Creepypastas

Why The Lights Flicker

Transcript from note found in Wright hall, room 919. Names have been changed to protect the identity of those involved.

I first noticed the lights flickering a few weeks in to last semester. A friend and I often wander campus at night. It has a completely different feel then, desolate, open, and lonely. I always found that appealing, just the darkness to accompany you, with the occasional stray walker or lamppost to contrast the void.

It was when we were walking by the math academic building that I noticed something strange happening. One of the first floor classrooms had the blinds open, and every light in the room was flickering, all in unison. It was really bizarre, and curious, we tried the doors to see if we could gain entry.

We did. The door to that particular room was wide open. It was almost surreal, dreamlike in a way. I had a class in this room the semester before. The air was thick in there, and I didn't realize it then, but that would be a feeling I would soon come to know very intimately.

That wasn't the last time that night I encountered the lights. My friend and I saw two deer almost immediately after leaving the building, and we decided to follow them, just to see if we could. They were bizarrely calm. We would be able to get within 20 or 30 feet of them before they would look at us and calmly walk away. During those times, we would stand motionless, afraid to scare them away. We never did though, and we followed them for a good while, probably ten minutes, before coming to a building that had a strange stigma attached to it.

Stewart Hall was originally a dormitory, but it was left abandoned for years and for the longest time. Over the time of neglect, vines had grown over the walls, and into the smashed windows and decrepit hallways. Recently, however, they had decided to renovate and reopen the building, though we had no idea why.

There were hardly ever cars parked outside the building, and the only indication of its purpose was a standard university sign that hung outside the doors. It simply read Information Services. The doors are always locked and I have never seen anyone in the building.

The deer moved around the back of the building, but when we tried to trail them they were gone. We had let them out of sight and they had likely fled hearing us approach. What waited instead of the deer was disturbing though. Out of all the windows on the back side of the building, we could see flickering lights. Something just felt wrong. I can't really describe the feeling, but if you ever had it, you will know what I am talking about. It just feels as if some terrible being, some horrible abomination is there, watching, or that things are about to take a turn for the worst. It was a feeling of immense dread.

For a while we stood there in silence, and then decided it was probably time to part ways and head to bed, as we both had class relatively early in the morning and it was nearing 1am. That night though, I couldn't sleep. It wasn't the draft coming in through our open dorm window, my roommate on the bed above me occasionally rolling or snoring, nor was it my loud neighbors. I stayed awake that night because I couldn't shake that feeling. I knew there was more to it than just mere coincidence, and that bothered me because I knew there was no way to prove it wasn't.

The next few weeks proceeded as normal, though I occasionally noticed flickering lights when I was with the friend I had been with that one night. Eventually, I brought it up and we both agreed that we needed to venture out into the darkness again.

That night was very different from the first. The air was thick and heavy all around, and we jumped at any small change in shadows. It took quite a while before we said anything, as we were both practically holding our breath, hoping nothing horrible would happen. Finally, I spoke up.

"So, I was thinking about this weird light thi-"

Before I was able to finish, the nearest lamppost blew out, and violently. My heart leaped out of my chest, and for a brief moment I thought I was about to die. The tension was so thick you could almost cut it. It was choking me; I was so afraid I felt as if I couldn't breathe. The glass on the lamppost had shattered, and a few remnant sparks from the electrical overload still sat on the ground where they had fallen.