As Halloween nears, telling ghost stories can be a fun way to enjoy the spooky season. According to the Atlantic, 42% of Americans say they believe in ghosts, so it should come as no surprise that some students are believers in the paranormal. 

The Daily Texan has compiled a few stories from students to celebrate the season.

The Invisible Friend

Andrea Garza, Asian cultures and languages sophomore, said she is no stranger to ghostly apparitions. As a child, Garza said she had a habit of not picking up her toys before she went to bed. One night, she said she noticed something strange.  

“I would wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of the train whistle going off,” Garza said. “This was not some type of train set with a battery in it, it was specifically for hands to move it manually.” 

This wasn’t the first time Garza experienced something paranormal in her home. Over the years, her family saw shadows and heard rustling throughout the house that they believed were ghosts. 

Garza said she believed a child’s ghost was playing with her toys and so she started leaving them out on purpose for the ghost to play with.

“I liked the idea of sharing my toys which is not really common in kids, but I loved that this train set so much that I was willing to share them with someone else or something else,” Garza said. 

The Disappearing Phone

While working at Dillard’s last year,  Hanna Haobsh, international relations and global studies sophomore, kept receiving calls from a disconnected landline at work.  Then she noticed her own phone was missing and after looking everywhere, she found it in a random shoebox across the room. She said that this wouldn’t have been so unsettling if she had not been the only employee there.

“I tried to distract myself by going on my phone, but then shoeboxes started falling over with no explanation,“ Haobsh said, “After that happened, I started hearing giggling and speaking, followed by scraping and footsteps. It was totally freaky.”

Startled, she waited out the rest of night and raced home as soon as her shift ended. 

The Unknown Footsteps

As a child, it was normal for biochemistry freshmen Pablo Labiaga Trevino to get home from school while his parents were still at work. While waiting for them to arrive, he would watch TV and often hear footsteps running upstairs. At first he tried to ignore it, but the sound continued everyday and only seemed to get louder.
 
With Día de los Muertos near, his family had set up an altar that had offerings and photos of his family members who had passed. Trevino asked his mother who the little boy in all of the pictures were and she told him it was his uncle. 

His uncle had passed away at the age of seven after he was hit by a car.
 
“When she told me that, in my mind it clicked that the steps I was hearing were from the ghost of my uncle,” Trevino said. “I believe that it was him that I heard, running and trying to get back home.”