Ever since I can remember, I have been sensitive. So it should've been no surprise to me, the events that would take place in my early twenties.
I am in the military, and because this incident took place on a military installation, I cannot identify specific locations.
I was 21, fresh out of boot camp and well into the final stages of technical training to become an avionics specialist. I was naturally distracted by my goals and not in touch with my normal sense of intuition.
We had just been assigned a class on the midnight shift when it started happening. At first, I chalked it up to nerves and adjusting to a new sleep schedule. About two weeks in, I was finally acclimated. Our schoolhouse was in what used to be an old training hospital during WWII, the Korean War, and Vietnam. The building was shaped like an 'H'.
The floors were concrete linoleum. Instead of stairs, there were two gurney ramps per floor. One night during cleanup duty, I got curious about the top floor. From the outside, it looked like three stories. I climbed the ramps alone.
I climbed what felt like seven identical floors. Staring up the next ramp into blackness, I decided to turn back. I returned to find my classmates staring. They said they had called me numerous times and even looked for me, but I never heard them. No one believed my story.
After those two weeks, I became more aware. I started feeling uncomfortable in the bathroom, my eyes always drawn to a 2x2 foot air vent, feeling watched from the gloom.
One night, after using the latrine, I stopped on the first floor—our original classroom, nicknamed the 'meat locker' for its coldness. I noticed a flickering fluorescent light at the hall's end. It went out, then the light in front of it flicked off, and this pattern repeated rapidly down the hall toward me. The terrifying part was the racing shadow on the floor, like an impenetrable black mass charging me. Filled with inexplicable horror, I turned to run down the ramp but was shoved hard by something. I tumbled down, managed to spring to my feet, and kept running. Passing two big shut doors, a sudden realization hit me: the basement was the morgue, and this first floor with red linoleum was the operating wing.
In the following weeks, I saw many ghosts—mostly nurses and doctors—usually when I was alone.
The only time I was truly scared was on that red-linoleum floor about a week before graduation. I felt an overwhelming animosity. Finally, I saw him: a handsome, angry, dead soldier in a green Army Air Corps uniform. He stared holes into me. I don't know why he chose me, but I'll never forget that moment.
We graduated shortly after. As we marched away, I turned to look at the schoolhouse. There he was, in the first-floor window, just staring. I haven't thought much about him since, but I'm sure we'll meet again if I return as an instructor.