Urban Legends

The Scream Nobody Heard

At some college campuses, it's apparently a tradition for students who live in dorms to all let loose with a scream at a designated time. According to the stories, it helps the students release stress, especially during finals week. On finals week at UCLA, the tradition was for everybody to scream at midnight to let out all that pent-up frustration. So, just as expected, everyone did their screaming ritual and the campus rang with the caffeine-fueled howls of a horde of exhausted youths.

The ritual complete, the campus quieted down and everyone eventually went to bed, only to discover the next morning that one of the screams . A young woman had been raped at precisely midnight, her assault timed to coincide with the noisiest moment of the year. Nobody heard it, because what's one scream among hundreds? Legend has it that since then, the screaming tradition has been banned from the UCLA campus, and anyone who breaks the rule is punished with expulsion.