A Haunting in Connecticut

I don’t believe in ghosts. I don’t believe in haunted houses. But I do enjoy scary movies (not gory ones, the ones with suspense). As a child, R.L. Stine was the man to me (seriously, I loved reading his books more than sleeping. I can probably blame my strained myopic eyes on him, because I would stay up all night reading his Fear Street and Goosebumps books, only a few inches from my face, next to my night light).  My love for suspense thrillers paired with my over-active imagination has me compulsively thinking of scenes from scary movies when I am doing things like closing my eyes in the shower, or closing a door with a mirror on it. I sometimes feel that when I open my eyes, or swing the door something terrifying is waiting to pop up. Obviously, that never happens, but it terrifies me anyway.

Ah, soo many memories..

So during my first night in my new apartment, I found out the many quirks of living in an old (but beautiful) Georgian mansion built in the beginning of the 20^th century. For example, the outlets are not three pronged, but two pronged. The bathroom has a total of zero outlets. There is no air-conditioning. The basement is where the laundry is, and you have to walk down a stone staircase into a dark, cold room not unlike how I imagine a catacomb would be. Despite these quirks, I love it. It is a large apartment with high ceilings, elegant details, and dark wood floors. It is pretty much the best apartment ever. But one quirk, which appeared my first night here, was particularly unsettling.

I had just turned out all the lights and settled into bed when all of the sudden the bathroom light flashed on. It is one of those pull string ones so it was extra creepy looking. The string was completely still and the bulb sent a menacing, yellow glow into my bedroom. Thank God my boyfriend was here helping me move in, because I would have just died. Sure, I always psych myself out and imagine scary things happening, but they aren’t supposed to actually happen. So after we went back and forth as to who should go turn it off, we decided to go together. As soon as my boyfriend’s foot touched the ground, however, the lights turned off leaving us in total darkness. So I thought, Great.. just.. perfect. I am living in a real-life haunted mansion. Which, considering a modest stipend and my inability to release myself from year-long contract living in this apartment, could complicate my grad experience.

This is the light:

But, it turns out the pull string wasn’t pulled enough to be “off” and after we fixed this, it has since not happened. So my apartment still remains to be the best apartment ever. Until one day when I swing my mirror covered door and see something behind me.. Okay, enough joking. It is starting to get dark.

There are some things that are scarier than my imaginary haunting though.. like, the reality of school starting tomorrow. I do not know where the summer went! But all the Yale Graduate School orientation events/tours I attended over the last week allowed me to adjust to the idea better. I had a tour of the gym the other day, which, by the way, is in a gothic cathedral. Yes, the gym is eight floors high, and looks like it is straight out of Victor Hugo’s Hunchback of Notre Dame.. Or Hogwarts (Yes! I always wanted to go to Hogwarts!) Also, it is the largest gym in the world and boasts 12 acres of indoor space. And if the architecture of this place isn’t Yale enough for you, they also have several indoor crew tanks, a fencing floor, and a squash room.

The castle-gym interior:

And a crew tank:

Anyway, I am already feeling right at home here. I have met so many wonderful fellow grad students through the orientation events. It is hilarious the type of conversations I over-hear, or find myself having. For example a few new friends and I were waiting in line for free food at an event hosted by a local bar when we over-heard somebody discussing how they preferred the square plastic plates to the round ones because they had more surface area. First of all, I love that like true grad students, this person wanted to optimize their foraging strategy when free food was offered, and was doing so by selecting the plate that could hold the most (honestly, free food at grad events goes so fast, and naturally after hearing this selected the square plate over the round one when I reached the front of the line), but mostly I love that I can let my inner nerd loose. This is my place. I have a feeling that it will soon be much tougher come the research pressures, teaching fellowships, and coursework, but this is where I feel like I belong. Also today is especially good because I finally got my internet turned on! Now I have access to online scientific journals! And Netflix (let’s be real).

Fingers crossed that first day of classes goes well!