashes stopped appearing on my desk. A few days later, I learned about something that chilled me to the bone. I was sitting in my cultural communication class, and the professor was talking about how culturally we are all very afraid of death. She started to tell us how a few years prior, there had been a su*cide on campus. A Vietnamese foreign exchange student had offed herself in the bathroom in the same dorm hall we were living in. The school was very hush-hush about it. They didn’t want the association of a suicide with their upstanding christian university. Apparently, they were able to move the body off campus easily and privately, as the room she was in was right near the culdesac…. At this, my blood ran cold. Our room was the closest to the culdesac. The pile of ashes. The dream, where the name Pham kept ringing in my ears. It had to have been her. The remainder of the semester, nothing majorly alarming happened. If something fell off the walls, we’d say “must’ve been pham” and it kind of turned into a joke between my roommate and I. We went off to winter break, and the day before I got back, I got a frantic call from my roommate. She had arrived at campus before me, and nothing seemed amiss. Then, she returned to the room after a cigarette break with a friend, and on her desk, there was a neatly packed, HUGE pile of ash. Like, a foot long. Just chilling on her desk. She freaked out. Not only was the pile bigger than ever before, but it had moved. To her desk. Again, no scientific explanation could explain the pile. After that, she spoke with her aunt who’s “gifted” so to speak. She recommended we write a letter to Pham explaining that we’re her friends but she didn’t have to stay in that room any longer. Simultaneously, we got a new next door neighbor. The dorms shared a bathroom (remember, the girl who had unalived herself did so in the bathroom). This new neighbor was a foreign exchange student from (coincidentally) Taiwan. Eventually, her roommate moved out, and the girl was alone in the room. I could often hear her talking, almost arguing and crying. We became convinced that Pham had attached herself to this new girl. I tried talking to the girl to befriend her, but she was very shy and reserved and kept to herself. The following year, those two dorm rooms were converted into a storage room… I have a feeling the school was aware of what had happened in that room, and wanted to nip any rumors of supernatural goings on in the bud. But who knows? I was not able to find any formal information on who the girl in the room was. There was no public report traceable about the incident, no obituaries, nothing. And I’m still wondering what on earth those ashes could have been. Does anyone have any idea about this kind of haunting? How could I go about finding more about her? And what were those ashes? Make it make sense! Ahhh! submitted by /u/HeatherDora [link] [comments]
