In Fuzhou, one particular school held a notorious reputation for unsettling events that seemed to plague its dormitory halls. Whispered about between students, the school's stories of ghostly apparitions and strange, inexplicable happenings stretched back for years, told and retold to each new group of students who arrived each year.
In 2004, an incident took place that added yet another layer to the school's legacy of the unexplained. It all began when the school's male student population grew unexpectedly large, and with limited accommodations, a group of boys, myself included, was assigned to the first floor of the girls' dormitory building. The idea of staying in the girls' dorm felt like winning some secret lottery, and we laughed and congratulated each other on our luck. But our excitement quickly faded after moving in. We learned that the iron gate connecting the first and second floors was firmly locked, keeping the floors segregated. Worse yet, we discovered that the first floor was rumored to be haunted.
Odd occurrences began to happen almost immediately. At first, they were small things, odd sounds that could be attributed to faulty plumbing or creaky floorboards. A few of the guys mentioned hearing what sounded like a basketball bouncing in the common washroom. The echoing thud would start up in the dead of night, bouncing rhythmically as if someone were playing a solitary game. Whenever someone went to investigate, however, the sounds stopped, and the washroom was empty, silent, and still.
In the bathrooms, even stranger things happened. A few students reported hearing the sharp "ping" of coins being flicked from inside the stalls when no one else was there. Some boys even said they'd felt a cold breeze rush past, leaving them with goosebumps despite the humid warmth of the summer. Word spread fast, and soon enough, everyone on our floor was on edge.
As the rumors grew, students began looking into the history of the dormitory, trying to understand what might be causing the strange events. An older student eventually revealed that a death had indeed occurred in one of the rooms years before, after a violent altercation had broken out between students. Following the incident, the room had been sealed off for years. But with the recent overcrowding, the room had been reopened and assigned to a group of boys, the very same room that seemed to be the center of all the strange disturbances.
One night, a group of four boys gathered in that reopened room, sitting around on one of the lower bunks, chatting before bed. One of the boys, seated near the window, looked outside and suddenly froze. His face went pale, his eyes fixed on something outside the window. He started shaking, barely able to speak. When the others finally got him to explain what he'd seen, he could only manage a single word: "Head."
The other boys jumped up and peered outside, but the view was empty. Frustrated and confused, they began to ask him what he had meant. He said that, just moments before, he had seen a human head—a head and nothing more—floating just beyond the window, staring back at him. The boys quickly left the room, their fear catching the attention of students in other rooms. Several came out, and a few even claimed to have seen the head, too, drifting eerily above the three-meter-high wall that surrounded the dormitory building.
For days, students debated what had really happened that night. Some insisted it was a prank, others chalked it up to a collective hallucination or group panic. But what made the sighting particularly unsettling was the height of the wall outside. It was nearly impossible for an average-sized person to reach, and certainly too high for a head to "float" above it, as the students had claimed. Even the most skeptical among us were left with the chilling notion that perhaps we had witnessed something beyond explanation.
Things took a darker turn the next morning. One of the boys who had seen the head woke up drenched in sweat and feverish. His roommates tried to help him cool down, but he was shaking and seemed deeply disturbed. As they brought him water, he realized with a start that his clothes were missing. His shirt, pants, and even his underwear had disappeared from the bed, as though they'd been spirited away in the night. He searched the room, his hands trembling, but found nothing. His roommates were equally confused, but they couldn't help him. The boy, clearly shaken and humiliated, went home that day and did not return. His sudden exit only added fuel to the rumors, and by now, nearly everyone on the floor believed the dormitory was haunted.
The haunted dormitory stories didn't stop there. Other strange events began cropping up, with each one more unsettling than the last. Another student described seeing strange white lights flickering in the experimental building adjacent to the dorm. Late one night, while standing on the balcony, he caught sight of a bright, pulsing light in one of the rooms across the way. The building was supposed to be empty, yet the light seemed to move, casting eerie shadows through the window.
One of the most disturbing encounters, however, happened to a student who was sharing a room with four others. The room featured a large, floor-length mirror that reflected everything, including the bunk beds where they slept. One night, as he lay awake in the top bunk near the balcony, he noticed something strange out of the corner of his eye. His roommate, who normally slept soundly on the bottom bunk, had gotten up without a word.
The student watched in horror as his roommate, eyes wide open and glassy, put on his shoes and walked in a straight line towards the mirror, his steps silent and deliberate. Standing directly in front of the mirror, he stared into his reflection, unmoving, his face expressionless yet eerily transfixed. The moonlight from the balcony cast an unsettling glow on his face, giving it a strange, otherworldly hue.
For minutes, the student in the top bunk remained frozen, watching as his roommate gazed at his reflection. The mirror seemed to reflect back more than just his appearance; it seemed almost alive, like a portal drawing him in. After what felt like an eternity, the boy in front of the mirror turned, his gaze still vacant. He began moving from bunk to bunk, pausing in front of each bed to stare at the sleeping faces of his roommates. He stood in silence, watching them with eyes that seemed to pierce through them, as if assessing something deep within.
When he reached the top bunk, the boy closed his eyes, pretending to be asleep, his heart pounding wildly. Through a sliver of his eyelids, he could see his roommate's face mere inches away, eyes wide, mouth slightly open, a shadow of a smile playing on his lips. The pale moonlight illuminated every detail, casting an eerie green tint over his face, making him look like something from a nightmare.
Finally, after what felt like an agonizing stretch of time, the sleepwalking roommate returned to his own bed, lay down, and began snoring softly. In the morning, the others asked if he remembered anything, but he looked at them blankly, confused, claiming he had no recollection of his nighttime wanderings.
The story of that night became yet another chapter in the haunted legacy of the dormitory. Even now, students whisper about what happened there, and the tales continue to grow. They say the building's history is cursed, tainted by a restless past, and that whatever spirits linger there are not yet ready to leave.