My Dorm Has Some Weird Rules

The following paper was found tucked inside my student handbook when I moved into my new dormitory. For obvious reasons, I will be editing any details that could lead to the overly skeptical or the overly curious poking around my college campus. After reading the instructions replicated below, I do not think that it would end well.


Hello, and welcome to [REDACTED] Hall! If at any point you have any questions or concerns about any of the instructions you are about to receive, please DO NOT hesitate to ask your Resident Assistant or Residence Director for clarification. The rules listed below are deadly serious and are NOT a prank of any sort. With that being said, if these instructions are released to the general public or brought to the attention of members of [REDACTED] University administration, the [REDACTED] Hall residence life staff will disavow any knowledge of them. There are those in the administration who believe that the following rules are based on superstitious nonsense, and there are others who would rather not warn you about the dangers due to liability reasons. We believe otherwise. Please do not make our jobs more difficult than they already are.

  1. Please do not answer the door if there is a knock between the hours of three and four in the morning. Please follow this rule even if you hear the voice of your roommate and he claims to have lost his key. RAs will not be doing room checks during this window of time. Drills will be done by the RAs at various times during the semester to ensure compliance. Do not assume that the knock is a drill even if you hear the voice of an RA.
  2. On a related note, if you awaken in the middle of the night and cannot check the time for whatever reason (cell phone runs out of battery, etc.), please do not try to guess the time without another form of verification. Taking five minutes to look for your phone or to wait for your computer to power up is far better than the alternative.
  3. Ignore the cute girl in the lobby who says that her name is Lilith. By no means should you invite her back to your room if you make the mistake of interacting with her. Please inform your RA if she is seen.
  4. There is no fraternity named Ad Mejor Malum Glorium on [REDACTED] University campus. Anyone claiming to be a member of this fraternity should be reported to your RA. For god's sake, learn some basic Latin, people.
  5. Rooms 66 and 13 are unoccupied and are kept locked at all times. If you stumble across anything that suggests that this is not the case, please inform your RA at once.
  6. If you are locked out of the dorm, please do not try to enter through any unlocked windows unless you can tell that the room is currently occupied by someone you know. Yes, this includes windows that you can swear are on the other side of the building or on a different floor than rooms 66 and 13. We have reason to believe students have been tricked into entering the rooms in this way in the past.
  7. If someone is waiting outside the dormitory for someone to open the door and let them in, you may open the door at your discretion. DO NOT give them verbal permission to enter the building. If you are holding the door open but they refuse to enter or they try to prompt an invitation (they can be crafty about this), close the door immediately and inform your RA.
  8. You may return from classes to find that small objects in your room have been moved around. This is perfectly normal and is usually relatively harmless and not worth troubling your RA about.
  9. The occasional soft scream or distant roar in the middle of the night is not uncommon. Once again, this is usually harmless if you have followed the other rules.
  10. Do not perform any séances or play with Ouija boards while staying at [REDACTED] Hall. We are still finding the pieces of the last person to do this.
  11. Drugs and alcohol are strictly prohibited. Not only are they illegal (this is a Freshman dorm after all), they can blur your sense of what is real and what is not thereby making it easier for you to make mistakes and break one of the other rules. There are beings out there that ARE AWARE of this and WILL take advantage.
  12. Wolves are not native to this area, nor do they grow the sizes that you may swear that you saw or walk on their hind legs. It is about fifty-fifty as to whether animal control and/or the police will take you seriously or laugh in your face if you inform them of any sightings. We suggest that you inform any sightings to your RA and they will help make sure that the information gets to the right people.
  13. If you are invited to a party and find yourself the only man there in a room full of women, this is usually a sign of a very bad night as opposed to a very good one. We recommend that you leave as quickly and discretely as possible. This is especially true if any of the women claim to be members of a "feminist society" known as The Bacchae. No such organization is officially recognized by campus administration.
  14. If you notice any Shadow Person in your vicinity, it is advised that you try to ignore them (or at least pretend to). From what we can tell, they cannot directly harm you unless you pay them a great deal of attention for an extended period of time. They will not make this easy.
  15. There is no sub-basement in [REDACTED] Hall. If the elevator should take you to one, do not leave the elevator or permit anyone/anything from the sub-basement to enter the elevator. They will usually require an invitation to do so.
  16. If you do not see your roommate for more than twenty-four hours, please inform your RA even if he has left you a note claiming to have gone home for the weekend. We have ways of verifying these things.
  17. It is not advisable to watch horror movies in the basement lounge after dark. We find that it provides certain beings with… inspiration.
  18. Any examples of déjà vu or doppelgangers should be reported to your RA immediately.
  19. Any men in robes carrying torches and/or bloody daggers around in the middle of the night who claim to be members of Alpha Mu Mu Gamma doing initiation ceremonies should be avoided. Please refer to rule number four and your Greek alphabet.

The campus security officers' first priority is the good of [REDACTED] University and not your safety. This means that at times they may minimize your concerns or try to cover up things that happen on campus that would make the university look bad. With this in mind, you should first talk to a member of the residence life staff at [REDACTED] hall if you have any questions or concerns about your safety. We will protect you as best we can.


This list of rules is subject to update as needed.


I only moved into this dorm this semester because a spot unexpectedly opened up and I was determined to get away from my obnoxious roommate. I can't help but wonder which of the rules the kid who used to sleep in my bed had broken.

Nothing out of the ordinary happened for the first week I lived in the dorm. I started to wonder if it was just a weird prank. I asked my roommate about the paper and he just shrugged his shoulders.

Yesterday, my phone disappeared for about two hours. I tore the room apart looking for it. It suddenly turned up on my pillow in plain sight. That was weird but was nothing concrete.

Of more concern is the fact that I have not seen my roommate all day. I suspect he had been drinking, but I cannot prove it.

I should clarify. I have not SEEN my roommate all day, but I think I might have heard him. Late last night, there was a soft knock at the door and I heard my roommate ask to be let in. I checked my watch and it said 2:57 AM. I was reaching for the door when I remembered that my watch was five minutes slow.

Maybe the rules are real. Maybe they are a joke. I don't plan on risking it, but my roommate's screams are making that difficult.