My sophomore year, that's when it started happening.
I can't come up with any other explanation for what I saw.
My belief in the supernatural has changed.
Something was wrong.
Something was very wrong.
It wasn't this joke anymore.
We couldn't protect ourselves.
Something was holding us there to really see this.
Everything was intensifying and becoming more dangerous.
My lungs just clamped shut.
I was being strangled to death.
I remember one day coming back from the gym.
I jump in the shower,
and I just... I'm thinking as I'm washing my hair
that something's not right.
Something made my skin crawl.
It felt like something was watching me.
And I remember looking out of the corner of my eye,
and I could see there was something there.
I snapped my head around to look.
It just... It didn't make any sense.
I knew what I saw,
even if it was just for a second.
It was right there, inches in front of me.
When I was applying to go to college,
I had gotten into every other school,
and then when I received my acceptance letter
to sweet briar,
it was the first time that I cried.
The standards are really high there,
so it was a reach for me.
Yes!
Unlike other campuses that I went to,
bigger schools,
it just had this homey feeling.
When you drive onto the campus of sweet briar,
you go through these brick walls,
and immediately I was like,
"This is a whole new world."
Unlike other schools, there's something that just drew me in.
There was something that just felt right.
Sweet briar college was founded in 1901
as an all-women's college,
and at that time, most of the existing
all-male universities and colleges wouldn't accept women.
I first met all my friends through swimming.
Oh, my god, I was trying to find you last night.
I saw professor...
I met Dani the first time that I came to sweet briar.
She's kind of the ideal sweet briar woman.
She's upbeat.
She works hard.
She's, like, my best friend, my sister.
Laure, I met on my recruiting trip with Dani.
They were the first two people that I met.
Basically, the team is my family.
We're together 24/7.
- Chemistry? - yeah.
When I met Dani, we were in the same dorm,
and we just became close, close friends,
so we decided to room together.
♪ ♪
It was the first month we had moved in.
It was around 3:30 A.M.
When I had to go to the bathroom.
The only way to get into the bathroom
is through this heavy door that makes the...
It's the loudest door I've ever heard.
I'm the only one in the bathroom at this time.
I went into the far stall,
so the farthest away from the sink.
And all of a sudden, the sink turns on.
You can hear someone come in and out of the bathroom.
If someone had come in, i would've heard the door open,
and there was nothing.
Hello?
And suddenly, the faucet turns on again.
No one had come in and out,
but I felt another presence in the room.
♪ ♪
That's when I started to get a feeling
that I didn't want to open the stall.
Who is it?
And I was alone,
and there was no water around the sink.
♪ ♪
I kind of didn't want to tell anyone about it.
I didn't know how to explain it
or if anyone would believe me.
I didn't feel right talking about it
'cause it scared me.
I didn't know what was going on with Dani,
but one night, I was having trouble falling asleep,
so around 2:00 in the morning, pretty late,
I got up to use the restroom.
It was dead silent when I went out into the hall,
and no one else was up.
I distinctly heard footsteps other than my own
right behind me.
♪ ♪
I saw my reflection,
and I saw the reflection of a young girl
standing right next to me.
To realize that something can do
whatever it wants to do to you
with such hate toward you
is probably the scariest thing that could ever happen.
I distinctly heard footsteps other than my own
right behind me.
♪ ♪
I saw my reflection,
and I saw the reflection of a girl in a white nightgown.
It looked like we could have been touching.
Realizing that there was something standing next to me
that I couldn't see freaked me out.
Her nightgown wasn't from this time.
It was older.
It was floor-length, all white.
I turned and ran back to my room,
thoroughly startled.
It felt like there was still someone behind me.
I can't come up with any other explanation for what I saw,
other than there was actually something there.
I don't know. I have so much work to do.
I'll call you. All right, see ya.
Bye.
What's the matter?
Nothing.
Seriously, tell me what's wrong.
I told Dani what I'd seen,
and when I started really telling her
what I experienced...
I thought I heard these footsteps behind me.
She listened and got very serious.
And I saw my reflection, but I wasn't alone.
Getting me to admit that I had seen something
possibly paranormal was huge,
'cause I didn't believe in that sort of thing.
She had on this white dress,
and she had this blonde curly hair.
After hearing about this,
the more I thought about what had happened in the bathroom.
You know what?
Um, I got to show you something.
Having that comfort of knowing that there was someone else
who had seen these things or had stuff happen to them
kind of made me feel a lot better about it
and able to talk about it.
It made me feel like I wasn't alone.
That's her.
Coming into sweet briar, the first day I had heard people
talking about ghost stories on campus.
There was this little girl who...
She kind of, like, shows up in random places
or does weird things.
But it was just a fun story.
I never expected paranormal things to happen to me.
Sweet briar college was founded
by a successful plantation manager
named Indiana Fletcher Williams.
Indiana only had one child,
her beloved Daisy.
Daisy was given an elite education.
She had tutors in foreign languages
coming and visiting her at her home.
Daisy loved reading, and she loved to draw and paint.
And she played piano.
Before Daisy's death,
she had a very luxurious childhood.
The paths that students today take back and forth
between their dormitories and their classes
is a stone's throw away from where Daisy grew up
at the plantation house.
My sister came up to visit one weekend
where I had nothing going on,
and I showed her around campus,
and we were gonna go visit my friend
who lived on third floor of meta glass,
which is a freshman dorm
attached to the cafeteria and the bookstore.
It's one of the newer buildings, so it has an elevator.
And my friend lives on third floor of meta glass.
So tell me about this Rob.
What's going on?
All of a sudden, we passed the third floor,
but you have to have a skeleton key
to get to fourth floor.
You can't just press the button.
♪ ♪
When the elevator door opened to the fourth floor,
there was a chair directly in front of us,
as if someone was just sitting there facing the elevator.
We were gonna go visit my friend
who lived on the third floor.
What's going on?
All of a sudden, we passed the third floor,
but you have to have a skeleton key
to get to fourth floor.
You can't just press the button.
When the elevator door opened to the fourth floor,
right in front of us was a chair from an old desk,
like, a really old desk,
facing us, as if someone had been sitting there,
waiting for us to come up.
It was like something was holding us there
to really, like, see this.
It's okay.
After that night in the bathroom,
I kind of figured that it was Daisy.
Daisy?
Daisy, is that you?
That's when I saw the chair being moved.
Daisy, stop it!
Daisy, stop!
After I said, "Daisy, stop,"
that's when the elevator door shut,
and we went down to third floor.
Even though it kind of startled us,
it was kind of like she was not a threatening spirit.
♪ ♪
Daisy was suffering from an inherited disease
from her father
and would have been coughing and having troubles breathing.
Today we would call this disease antitrypsin deficiency,
but in that day and age, all they knew
was that she was suffering from a liver condition,
and it was not treatable.
Daisy, Daisy, sweetheart!
♪ ♪
Breathe in.
Over the next couple months,
despite the constant care of a doctor
and the money that Indiana would have been pouring into this,
Daisy worsened,
and January 22nd in 1884, she died.
Indiana was devastated upon the death of her daughter.
She never truly recovered from Daisy's death.
Indiana turned her grief into a future promise
that what her own daughter had been denied,
which was a full life and a full education,
she took all of her resources and devoted them
so that other young women could do exactly that.
She found ways to commemorate her daughter's death,
and the idea that she finally decided upon
was to give land and money
to found a college for girls and young women.
Daisy is buried on the former plantation
in an area called monument hill
on the campus of sweet briar college.
Every year we have this tradition
where we walk up to monument hill together,
place a Daisy on Daisy's grave,
and kind of, like, say a few words for her
and, like, thanking her and her family
for dedicating this place to us.
The purpose of the school
is to let each and every one of our students
finish the life that Daisy couldn't.
So after that, i felt better.
It's kind of comforting to know
that someone could love this place
just as much as we do and want us to prosper.
She wasn't there to threaten anyone or hurt anyone.
She was there to watch over the girls of sweet briar.
The next day, I woke up, 5:30 in the morning...
Just a regular morning... For morning practice for swim.
After I leave my dorm,
I kind of just am thinking, you know,
"Get there as quickly as possible."
Because, you know, it's scary in the dark by yourself.
I was walking behind the athletic center,
and all of a sudden, there was a cold breeze
that went right over me.
It gave me chills.
And that's when I heard something whistle at me.
Dani?
Dani, is that you?
Sarah?
You guys, come on.
I thought at first maybe it was one of my friends
playing a joke on me,
or it was someone calling a dog.
Sarah?
Laure, I know it's you.
Come on, guys.
There was nobody around me.
I didn't hear any footsteps or laughter,
which you would have heard
if it was someone making fun of you.
You guys, come on.
All of a sudden, I see about maybe a 6-foot dark figure.
It just looked like a giant man,
and the most distinguishing thing about it
was that it was just all black.
♪ ♪
All of a sudden, my body kind of just froze.
It's about 5:30 in the morning,
just a regular morning, for morning practice for swim.
All of a sudden, I see about maybe a 6-foot dark figure.
It just looked like a giant man.
And then all of a sudden, he just vanished.
My body kind of just froze.
My stomach was, like, quivering.
I couldn't breathe,
and I just felt like i was about to pass out.
♪ ♪
The first thing that went through my head was, "Run,"
but I couldn't move.
He was singing a tune, almost like somebody singing
to, like, a little girl.
♪ ♪
It took me maybe about seven to ten seconds
before I actually started running to get away from it.
Just... okay, calm down. Explain to me what happened.
When Chloe told me about her experience,
it really concerned me,
because Daisy never had the intention to scare someone.
And I asked her what the figure looked like,
and she said it looked like a tall 6-foot guy.
But there is no way for a male to get onto our campus
without going through the security gate
and having his name taken down and his car.
And if you are a guy on our campus,
you have to be accompanied by a student,
no matter where you are.
Whatever I saw was not something playing a joke on me.
It was something that was coming to get me.
♪ ♪
Every time I have to go back there, even in the daytime now,
I feel unsafe.
This was not Daisy.
It wasn't this joke anymore.
It wasn't this funny little prank.
So after hearing this,
I kind of did a little research on my own.
And what I found out is that there was a man, Lucien,
who was Indiana's brother and Daisy's uncle.
Indiana was one of four children,
and three of the children inherited plantations,
and the fourth child was disinherited by their father,
and that individual was Lucien Fletcher.
Later, in her will, when Indiana left $750,000
to found a college for women,
Lucien did not get a penny.
And Lucien was absolutely furious.
After knowing this, it all started to make sense
why he would want to drive us away,
why he would want us gone.
There was a weekend where my friend had come,
and she had slept on a blow-up mattress
that was set up right in between Dani and i's bed.
Good night, girl.
Good night.
And the day after she left,
Dani and I were just too lazy to put the mattress away,
so it was still sitting in between our beds.
♪ ♪
I was having a dream that I was being choked.
It just felt like there was, like, a board,
like plywood or something,
just being pressed down very hard on my throat.
So I woke up and instinctively just shot up in bed,
trying to get whatever this was off of me,
and that's when I noticed this figure.
♪ ♪
It was terrifying.
It looked like there was someone sitting
at the foot of the blow-up mattress.
It was facing away from me.
It wasn't moving.
It was just this dark shadow.
It was a figure.
It looked like a person just sitting there.
I instinctively wanted to get
as far away from this thing as I could,
but I didn't want to move at the same time.
Dani, Dani, wake up!
I woke up to Sarah yelling at me.
There's something there.
Like, not just yelling, but, like, frantic, like,
"Something is wrong. Get up."
Do you see it?
I look over, and I see this black figure
sitting on the edge of the air mattress down by our feet.
What is that?
She was seeing what I was seeing,
which made it even more petrifying.
♪ ♪
It looked like there was someone sitting
at the foot of the blow-up mattress,
but neither one of us was brave enough
to get up and turn on the light.
Yeah, i-i see something.
I kept seeing the figure just sitting there,
and it looked to me like every time we spoke...
It's moving.
Its head would turn towards the direction
that we were communicating.
I wanted it to be over.
I just turned my back to it and faced the wall.
And suddenly, it started moving directly at me.
What's going on in here?
My next-door neighbor,
she came in, yelling at me.
The blow-up mattress was partially deflated,
as if someone had been sitting on it
right where we saw them,
but there was nothing there.
So that's when we both realized that what we saw
was actually something sitting on the edge of our air mattress.
I mean, we can't pretend like it didn't happen, but...
We talked about it being a dream,
but there's no way that the two of us had the same dream.
The indentation on the mattress...
I know, I saw it too, but it could've been anything.
That is when i immediately thought, "Lucien."
I've been waiting for you.
We know from various records
that Lucien was a troubled individual
and had a history of unstable behavior.
People in the local community accused him
of alcoholism and violence,
and a former sheriff in Amherst county referred to Lucien as,
"The worst outlaw we ever had in this county,"
and this included being accused of killing two different people
on two different occasions.
Lucien and Indiana did not get along at all.
Not this time, sister.
He was furious because she had inherited money and land
from their father while he was disinherited.
I'm going to take what is mine.
I am going to take what is...
Lucien threatened to kill Indiana,
and Indiana was so frightened of Lucien
that she had had bars put on her house to keep him out.
After Lucien's death, Indiana would not allow Lucien
to be buried on her plantation,
even though it was the family cemetery.
After realizing that it was Lucien,
it made sense why he chose us to show himself.
It kind of put a lot of things together for us.
Losing his money and his inheritance from the family
when the plantation... Which Lucien thought
was rightfully his... Became a women's college,
he would have motive
to terrorize students at the college.
That's when I realized that everything was intensifying
and becoming worse and more dangerous
to the point where we couldn't protect ourselves.
It became frightening.
It became... What else could he do?
Sarah and I came to a decision
that rooming together was probably not the best idea,
because being in the same room, more and more would happen,
and it was affecting our lives
to the point where it just wasn't livable.
Sarah and i will always be friends,
but we just decided it would be better to separate.
Living with Laure is like living with my best friend
and my second sister.
- Roommate! - whoo!
We were starting new classes
and trying to get in a routine of things
and trying to get back into shape.
- Yes, I love it. - It's gonna be chill.
- Perfect! - love it.
And then one night,
my body had given out completely.
We had just had a practice.
It was hard, because we're out of shape.
I remember having a dream of being shaken.
I was outside in my dream on a hill,
and two hands were wrapped around my arms...
And just rapidly shaking me.
It was a forceful screaming,
like someone was yelling at me and shaking me,
but I couldn't look any further than his arms and his hands.
And when I woke up from that...
I noticed my curtain blowing.
The fan was off, and both of our windows were shut.
And I looked at Laure...
Something was wrong.
Something was very wrong.
When I first woke up, i noticed my curtain blowing.
And I looked at Laure...
Something was very wrong.
I was having a dream,
and all of a sudden, this man whispers,
"Well, hello, Laure."
I felt another presence in the room.
I woke up, gasping for air.
My lungs just clamped shut, and I couldn't breathe.
It felt like the force of a person
was trying to strangle me.
I didn't know what to do.
I was shocked.
I was scared.
She was gasping and freaking out
at... at something.
I felt like i was being strangled to death.
I look around to see what's going on,
and there's nobody there.
It's just Dani and i in the room.
I'm thinking to myself, "What is going on?"
♪ ♪
No, no!
No, Laure, listen to me!
Listen to me!
Wake up, wake up, wake up!
Laure, wake up!
Wake up! Laure, please!
Oh, my god!
I don't know why, but I finally was able
to take a few breaths and figure out what was happening.
So the next morning,
we had morning swim practice that started at 6:15,
and I get to the pool, and I take my jacket off.
Chloe, ah.
She barely touched me,
and I turn my arm to look at it,
and I had this massive bruise wrapped around my entire bicep,
and I had no explanation for it.
It looked like someone had wrapped their hand
around my arm...
What is that?
And intentionally hurt me.
Oh, my god.
It was from last night.
And that's when I realized
that my dream wasn't just a dream.
It was a pretty big bruise.
It almost looked kind of like fingers on her arm.
At first, I thought maybe she had hit herself in her sleep
or she knocked her arm against the pool at swim,
but when she said that she woke up with it,
then I kind of was a little freaked out.
I couldn't have hit something that would wrap around my arm.
I couldn't have hit a wall.
I couldn't have hit a table
that went around my entire bicep.
The only answer that came up was Lucien.
He'd finally gotten at me.
And he made his point.
To realize that something can do
whatever it wants to do to you
with such a hate toward you
is probably the scariest thing
that could ever happen to anyone.
My belief in the supernatural has changed, definitely.
And I believe that it could get worse.
Because of the history behind Lucien,
he would have motive to terrorize the people
who are enjoying the area
that he felt was rightfully his through birth.
I think Daisy sticks around to help with him.
She knows him better than anyone else,
so maybe she does things as a warning sign.
There's always going to be that fear
that it's gonna get worse,
but that's how life is.
I feel like I'm in a place where I should be,
even if bad things happen.
And if he continues to fight back,
then so will we.