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A Truly Terrifying True Story


Every word of this story is 100% true (to the best of my recollection).


We called it the Toy Room. It was a legend in the Theatre Department at Marquette University that if you left a sealed deck of playing cards on the table in the middle of the Toy Room overnight, they would be scattered around the room in the morning, having been played with by the ghosts of the children who had died in the building.


Never having had the opportunity (or guts maybe?) to test the card theory, what we knew for certain was that the building used to be an old hospital. Not just any hospital, but St. Francis Children’s Hospital. The same hospital, in fact, that I was rushed to moments after my birth with only a 5% chance of survival. The thought that I was so close to potentially inhabiting those halls myself still sends shivers up my spine.


Is it coincidence, then, or providence that by 18 years later the building had been converted to Prop Storage for the theatre department of where I happened to be going to school to study theatre? To this day, I am not sure. For non-theatre folk, Prop Storage is where the Theatre Department would keep all of the “properties” or “props” for shows. These are basically any items (besides weapons, which are always kept under lock-and-key, even if they’re fake) or pieces of set decoration that an actor might use in a play such as a glass or a basket… or a toy. In the case of our Theatre Department, Prop Storage also held a good amount of set pieces and furniture as well.


It was Spring Term of my freshman year and I was sent to pull some props for the final production of the season. I had been to Prop Storage before, but usually with a crew of others and a truck to load items into. This time, however, only a few items that had been forgotten were needed, so I was sent off on my own. Honestly, the place was pretty creepy. An old hospital that had been, essentially, gutted and stacked floor to ceiling with set pieces, furniture, and old theatre props makes for a spooky environment, even at 2PM on a sunny Thursday. Still, I was doing well. In fact, I had nearly convinced myself that there was absolutely nothing to be afraid of at all, and that getting the last prop would be no problem, even if it was a toy. Supposedly the Toy Room was the old playroom for the children back when it was a hospital, and was now the most haunted room in the building (according to the upperclassmen).


I set down the props I had gathered on the floor and started looking through the key ring I had been given for the one marked with a “T”. I was just about to put the key in the lock when I heard, clear as a bell, a child laughing from the other side of the door. I dropped the keys and stepped back, nearly falling.


I just stared at the door. Sunlight filtered through the frosted glass of the door from the windows on the other side. No noise. I took a deep breath. I was just scaring myself. There are no ghost children on the other side of the door. I picked up the keys and was about to put the key in the door again when I heard more laughing coming from the other side of the door. NOPE.


I left the props and half sprinted half flew out of there. I slammed and locked the door behind me, feeling instantly safer in the warm sunlight. I then began pacing, trying to slow down my heart, which still felt like it was going to explode from the sudden burst of adrenaline. What was I going to tell the others when I came back with no props? That I heard ghost children? They’ll think I’m either trying to get attention or that I’m seriously losing it! I didn’t care. Neither love nor money could have gotten me to go back into that building. I had resolved to walk back to the theater, deciding I would come up with the words on the way. As I passed through the alleyway between Prop Storage and another building, I glanced at the window of the Toy Room, half expecting to see a pale little face there, but there was nothing.


And then I heard it again, children laughing. But it wasn’t coming from the Toy Room; rather, it was coming from the fenced-in playground area of building across the alley from Prop Storage. An area I had never really noticed or paid attention to before.


The building, apparently, held a daycare for parents at the University and there were children outside playing. It was their laughter that I heard coming in through the window of the toy room, and which nearly gave me a heart attack.


I paused, allowed myself a laugh, turned around, and went back in to get the props I had left behind. I even got the toy.



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