Halloween is quickly approaching, and while students prepare for this spooky season, some Aggies are sharing their encounters with the “otherworldly.”
Economics junior Vince Zambito said he’s been dealing with the supernatural his entire life and wasn’t surprised when he began having paranormal experiences in college.
“My freshman year, around the end of the first semester, I would start waking up at like 3:33 a.m. on the dot every single day,” Zambito said. “I didn’t think anything of it until it happened multiple times, then I got really freaked out by it because the second it started happening to me, it started happening to [my roommate]. [He didn’t] necessarily wake up at 3:33 a.m., but he kept on saying he would wake up in the middle of the night feeling like someone was watching him.”
Zambito and his roommate dealt with these experiences at the Callaway Villas for the rest of the year. However, he said the occurrences came to a halt a year later, when he experienced something else unsettling.
“A year later the power went out in the house that I was living in, and my roommate walked into the room and my clock was just blinking 3:33 a.m. again. Just because the power went out it randomly reset and somehow it went to that,” Zambito said. “I don’t understand that — that one was really creepy.”
Criminal justice senior Casey Bryan said she and her family have been encountering supernatural experiences since her late grandmother passed away.
“Around the time of her death, things started to get a little weird around the house,” Bryan said. “We awoke to this loud scream, and my mother frantically hid us in our closets. Apparently, she thought someone broke into the house. I used to have this pink bouncy ball that I would play with every day mainly with my late grandmother. While no one was awake, my mom saw the ball roll and bounce across the living room and into the guest bedroom. After cops were called out and the house was searched, there was no evidence of an intruder.”
Throughout the years, Bryan’s family continued to have strange encounters. Bryan said her brother began seeing her late grandmother, and she didn’t believe him until she came to College Station.
“When I moved out of my family home and began college, I started seeing her again, too,” Bryan said. “[It was] mostly in my dreams or late at night. I felt like she would come around to have us feel safe and know she’s there watching over us. I know that these appearances mean no harm, but it still makes the hairs on my back stand up.”
Sport management senior Caleb Carpenter said during his sophomore year at Texas A&M he explored fishing spots in Bryan and came across an old dirt road that was deserted at night. Being a curious 20-year-old, he decided to explore it and then experienced something unexpected.
“As I drove down the road, I started to lose power in my truck the further I got down the bumpy road,” Carpenter said. “Suddenly my truck came to a halt. As I waited for my friends to come jump my car, it would randomly flash its light on and off. Sometimes the interior lights and sometimes the exterior ones. As I began to wander around the road, I started to get an achy feeling in my gut.”
While waiting for his friends’ arrival, Carpenter said he saw a group of people down the road who began chasing him.
“Of course I began to run, fearing for my life as they suddenly saw me and started to chase after me,” Carpenter said. “The closer I got to my truck my phone began to work. However, my friends had already found my location. They jumped my car and towed me out, and I have never returned to that area of Bryan-College Station.”