The recent news about the pocong sighting that has been going around for the last couple of days kind of remind me about the supernatural activities at work.

Umm, yeah. Apparently we have ghosts at work. As in, more than one.

When I first started working there, I never believed or thought much about it. Mostly because I had never had any first encounters with such supernatural beings, and despite the fact that people around me seemed to have various experiences with these beings, I was fortunate enough to not ever notice them.

Students claimed that they had been disturbed on several occassions by a floating girl in a red dress.

One heard the water running in the bathroom in the dead of the night and when he went to check it out, there was a girl in one of the shower cubicles wearing (guess what) a red dress.

The same girl was seen by another student studying at the Lido, turning pages after pages of a book.

One female student said she was being followed by a big, green creature who demanded for coffee, so she put some coffee on top of her cabinet at the big, green thing stopped bugging her soon enough.

A class was taking a photo during a break and they captured a baldheaded person who looked like he was in his thirties, smiling and everything. No, this person was not one of the students. I saw the photo too and was baffled because I knew what all my students looked like and I would never not recognise anyone from a whole class, despite having to teach many.

I accused them mildly for photoshopping the photo but they were adamant that it was downloaded straight from the camera.

On several occassions, I was teaching in one of the classes called Oak Room and the slide had rolled up by itself. I happened to have my back facing it, so I was confused when some of the students went very pale and they were pointing at the slide but not  being able to say anything. I thought this was some sick joke the students were playing, so I demanded the remote control, and they said it was right at the teachers desk, in one of its drawers.

The highlights of my semi-supernatural experiences (I am still somewhat half-denying their existence) came during the Indonesian Independence Party last August.

Everything was going great, I took lots of pictures with the students, and everyone was out at the soccer field watching the band and having a great time dancing and being mildly drunk. I had been drinking lots of bottled tea so I had to pee. Off I went to the Teachers toilet inside, and there was nobody at all in the Teachers Room, nor in the toilet. I wasn’t even thinking of ghosts then so I did my business as usual and went back outside. It was ten o’clock in the evening.

An hour later, I decided I had enough and I wanted to go home. I said goodbye to everyone, made sure I got all my stuff together from the Teachers Room and went out to the parking lot to my car. While I was warming up the engine, I had the sudden urge to pee but some very strange reason I felt a bit too freaked out going to the toilet by myself.

So I dragged Sally, one of the teachers that I felt quite close with and asked her to accompany me. She obliged even thought I knew she wasn’t too keen on the idea because she was much more freaked out about the ghost thing than I was.

While she was waiting for me outside of the cubicle, we were having idle chit-chats. Suddenly we heard a high-pitched giggle which sounded like it was coming from outside of the toilet.

Both of us went very quiet and a few seconds after I said, “Uhm. Sal, what the hell was that?”

And she was like, “Idon’tknowjusthurrythefuckup.”

I was sort of shaking and freaked out (ok I was scared shitless) so I finished quickly, attemped to wash my hands but Sally was already running outside as fast as she could. So I was running as well and we were both screaming and running like crazy.

I felt quite guilty for asking Sally to accompany me but I was still adamant it was not a ghost. It sounded like a noise that could be played from a mobile phone. But then Sally said while she was waiting for me she saw some dark shadows reflected through the mirror and when she tried to look further (through the mirror) there was nothing there.

Up until this day, I still feel weird about the whole toilet thing.

So how about you, any supernatural encounters at work?