Terry was a law student who liked to study into the closing hours of his university library every Friday night. He believed the more time he spent on Friday nights at the library, the clearer and more focused his aspirations for a law degree would be. What Terry didn't realize is that he wasn't as alone as he thought he was.
One Friday, his girlfriend Pam asked him to skip his library study session and go out with her and her girlfriend for pizza at the local pizzeria. Terry considered the offer but then politely refused, knowing that he could get ahead in his studies with a few extra hours of library study of law contracts that Friday night. He told her, "Maybe next Friday, ok?"
Terry walked into the library and sat down at his usual corner table and began studying at about 4 p.m. He found some interesting contract case studies as well as a law journal article on contract review procedures. The library was closing at 10pm, and Terry was wrapping up his study session at about 9:30 p.m. and considered running over to the pizzeria to see if he could catch his girlfriend who might still be there.
As he began packing up his books and notes and piling the books he planned to check out for the weekend, he thought he heard some strange shuffling sound near the book-shelves around his corner table. He realized that since the library was about to close, there weren't any other students around; there was only the librarian and custodians working there at that time. Terry decided to investigate and see what made that strange shuffling sound.
Terry walked around the area of the book-shelves where he thought he heard the shuffling sound was being made. At first he didn't see or hear anything, but then as he turned another corner, thinking he was getting closer to the origin point of the sound, he saw a strange shadowy figure. Terry thought it was some strange lighting effect or that perhaps he was tired and was hallucinating so he strained his eyes. Terry was shocked to see that the shadowy figure seemed to be a very old woman.
Terry approached the shadowy figure which seemed to be standing over some student notes on papers which were shuffling around in the library draft. As he got closer, the shadowy figure suddenly became cleared to him. It was indeed a very old woman who suddenly turned to Terry and whispered, "Our secret!" and then disappeared. Terry gathered his things and ran out the library after quickly checking out his books and did not say anything to the librarian. He ran to the pizzeria and found his girlfriend there. He walked over to her table and sat down next to her.
Terry said to his girlfriend, "You'll never believe what I think I just saw at the library." "What did you see?" she asked, and Terry replied, "I thought I saw the ghostly spirit of your dead grandmother." His girlfriend replied, "That's funny. My grandmother died in a school library after a heart attack." Terry was shocked. Even though he had met his girlfriend's grandmother before she died, he did not know that she died in a school library. Terry wondered for a second if he had hallucinated the whole experience at his university library or if the shadowy figure he thought he saw and heard could actually be the ghost of his girlfriend's grandmother.
Maybe the ghost was telling him that he shouldn't study so much and spend more time with his girlfriend, Terry thought. Either way, he decided to keep the whole thing a secret and said to his girlfriend, "Maybe I'm hallucinating and my conscience is simply telling me I should spend more time with you." His girlfriend smiled and said, "Our secret."
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