Listen as host Levi Libson and guest Aaron Guzman tell three spooky stories to get you in the Halloween spirit.

Transcript:

0:08: Welcome to Three to Know with the Columbia Chronicle, your go-to source for the top three things every Columbia College student, faculty and staff member needs to know. 

 0:15: I’m your host, Levi Libson. 

 0:18: Brave listeners, today we prepare for Halloween by sharing three ooky spooky stories. 

 0:23: These stories will shake your core, inflicting goosebumps and paranoia upon you. 

 0:27: So get comfy, put a fire on and sip your warm drinks as we make our way through this nightmarish episode of Three to Know, featuring special guest, our very own Aaron Guzman of Chronversations. 

 0:41: The Dress: As a kid, I found comfort in videotaping everything in my life. 

 0:46: This obsession started at the age of around nine. 

 0:49: I would shoot short films or just videotape my literal life frame by frame. 

 0:53: Ironically, these films often covered horror, spook and scare. 

 0:57: They were fun to produce, and my family always got a kick out of everyone involved. 

 1:00: I’d recruit friends, younger family members, even our dogs. 

 1:04: Everyone was involved and everything was homemade. 

 1:07: One Christmas, I gathered everyone together and decided to shoot a short film about superheroes, something about a kid who could travel back in time and change the events of the present. 

 1:15: He wore a silver helmet and beared a red cape. 

 1:18: When time-traveling backwards, his eyes glowed yellow, distorting the entire room until fading out, revealing a moment of the past. 

 1:24: The villains of this story, past versions of our hero himself, stuck in moments of history. 

 1:29: We filmed all day and all night, vigorously trying to tell our story. 

 1:33: Eventually, once I had the footage I needed, I sat down alone and began editing. 

 1:37: I recalled the process being smooth and enjoyable. 

 1:40: It was all coming together until I noticed something out of the ordinary. 

 1:43: In one of the shots, a villainous character was introduced with a title card covering a chunk of the screen. 

 1:49: In the back sat a mirror. 

 1:51: When reviewing footage, I noticed a figure passing by the mirror. 

 1:54: The figure appeared to be a completely black silhouette with a white dress. 

 1:58: It quickly passed by the mirror in the back of the footage. 

 2:01: It didn’t bob up and down as you might expect from a walking human. 

 2:04: Rather, it glided as if on ice, not shifting position, almost like it faced the camera at every point. 

 2:11: No one in that house was wearing a white dress or had entirely black hair, and especially no one in that house besides me and my subject were in that frame during that specific scene. 

 2:20: To the very specific moment of this very day, I still do not know what I captured that day on camera. 

 2:26: Maybe a spirit, maybe a ghost or maybe just another villain of the past for our hero to fight. 

 2:34: The study: 

 2:36: When I was younger, I would go carpet installing with my dad as a summer job. 

 2:41: One day, we got to the customer’s house to install his order, but the customer took almost an hour to answer the door. 

 2:47: After a few minutes, I hear a few words shouted from the front door. 

 2:50: “Hey guys, over here I’ll let you in.” 

 2:52: I called my dad over as he was looking for another possible entryway, but the customer still did not let us in. 

 2:58: A few minutes passed by, and we were finally let in. 

 3:01: I asked the customer why he didn’t let us in the first time, and he claimed that he never shouted for us and that he was in a Zoom call meeting that entire time. 

 3:09: He also assured us that nobody else was home. 

 3:12: After some confusion, we continued the job, and one of the rooms we were working on was the customer’s study. 

 3:18: His study had a large window that nearly scaled from the ceiling down to the floor. 

 3:23: I noticed that every time I turned my back to the window, a shadow would fill the room for a split moment as if somebody was running past. 

 3:30: This continued to go on for the rest of our time there, but it was not noticed by anybody else. 

 3:35: A few minutes before we were about to wrap up and collect our tools, I looked up into the reflection of the study’s doors that displayed the window behind me. 

 3:43: A dark figure that resembled a man was still and facing right towards me. 

 3:48: I turned around in an instant, and nothing was there. 

 3:51: We went home with no issues, and the owner of the house remained confused. 

 3:55: To this day, I still have no idea what I’ve experienced, and I remained the only one who saw it happen. 

 4:04: The Boots: Sunlight shone through the blinds of my room, casting a warm glow upon the bunk bed that I slept in. 

 4:11: It was the summer of 2019. 

 4:13: When I was younger, I spent the occasional summer working with my grandparents in Wisconsin. 

 4:17: Me and my cousin would wake up early in the morning to go out with our grandpa and spend the day working on a house construction. 

 4:23: It was hard work; however, we always had a good time. 

 4:26: I still reminisce about those times to this day. 

 4:28: This specific weekend, my grandparents were out of the house getting breakfast. 

 4:32: I was alone sleeping. 

 4:33: At around 11 a.m. I distinctly remember hearing the sound of creaking. 

 4:37: It piqued my interest, and I sat up in bed swiftly. 

 4:40: The sound continued from the downstairs level of the house, up the stairs and through the kitchen. 

 4:45: It sounded like footsteps. 

 4:46: The distinct sound of rubbery boots buckling under weight made its way around the house until stopping outside the room I was in. 

 4:52: The hair on my neck stood upright as I was paralyzed with fear. 

 4:55: For a few moments, there was silence. 

 4:58: It felt like a standoff, just me and whatever laid outside my room. 

 5:02: Shortly after this wait, the sound commenced forth, walking slowly away and into the bathroom at the end of the hall. 

 5:09: I stood quickly and rushed out of my room in a fit of pure, unadulterated fight or flight. 

 5:14: I opened the bathroom door and saw nothing. 

 5:16: I’ve never been able to find a feasible explanation, and despite being a hardcore skeptic, I truly can’t say what it was. 

 5:24: Subscribe to our newsletters on our website, columbiachronicle.com. 

 5:27: Be sure to also check out Chronversations for weekly campus highlights. 

 5:31: I’m Aaron Guzman, and I’m Levi Libson. 

 5:33: Thanks for listening. 

Copy edited by Vanessa Orozco