Lights off, spirits on: the scariest ghost stories from the Tilburg campus

It’s Halloween, time for ghost stories. Staff and alumni share their most bizarre, creepy, and paranormal experiences on the Tilburg campus. From ghosts in storage rooms to poltergeists, unexplainable voices, and flickering streetlights. These stories are guaranteed to give you chills.

Ghosts

‘Before I started working for the university library, I worked at the theological faculty. Occasionally, staff had to retrieve books from the underground archives themselves. Those storage rooms were hardly cozy. The hallways were narrow, the lighting minimal, and a musty smell of old, forgotten books lingered everywhere.

‘One drizzly afternoon, I was tasked with picking up some theological works, along with an intern who was new to the faculty. As we descended through the creaking stairwells, she casually told me something that made my heart skip a beat.

”I see ghosts,’ she said, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. “Sometimes they come to my house and sit on my bed.” Although I am quite level-headed and don’t believe in paranormal stories, a chill crept into my body. She continued, “Here, in this storage room, I see them too. They float around everywhere.’

‘I felt a cold shiver run down my spine. It was as if the air in the storage room suddenly became even colder. I had never believed in ghosts, and yet… We were working in the theological faculty, surrounded by centuries-old books filled with stories about supernatural powers, the divine, and the inexplicable.

‘From that moment on, every time I walked down the stairs, I was gripped by that same suffocating feeling. The idea lingered that something invisible lurked in the shadows of the storage room. I would deliberately make a lot of noise, hoping that my presence would be noticed and the ghosts would leave me alone.’

Emmy, Library Services staff member

Voices

“A few years ago, I met up with a friend from Brazil. She was about to return to her home country for good. We decided to go to the university together one last time.

It was already dark on campus. We parked our bikes near the university library to walk to the field between the Mensa and Cobbenhagen buildings. That’s when the atmosphere changed. Suddenly, it was very dark and too quiet. Something held me back from walking any further. My friend shrugged casually and said, ‘I’ll go take a look. You stay here.’

After a few minutes, a strange feeling crept over me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a large shadow moving along the Koopmans building, and suddenly I heard her voice, loud and clear: ‘It’s not safe; we need to go back.’ Startled, I looked up, but there was no one around.

Not long after, my friend came running back with a worried look in her eyes. ‘Were you just with me?’ she asked, out of breath. ‘Because I heard your voice telling me we needed to go back.’

My stomach turned. What she described was exactly what I had just heard. Without saying a word, we jumped on our bikes and raced away. Every time I think back on it, I get chills. I still can’t explain it.”

Eva, alumna

Poltergeist

During one of my late rounds on campus, I was talking with a colleague in the Esplanade building. It was a quiet, ordinary evening. We were locking up the Black Box when we suddenly heard a loud, piercing sound: bang, bang, bang! It sounded like someone was pounding hard on the door. We looked at each other in surprise. At first, I thought maybe someone was rehearsing and we’d disturbed them by talking too loudly, but the building was silent and empty.

Curious, we looked through the door’s peephole, but to our surprise, we saw absolutely nothing. Yet that heavy sound lingered in our ears. Determined, we opened the door, convinced someone was playing a prank on us. But as we stepped inside, we were met with an empty, silent space. No sign of life, no trace of anyone having been there.

‘You couldn’t have left that fast,’ I said to my colleague, as a cold shiver ran through me. We stood there for a moment, wondering what had just happened. The campus was deserted, and a sound like that was anything but normal.

To this day, it remains a mystery. Was it a poltergeist haunting us? Or simply a strange, coincidental phenomenon? We’ll never know for sure, but the memory of that moment still brings an inexplicable tension.

Patrick, security guard

Under the light

One evening, I was walking late on campus to clear my head. It was quiet, almost deserted. Blonde, the then-new album by Frank Ocean, played in my earbuds. The melancholic sounds made me feel like a main character; that feeling of being in a movie where every moment is significant.

As I walked down the familiar university lane, surrounded by a row of streetlights, something strange happened. At a certain song, goosebumps suddenly crawled over my skin. The evening was already cold, but suddenly it felt like the temperature dropped even more. It felt… different.

And then, just as unexpectedly, all the lights went out. Except for one. The streetlight directly above my head remained lit, while the rest of the lane was engulfed in complete darkness. There I stood, in a narrow circle of light, as if the rest of the world had paused for a moment. The silence became deafening, and the surrounding shadows seemed to creep closer.

It was frightening yet, in a way, almost serene. In that brief moment, I felt not only like a spectator in my own life but also the center of it.

Jenny, alumna

_Advertentie.