Picture this, it’s your first night at Stony Brook University. You feel a swirl of emotions: excitement for your new adventure, fear of the responsibilities that lie ahead and a hint of home-sickness. Then you wake up. It’s 2:00 a.m. and you hear a noise on the other side of the room. You freeze, as if all the blood in your body has turned to ice. Despite the overwhelming feeling of dread, you slowly turn your head. 

“Mom?” you instinctually question. 

No. It is something far worse. Screams attempt to claw their way out of your mouth, desperate for help — a resident assistant, a neighbor, anyone. But no, it’s too late. 

It’s your roommate, and they’re playing League of Legends on a Discord call … with no headphones on.  

This grueling tale is not unfamiliar to many Stony Brook students. With more than 26,000 students, the University has an abundance of unexplainable and strange moments and experiences, many stories of which have been shared on Reddit. “Anomalies,” as this article will use, are phenomenons, creatures, people or incidents that would have any student second-guessing. There is much room for investigation, whether it is strange noises in basements, mysterious gatherings, roommates from hell or what can only be described as the paranormal. 

Shristi Tuladhar, the president of The Stony Brook Paranormal Society and sophomore undecided major, defined the term “paranormal” as an “umbrella term” for all things considered to be abnormal. She listed aliens, spirit energies, tarot card readings and Big Foot as examples of paranormal legends and practices. “There are a lot of common abnormal experiences,” Shristi said. “Sometimes you can explain it, sometimes you can’t.”

Anomaly #1: The Haunting of Benedict South Hall

Doors in Stony Brook are infamously heavy and, despite often being fully closed, can be unlocked and open themselves. Tuladhar was relaxing in her dorm last year when her door, despite being fully closed and locked, opened itself.

At first, she assumed it was nothing; however, it kept happening. Her roommate was nowhere in sight, and no one was behind the locked door, yet it kept opening.

Weird occurrences continued. A few times she would hear “soft knocks” behind the sliding curtain on the closet: knocking too light to be from the other side of the wall, but clear enough that it was coming from inside the room. Lights would malfunction and what proved that haunted forces were at play for Tuladhar, was a voice. When recording a video for her friend, Xiomara Jaramillo, a sophomore creative writing major, she called out and heard a woman’s voice that came from within the room, despite being alone.

This anomaly is referred to by Tuladhar’s friend group as the “Gay Ghost” due to the music player in the room attempting to play “girl in red” on its own and when asked if the name was satisfactory, the lights flickered. Tuladhar and Jaramillo agreed this spirit was the friendly kind, both saying its presence using light flickering and speaker malfunctions would be most prevalent when friends were over and having a good time, illustrating the spirit’s connection to positive energy. 

However, this wasn’t the only spirit they encountered in Benedict South.

“The Shadow,” as Tuladhar named, appeared only once. 

Tuladhar was doing classwork with friends in her dorm when she wanted to take a break. A step outside the door she turned her head. For a second, at the end of the empty hallway, a shadowy figure popped its head out of a corner leading to the fire exit and went back. She described the figure as faceless and seven feet tall as it silently opened the fire escape door. 

Tuladhar described feeling the weight of “bad energy.”

“I felt heavy,” she explained as if this entity carried a force that made her body feel as if it was pulled back. Running back into the room, she told the other students what happened and Jaramillo, with another friend, attempted to investigate. Yet, despite the initial bravery, fear swarmed through her body, which she described as chills and her stomach dropping, only getting halfway through the hallway before an instant retreat.

This shadowy figure with inhuman traits was never seen again, however, those who dorm in Benedict South Hall must stay vigilant — you never know what could appear around any corner.

Anomaly #2: The Deers

“The deer on campus are weird,” states Ryan Rau, a sophomore creative writing major, in an interview with The Statesman. 

While most people are fond of the deer on campus, citing them as cute and pleasant, Rau begs to differ. About a month ago, Rau and some friends explored the woods on the outskirts of campus. Using flashlights to illuminate their path, Rau and the others were looking around the forest to nothing but darkness and silence. 

“Suddenly, branches break around us.” He described how they all looked around to find nothing and then saw two sets of glowing eyes in the dark.

There were two deer: silent, still and just watching with no reaction at all. Rau backed away, but the deers never moved or walked away. This wasn’t the first time something unsettling like this happened. 

A year prior, Rau had a similar interaction. He was walking back to his car in the late evening when suddenly he stopped in his tracks. Surrounding his car was a group of deer that stood like statues, all watching him without movement. As he got closer to retrieve his car they backed up a few feet but never broke their eyes fixation on him. Driving away he looked back one more time and found them immobile and still watching, unclear if with absent thought or with deep observation. 

Anomaly #3: The Headless Bird

Matt Schuster, a sophomore English major with a minor in history, was exploring the woods by Tabler Community with some friends. There, among the foliage, was an open space with a campfire set up with some logs. He and the others excitedly walked forward, when something caught Schuster’s eye. 

Near the campfire was a small bird’s body.

The forest stood still for what seemed like only a few seconds, as if to give him time to register. He walked closer to inspect the corpse and found that the bird’s head was completely missing.

He assumed that an animal had attacked the bird but wasn’t entirely convinced. Not when there was no blood, mess or other bitten body parts of the bird. He wasn’t too sure an animal could do the job this neat, and if not an animal, then what?

Schuster instantly turned and left. “Don’t wanna mess with that,” he explained. But the memory still rests in the back of his head. If it wasn’t an animal’s doing, then … does that mean another student did this? 

Anomaly #4: The Biohazard of Irving Hall

Three washing machines — gone. This is the current reality for Irving Hall residents this year, with all three showing no signs of when they will be back in use. Two of the washing machines are gone via a flood-inducing malfunction. Crie Rivera, a freshman communications major, detailed the fate of the third machine in a spoken interview with The Statesman. 

It was a late night at Irving Hall and some students headed to the basement to do their laundry. Upon arriving there, a horrid stench filled the room in a cloud of putrid death. A resident assistant (RA) was contacted and the source of the smell was found — a singular washing machine that, at face value, had no unusual qualities. 

Rivera described that the closer you walked, the worse the intoxicating aroma enveloped you.

The RA described the stench as a “Biohazard” to Stephanie Harding, a freshman communications major, who then told Rivera. Within the washing machine, among a clump of clothes was … feces. The excrement was in a pair of pants, meaning another student made the extremely bizarre decision to put the dung-filled pants with other clothes into the washing machine.

Did they think it would magically remove and dispose of the feces? Why mix it with non-feces-filled clothes? These questions will likely never be answered.  However, this horrific tale holds over Irving Hall residents with less space to wash their clothes and the mysterious pants pooper still at large. 

Anomaly #5: The Book of Bill

One morning Jaymie Grant, a freshman physics major and philosophy minor, woke up to an unusual sight. In the middle of her room was her Wolfie plush surrounded by its own stuffing in the formation of a triangle. Next to it was an encrypted note and outside the triangle stood a copy of Alex Hirsch’s newest book named “Book of Bill.” The book revolves around a reality-bending chaos entity named Bill Cypher from the popular Disney Channel show “Gravity Falls.” 

Grant said that this happened a month after her suitemate brought the book.

“After she brought the book to our suite, weird stuff started happening,” said Grant in a Google Forms survey. She detailed that, at first, small stuff happened. 

When she happened to be reading the “Masters of Codes” chapter, her suitemate was coding beside her.  

She stumbled on the line: “KA wants to make his patients blind.” Next door lived a neighbor with glasses whose initials were KA.

One of the biggest shocks for Grant was the book’s inclusion of a character named Dennis who she described and quoted to be someone “who causes pain in this world.”

“WE HAD AN EVIL CALC PROF WHO CAUSED US IMMENSE PAIN AND SUFFERING NAMED DENNIS,” wrote Grant.

As for the de-stuffed Wolfie, beside it were the words “Am I Really Gone?” According to Grant’s depiction, all of her suitemates had alibis. “Our suite has not been the same since.”

Anomaly #6: Stony Brook University 

Why do the halls of Frank Melville Jr. Memorial Library echo whispers of a time long gone at night? Why do Wolfie’s old, withered costumes stay locked up in the Physics building basement? Why is there a horrible smell coming from under my roommate’s bed? These are hypothetical questions that often arise throughout one’s time at the University. 

For a 67-year-old university, there have been waves of people all with differing experiences and stories. Some positive, many reveling in the school’s beautiful fall scenery or diverse communities. However this Halloween and fall season, horror takes precedence. Students should stay weary, for they never know what’s around the corner …

Imagine: it’s the day of your graduation, and you’re celebrating the grand accomplishment with a friend late into the night. Music fills the room, when it suddenly stops.

“What’s wrong?” you ask, turning to your friend, who surprisingly has a cold drained expression. They show you their phone and the room goes dark.

“It’s … it’s … student loans.”

Have a Happy Halloween!