This happened back in the early days of my undergrad, right after I joined BITS. The hostels were brand new, built around this massive quadrangle. Think of a giant square donut, with stairs at every corner and a huge open space in the middle. Every room had a decent view: either the courtyard or the forest right behind the building. Mine faced south, so it was bright all day. I loved chilling in my room and just exploring whatever the campus had to offer.
Of course, with the good stuff came some drama. When I read in bed, I have this habit of swinging my legs and sometimes kicking the wall the bed was pushed against. Predictably, my neighbor showed up at my door one day. She said the thumping was very loud in her room and asked me to stop. I did, right away. I think she already wasn’t my biggest fan.
One day I was climbing the stairs to the third floor, but being the distracted person I am, I ended up in this little space above the top floor. It felt like a penthouse party room. There were some old balloon bits lying around, but it was otherwise clean, no pigeon poop anywhere (which honestly was a big deal). There was a door to the terrace, locked of course. I was really tempted to force it open and check it out—terrace hangouts with friends in high school were the best—but I didn’t want to risk trouble in my first week. Plus, who knew about the CCTVs? It wasn’t that exciting anyway, so I just left.
Days went by, and one night I was back in my room, reading alone, getting all giddy in the middle of the night like usual. Suddenly I heard heavy footsteps right above me. I got excited—must be some girls dancing in that party room upstairs. It went on for a while, and I could even hear multiple voices talking. I wanted to join but was too lazy, so I just kept reading.
My neighbor, though, wasn’t having it. She came over again, complaining about the wall-kicking. I told her it wasn’t me this time, it was the girls dancing upstairs. She looked totally confused and said there’s no floor above us. I explained it wasn’t a proper floor, just that common space I’d found, and the sounds were obviously dancing and talking, not me kicking. To settle it, I said, “Let’s just go up and ask them to keep it down.” The stairs were literally right outside our rooms.
Except… there were no stairs going up from there. It just ended at our floor. The ones that actually went higher were at the far corner, by the main entrance. We stared at each other for a second, laughed nervously, and went back to our rooms. By then, the footsteps had completely stopped.