Tales from the Hill

By Olivia Denaro ’28

It started with the flickering lights through the hallway of Hilltop.

Emma was the first to notice; she always stays up later than the rest of her friends, typically hunched over her laptop doing homework in the first-floor lounge of Hilltop. The room was always dim, and the floor was always creaking, even when nobody was moving. She thought the flickering was just the lightbulbs that were probably years old, giving out; the building was old enough to have ghosts in the floorboards. This night, this night was different. The lights blinked once… twice… and then completely went out. She then saw something move in the reflection of the window, something that wasn’t her.

When the power came back, her laptop slammed shut on its own.

By morning, she had convinced herself she had imagined it. Finals week stress and exhaustion, too much caffeine, but the next night, Lena saw it too.

Lena was brushing her teeth in the third-floor bathroom around midnight when she started to hear a faint humming. It was almost like a melody being sung through the walls. It was soft and uneven, and it came from the old maintenance closet at the end of the hall. Everyone said no one used that closet anymore; the door had been sealed shut since last year, when a pipe burst behind it. But that night, Lena swore she saw light leaking out from the cracks that were thin and pulsing, like someone had a candle burning behind the door.

When she pressed her ear closer, the humming stopped. And from behind the door came a chilling whisper: her name.

The next morning, Lena, Emma, and Hannah gathered in their room. They were all best friends and spent all day, every day together, but today was different. Maddie was always there, and today she wasn’t. Maddie has been distant lately, never going to the commons with the rest of her friends, suddenly going on late-night walks up to Binder, none of it made much sense.

“Maybe it’s Maddie,” Hannah said, half-laughing, half-nervous. Maddie lived at the end of the hall, two doors down from the maintenance closet. She had a dark sense of humor, always joking about the school’s old ghost stories, always staying up until strange hours. She also always had an eerie vibe to her.

“She was talking about Hilltop’s ‘ghost floor’ the other day,” Emma remembered. “You know, the rumor about the floor plan not matching the blueprints? There’s supposed to be a hidden section no one’s been in since the sixties.”

“Yeah,” Hannah said, rolling her eyes. “And apparently, that’s where the old head resident used to live before she… vanished. Maddie said she found her name carved under the window frame in her room. She was also just talking about the ‘Ghost of Clark.’ Clearly, she is crazy!” Hannah said, laughing.

“That’s not funny.” Lena frowned. “Plus, Maddie lives in Oyaron. It wouldn’t make sense to be her

“Fine. All jokes aside,” Hannah said, with her voice softening. “I think she believes it. She said she’s been hearing things, too.” Hannah sat up. “Even though Maddie lives in Oyaron, they are a two-second walk from each other!”

They decided to check on Maddie that night.

At 11:47 PM, they crept over to Oyaron. The air between the buildings always felt heavy after midnight, like the air itself was holding its breath. They got to Oyaron, took the elevator up to the third floor, and noticed that Maddie’s door is slightly open, light spilling out onto the carpet in a narrow line.

“Maddie?” Emma whispered.

No answer.

Hannah pushed the door open a little more. Maddie was sitting at her desk, back turned, her long dark hair falling over her shoulders. Her computer screen glowed pale blue.

“Maddie?” Hannah said, shaking, “It’s just us, we haven’t seen you all week… We miss you.”

Still nothing. Then, the screen flickered, and Emma saw her own reflection on it. Not Maddie’s. Hers.

When Maddie finally turned around, her eyes looked strange. Glazed, almost silver under the light.

“You shouldn’t be here,” she said softly. “Not tonight.”

Lena swallowed hard. “What’s going on? We heard things from the closet that you always talk about,” she breathed. “We are worried.”

“I told it to stop,” Maddie interrupted. “But it listens to me now.”

Her voice was calm, detached. The three friends exchanged glances.

“Who listens to you?” Emma asked.

“Hilltop,” Maddie said. “It remembers who used to live here. And it remembers who doesn’t belong.”

That night, none of them slept. The sound returned, the humming, faint but constant, now coming from inside the vents. Hannah said she felt someone standing beside her bed around 3:00 AM, but when she turned on her lamp, there was no one there. Just the outline of handprints on the wall, fresh, as if someone had been pressing from the other side.

By morning, Maddie’s room was empty. Her things were gone, closet bare, bed neatly made and her laptop was missing. The RA said she probably left campus early for break, but no one saw her leave.

That evening, the girls decided to go back to the maintenance closet. They needed to know what was behind that door.

They brought a flashlight and a screwdriver. The hallway was silent except for the low hum of the heater, which somehow made it worse. The door’s paint was chipped and flaking, the kind that looked older than anyone in the building. Emma pried the latch loose, and it came off with a sound like a sigh.

Inside was a narrow stairwell leading down. The air was colder there, stale, heavy, wrong.

“Should we…?” Hannah began.

But Lena was already descending. “If Maddie’s down here, I’m not letting her freak me out again.”

They reached the bottom, where the walls were covered in something like wallpaper, peeling, damp and printed with old photos. Black-and-white pictures of students, all wearing the free Hartwick sweatshirt they got during Wick Week. Some had names written beneath them. Others had been scratched out.

In the center of the room was a single desk. On it sat a small notebook, open to a page filled with cramped handwriting:

“The house wants to keep them. The ones who don’t leave become part of it. It chose me first.”

There was something else on the page, too, Maddie’s name, signed underneath.

Emma flipped through the rest of the notebook. Each page listed names, residents of Hilltop House, dating back decades. Most were crossed off in red ink. The last three names were Emma, Hannah, and Lena.

The flashlight flickered.

“Emma,” Hannah whispered. “Look.”

In the far corner of the room, someone was standing. The same long dark hair. The same silvered eyes.

“Maddie?” Lena said weakly.

She smiled, too wide. “I told you it listens to me.”

The lights went out.

When campus reopened after break, Hilltop House had three empty beds. The RA said Emma, Hannah, and Lena probably withdrew for the semester, though no one could find any record of them leaving.

The maintenance door was sealed again, with new locks and fresh paint covering the frame. But at night, from the far end of the hall, residents sometimes say they hear humming, soft and uneven, coming through the vents.

And if you listen long enough, you can almost hear someone whispering names.

The new ones.

By Caswell McCoy ’28

Part 1 The Dare

On a cold October night, four Hartwick College sophomores sat around a booth at Table Rock, the warm hum of the dining hall closing down around them. The last few students were leaving, the lights dimming to that sleepy campus glow that always seemed to make the night outside feel deeper than it really was.

Eli, tall and restless, flicked the tab of his empty energy drink.

“Come on, it’s the perfect night for it,” he said. “No wind, no people, full moon—Bresee’s gotta be creepy as hell after dark.”

Maya, the journalism major, rolled her eyes. “You’re still on that ghost story thing?”

Eli smirked. “You mean ghost story.”

Everyone at Hartwick had heard whispers about Bresee Hall, the old academic building with its limestone face and tall windows that looked like hollow eyes. Some said it used to be a morgue during the war. Others said a girl jumped from the third floor after failing her finals. Most people just laughed it off.

But Eli didn’t. He’d been obsessed ever since he found a faded article in the library archives about a student named Anna Breese, daughter of the building’s namesake. She’d died mysteriously in 1923 cause of death “undisclosed.”

“You really think she haunts the classrooms?” Jonah, the quiet one, asked, stuffing his hoodie sleeves into his hands.

“Not think. Know,” Eli said. “Campus security says lights flicker on in Bresee after midnight. And people hear get this typing. Like on one of those old typewriters.”

Maya leaned back. “You’re such a freak.”

“Yeah, but admit it,” Eli said. “You want to see for yourself.”

Across the booth, Lena smirked behind her coffee mug. “If we get caught, I’m blaming you.”

That was how it started: a half joke turning real. They would break into Bresee Hall after midnight, explore the top floor, and record what they found. Eli would film for his YouTube channel; Maya would get material for her blog; Lena said she’d bring sage “in case things got weird,” and Jonah well, he didn’t want to be left out again.

They left Table Rock at 11:47 p.m. The night air bit cold, the quad glistening faintly under the moonlight. Smith Hall’s windows glowed behind them tiny boxes of warmth fading away as they crossed campus.

Bresee stood alone on the far edge of the academic lawn, half-hidden by trees that had already shed most of their leaves. The windows reflected nothing. The front steps looked too steep, like they were built for people who never made it back down.

“Locked?” Lena whispered.

Eli grinned and held up a key. “Maintenance guy leaves the side door cracked during cleaning hours. Found out last week.”

He led them around the corner, and sure enough, one of the doors near the basement entrance gave a low metallic groan when he pushed it open. Cold air spilled out like breath from a crypt.

Inside, the light from their phones stretched long shadows over marble floors. The hallways smelled faintly of dust and something sweet and old—like rotting flowers.

“Creepy, but not haunted,” Maya said.

“Yet,” Eli replied.

They crept up the central staircase, past locked classrooms and old portraits that stared too long. Somewhere deeper in the building, a pipe knocked a dull, rhythmic echo.

At the top floor, the air changed. It felt heavier. Jonah noticed it first.

“Do you guys hear that?” he whispered.

It was faint, but distinct: a tapping sound, steady and mechanical. Tap-tap-tap. Pause. Tap-tap-tap-tap.

Lena frowned. “That’s not possible. There’s no one up here.”

Eli started recording. “Perfect. Keep walking.”

They reached the old seminar room at the end of the hall. The door was half open. A thin beam of moonlight cut across the floor through a broken window.

On the desk sat a typewriter.

Its keys moved on their own.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

The four of them froze.

Eli’s phone shook in his hand. “Are you getting this? Are you—”

The typewriter stopped.

Then, slowly, it typed three letters:

R-U-N.

Maya screamed first.

They bolted down the hall, phones flashing, breath echoing off the walls. At the stairwell, Eli stopped he was smiling, half terrified, half thrilled.

“This is gold,” he said. “You saw that! We have to go back.”

But when they turned around, the hallway was empty.

The typewriter sat silent in the distance.

And the door they came through… was now closed.

Part 2 The Mark in Smith Hall

They didn’t stop running until they were halfway across the campus green. Bresee loomed behind them like a shadow that refused to die, every window watching.

Lena bent over, gasping. “What the hell was that?”

Eli’s face glowed blue from his phone screen. He was replaying the footage, trembling with adrenaline. “It typed run. It actually oh my God, you guys, it typed that by itself.”

Maya slapped the phone out of his hand. “That’s not funny! Something was in there!”

Jonah was staring back at Bresee. “Did anyone close the door behind us?”

They hadn’t. But the door had been closed anyway.

Eli swallowed, trying to look composed. “Probably just air pressure. Or a janitor.”

But his voice had a tremor he couldn’t hide.

They walked back to Smith Hall, their dorm, in silence. The campus was still. The fountain near Yager was turned off for the season, and the trees swayed like whispers. The moment they entered the warm, fluorescent lobby of Smith, the terror felt distant almost childish.

“Okay,” Lena said, brushing her hair back. “We delete that video and pretend none of this happened.”

“No way,” Eli said. “I’m editing this tonight. It’s proof.”

Maya looked like she wanted to argue, but she was shaking too hard. “I’m taking a shower,” she muttered and disappeared down the hall.

Jonah followed Eli to his room 205, a cramped double with posters and empty Red Bulls littering the floor. The footage replayed on his laptop: their entrance, the stairs, the classroom, the typewriter.

And there it was three crisp letters hammering onto the page: R-U-N.

Eli slowed it down frame by frame. The keys moved… but not from the normal angles.

It looked almost like fingers thin, translucent fingers pressing down from above.

“Pause it,” Jonah whispered. He pointed at the far left corner of the screen.

Something pale stood by the wall.

Not a reflection.

Not one of them.

A woman’s silhouette, barely visible, her head tilted, long hair hanging like a curtain.

Eli exhaled sharply and slammed the laptop shut.

“Delete it,” Jonah said.

Eli shook his head. “No. We need to figure out who she is.”

But that night, while Eli was trimming clips on his laptop, his screen flickered. The editing software froze for half a second, then resumed except the video had changed. The message on the paper didn’t say RUN anymore.

Now it said:

YOU TOOK SOMETHING.

Eli leaned back in his chair. “What the?”

He hadn’t taken anything. Unless…

He glanced toward his backpack. It was still on the floor beside his desk. Slowly, he unzipped it and found a folded, yellowed sheet of paper inside.

Typed words ran across it in neat rows. The ink had faded, but one line stood out at the bottom:

I am still waiting.

He dropped it like it burned.

The next morning, Maya didn’t show up to breakfast. Lena found her still in her bed, trembling. “My shower curtain moved,” she whispered. “No window open. No draft. It moved like someone was standing behind it.”

Lena shivered. “It’s just your nerves.”

But by midafternoon, the fire alarms in Smith Hall went off. The whole building evacuated into the chilly sunlight while maintenance checked for faults. No fire. No smoke. Just one dorm room with its alarm ripped off the wall.

And on her desk, someone had left a torn page from an old typewriter roll, the ribbon inked in red:

YOU SHOULD HAVE RUN.

Eli was pale when he saw it. “Okay,” he said, voice shaking. “We need to go back. Put whatever this is back where we found it.”

“Are you insane?” Lena snapped. “Go back there? You saw what it did!”

Jonah nodded. “She’s right. We don’t even know what it wants.”

Eli looked at them one by one. “She said we took something. That paper was in my bag I must’ve picked it up without noticing. Maybe if I return it, she’ll stop.”

But it wasn’t just Eli’s problem anymore. That night, the tapping came back only this time it wasn’t in Bresee.

It was in Smith Hall.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Pause.

Tap-tap-tap-tap.

Lena heard it first, in the hallway outside her room. When she peeked out, no one was there. Just faint typewriter ink smeared across the white wall, spelling out one word:

GUILTY.

By midnight, Jonah’s mirror fogged up from nowhere. Words appeared slowly through the haze:

FOUR ENTERED. THREE LEAVE.

He ran to Eli’s room in a panic, but Eli was gone. His door hung open, laptop still playing the video on loop.

Every frame now showed the ghostly figure closer to the camera.

Closer.

Until the last one where she stood right behind Eli, one hand reaching toward his throat.

At 2:14 a.m., Lena’s phone buzzed.

New video uploaded: “The Ghost in Bresee Hall – “REAL FOOTAGE.”

The thumbnail showed Eli’s terrified face, frozen mid-scream.

They found him the next morning at the base of Bresee’s steps. The police said he fell from the third floor. No witnesses.

But the paper he’d returned to the classroom was back in his pocket.

Typed across it in fresh ink:

ONE DOWN.

Part 3 The Library Records

The campus felt smaller after Eli died.
Classes were canceled for the day, but nobody was really resting. Police cars idled near Bresee, and security stood outside Smith Hall like silent statues. Word spread fast people whispered about an “accident,” but everyone knew it wasn’t that simple.

Maya hadn’t spoken since the morning. She sat in the lounge, staring at the floor. Her hands were bandaged; she’d gripped her shower curtain so hard the rings tore through her skin.

Lena and Jonah sat beside her, trying to fill the silence that hung like fog.

Finally, Jonah said, “She won’t stop.”

Maya looked up, eyes hollow. “Who?”

He hesitated. “Anna Breese.”

The name came out like a curse.

Lena shook her head. “We don’t even know if
that’s who it is.”

“We have to find out,” Jonah said. “Before she kills one of us next.”

Maya’s voice cracked. “How? Ask her nicely?”

Jonah stood. “The library. They keep old student records in the archives. If she was real if she went here, we’ll find her.”

Lena didn’t want to go, but the thought of staying in Smith Hall after dark was worse. So, they went.

The library loomed quiet under the gray sky, the kind of silence that seemed to deepen when you breathed. Inside, the main floor smelled like paper and coffee, normal enough — but the basement was another story. That’s where they stored the archives: a maze of file cabinets, rolled newspapers, and boxes of forgotten things.

The librarian on duty, Mrs. Rourke, was a small woman with steel-gray hair and a voice like chalk dust. “You’re looking for 1920s enrollment records?” she asked. “That’s a deep dig.”

“Anna Breese,” Jonah said. “She might’ve been a student here.”

Mrs. Rourke frowned. “Breese? As in the building?”

“Yeah,” Lena said. “Related, maybe.”

The librarian led them down a narrow staircase into the basement and unlocked a metal gate. “Be quick,” she said. “We close at eight.”

Rows of drawers lined the walls like coffins. The three of them spread out, searching.

After nearly an hour, Maya found it, a folder labeled BRESEE, ANNA — CLASS OF 1923.

Inside were yellowed photos and a short report typed on brittle paper. Jonah read aloud:

“Anna Bresee, Case is undiclosed and said to be a mystery.”

“Undisclosed,” Lena muttered. “That always means covered up.”

Behind the report, a torn page from a student newsletter was paperclipped to the file. The headline read:

“LOCAL GIRL FOUND DEAD IN BRESEE HALL TRAGEDY”

The article was short, almost dismissive. But one line made Maya’s stomach turn: Sources say Miss Breese’s final manuscript was confiscated by faculty and never returned. She looked up slowly.

“A manuscript. Maybe that’s what she thinks we took.” Lena said

Jonah frowned. “But we didn’t”

He stopped mid-sentence. The lights above them flickered once. Then again.

Lena’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Did you feel that?”

A breeze slipped through the stacks. The papers rustled though no door was open. One of the cabinet drawers slid out on its own screeching metal echoing through the basement.

From deep in the stacks came a faint sound: tap… tap… tap.

Maya’s flashlight flicked toward the noise. “No,” she said, backing up. “Not again.”

Jonah grabbed the folder and stuffed it into his backpack. “Let’s go.”

But the lights died completely.

Darkness swallowed them whole.

The tapping grew louder, circling them like someone pacing just out of sight, dragging fingers across metal.

Then came the voice.

A woman’s voice. Faint but close, every syllable echoing off the wall.

Lena screamed. “She’s here!”

They ran for the stairs. The flashlight beam jittered wildly over shelves, faces of forgotten students in framed photos watching them flee. At the top of the stairwell, the gate had swung shut again.

Jonah yanked it hard locked.

Maya turned, breath ragged. In the beam of her light, something stood halfway down the steps: the silhouette of a young woman in a long dress, her face hidden behind hair black as ink.

Jonah’s hands shook so violently the keys slipped from his fingers. They clattered down the steps, landing right next to her feet.

The ghost lifted her head.

Her face was wrong eyes hollow sockets bleeding light, mouth stretched too wide, jaw trembling like a broken hinge.

The typewriter sound exploded all around them.

TAP-TAP-TAP-TAP-TAP.

The lights snapped back on.

Mrs. Rourke was there, blinking at them from the doorway. “What on earth are you kids doing?”

But the stairwell behind them was empty again.

No ghost.

No keys.

Just the lingering smell of old perfume and cold air.

They didn’t talk on the walk back to Smith Hall. Jonah’s backpack felt heavier, though he hadn’t added anything but the folder. When they reached his room, he dumped it onto his desk.

The folder was gone.

In its place was a single, newly typed sheet of paper.

That night, Maya woke to scratching at her door. She thought it was Lena at first.

But when she whispered, “Who is it?” there was no answer just the faintest sound of typing coming from inside her own room.

The next morning, she didn’t come to breakfast.

Her bed was empty.

Her window was open.

And on her desk, the typewriter waited though no one owned one.

The ribbon ink spelled a single line.

TWO DOWN

Part 4 Bresee’s Revenge

It rained the next night the kind of storm that makes the entire campus feel like it’s sinking into itself. Lightning flashed over the hills, washing the old buildings in ghostly white light.

Lena sat alone in the Smith Hall lounge, clutching her phone. Maya was gone. Eli was dead. And Jonah hadn’t left his room since they came back from the library.

Every so often, thunder would shake the windows, and she’d swear she heard faint typing under the sound of rain. Tap. Tap. Tap.

At 11:43 p.m., her phone buzzed.

From: Jonah

Lena’s stomach dropped.

He didn’t reply.

She threw on her sweatshirt, grabbed her flashlight, and ran.

The quad was empty, wind howling through the trees. The lights in Bresee flickered like candles behind dirty windows. The front doors stood open waiting.

Inside, the air was thick and metallic, like rain soaked into dust. Lightning lit up the stairwell, and Lena saw muddy footprints leading upward Jonah’s.

She followed them to the top floor, every step echoing through the building. When she reached the old seminar room, she saw him standing by the desk. The typewriter sat there, perfectly clean now, a single sheet rolled in place.

“Jonah,” she said, voice shaking. “We have to leave.”

He didn’t turn around. “She’s not angry,” he said quietly. “She’s lonely.”

“What are you talking about?”

He finally faced her. His eyes looked wrong glassy, distant. “She said she wrote something before she died. They hid it from her. Her father had it burned. Her last story gone.”

Lena took a step back. “Jonah…”

“She just wants it finished.”

The typewriter began to move again, its keys hammering without touch. Letters appeared across the page, slow and deliberate.

Lena’s flashlight flickered. She felt the air drop cold enough to sting her lungs. The smell of roses rotting, heavy filled the room.

Jonah reached out and touched the typewriter. “I can help her,” he whispered. “She chose me.”

“Jonah, stop..”

But when he pressed a key, blood began to trickle from his fingertips. It dripped onto the page, the ink mixing red and black. The machine typed faster, almost frantic, the keys striking so hard the metal bent. FOREVER.

Lena screamed and grabbed his arm, yanking him back but his skin was ice-cold. His pupils were gone, replaced by swirling white.

“Let me go,” he said, his voice overlapping with another a woman’s.

The lights exploded.

When Lena opened her eyes again, she was on the floor. The room was empty except for the typewriter, still clicking softly, though no one touched it. Jonah was gone.

She stumbled down the stairs, sobbing, but every hallway led her back to the same place – the seminar room. Every door opened to the same walls, the same desk, the same sound of typing.

Her flashlight died.

“Please,” she whispered into the dark. “I didn’t do anything.”

A voice breathed into her ear, close enough to feel its chill.

Something cold touched the back of her neck. She turned just in time to see a figure behind her pale dress, dripping with rain, eyes glowing faintly blue. The ghost’s mouth opened wider than human, and a thousand whispering voices poured out at once.

Lena ran. She didn’t care where. Her shoes slapped the marble stairs as lightning flashed through the broken window. She hit the front doors, shoved them open, and burst into the rain.

She didn’t stop until she was halfway across the quad. Then she looked back.

Every light in Bresee Hall was on.

In every window, a silhouette stood.

The next morning, campus police found the doors locked again. No sign of forced entry. No sign of Jonah or Lena.

Only one thing sat on the front steps a typewriter, dry despite the storm, a new page rolled inside.

That last line spread through Hartwick like wildfire. Some said the police dismissed it as a hoax. Others said the typewriter was never logged as evidence that it vanished from the station the next night.

A week later, students started hearing things again. Typing sounds in the halls after midnight. Papers found in classrooms with old ink stains and half-finished sentences.

And every year since then, someone swears they see her a girl in a soaked white dress standing by the window in Bresee, watching the students hurry across the quad below.

If you walk too close, they say, you can hear her whisper your name.

And if you don’t run when she tells you to…

You’ll help her finish the story.