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Ma Ville ♥, a mix tape brought to you by Champions of the Local Scene, the best of the 514 (or 438, if you're modern that way) every Wednesday at 6 PM on CJLO.

Ma ville ♥ from Champs on 8tracks Radio.

Hosted by Alexa Everett

Stories by Emeline Vidal & Catlin Spencer

Produced by Sam Obrand 

Happy Halloween! Here's a CJLO Ghost Story

CJLO's studios are located in the furthest corner of one of the oldest, if not the oldest building of Concordia University. Take a walk down one of the corridors and you'll see countless graduation photos of students long since dead, small black and white mementos of a time when only men walked these halls, a testament to how our world has changed. My favorite frame contains only two photos. It's dated 1914*, a year when most of the world had something other than studies on their mind. It's a visceral reminder of how many stories lie within these walls and how many young people have come and gone, leaving their ambitions and hopes echoing within the walls. How could this place not be haunted?

I should clarify right away that I'm not a believer. I know quite a few people who have had supernatural experiences, but my inner skeptic still doubts the existence of ghosts, despite the strange thing that happened to me one night, a few years back, while I was doing my radio show. I did the pee break shuffle, which fellow DJs know involves putting on a long song, then hustling to the nearest john and back as efficiently as possible. CJLO sadly does not have its own bathroom, but there's a women's washroom on the other side of the large lounge that neighbors our studios, and that's where I was headed.

As I walked through the lounge, everything seemed normal. There were a handful of students sitting in the cavernous space, mostly in small groups, studying or working on shared projects. No one looked up as I passed through. The women's washroom is an awkward space that at the time retained some features of what it once had been, some kind of dormitory bathroom including full showers. Along one wall, the shower stalls were flanked with two built in broom closets, which were sometimes left unlocked (I know because I had snooped around in them on occasion before). The showers have since been completely removed, but the closets remain, their heavy old fashioned wood doors a relic of what workmanship used to look like. Along the other wall, modern toilet stalls and sinks had been added. The entrance to the bathroom has a swinging door, which is occasionally left propped open, but this night was left closed.

I pushed my way in to the room, and the door swung closed behind me with a creak. The room was empty, and cold, not unusual for winter time in this forgotten, poorly insulated corner of the campus. I entered a stall, and got down to business, when I distinctly heard the door to the broom closet on the right open, then close again. I heard light footsteps across the floor, moving from the closet in the right corner of the room towards the main entrance on my left. Weird, I thought to myself, I guess someone was hiding in the closet. I waited, listening for the main door to swing open. It didn't. I waited.

Nothing. 

Silence. 

I waited some more, but the main door never swung open. Was there someone in the room with me? The hairs on the back of my neck prickled, but I had to know. I pulled up my jeans, opened the stall door and stepped out into the room. It was empty. The doors to the other stalls stood open. They were empty. The shower stalls, curtains long since removed, stood empty. There was no one by the sink. The silence was deafening.

That left only the closets... I walked over to the one on the left and tried the knob. Locked. In a daze, I walked over to the one on the right. I felt light headed, almost detached from my body, as though all the oxygen had been sucked out of the room. I turned the knob...

Locked.

I remember quickly going over the sequence of events in my mind, trying to make sense of what had happened. The closet door on the right opened, footsteps walked across the floor, but the main door never opened, and never swung shut, and the room was still empty. I looked at the main door again. Closed. Not propped open, closed. How had there been someone in the room with me, and yet the room was still empty, and no one had left it?

That's when the fear set in, but like a robot, I remember flushing the toilet, then washing my hands at the sink, my eyes fixed on the mirror, watching the reflection of the closet behind me, and listening, still listening, but there was nothing to hear. Only the hand dryer, then my feet walking across the floor, and then finally the sound I had been waiting for as I pushed the main door open and let it swing shut behind me.

I walked down the hall, toward the lounge, feeling as though all the blood had been drained from my body, as though every step I took wasn't actually connecting to the floor. As I entered the lounge, every single student looked up from their books at me. Every. Single. One. In that moment, I felt as though they knew, as though in their minds they all had the thought "she looks like she's seen a ghost." I remember being amused by that idea, despite still feeling cold fingers of fear creeping along my spine. Had I? I don't know.

I walked back into the CJLO studios, sat down behind the board, and continued my show. To this day, what happened that night still gnaws at me sometimes, especially in the winter months when the dark comes early and the hallways and lounge around CJLO are emptier than usual. I'll never know what I really experienced that night, but if you ask around, I'm not alone. There are others like me, who have roamed these halls for many years, and who have been confronted with things they couldn't quite understand. What secrets do these walls hold? Sometimes, when I walk down those hallways, and look at the black and white faces staring down at me from the walls, I wonder which of these students or their friends, who perhaps never had the chance to graduate, still walk these halls on cold winter nights...

*The building in which CJLO is located was completed in 1916, so these two students graduated when the previous incarnation of the university (Loyola College) was still located downtown.

-- Angelica hosts BVST, every Wednesday at 7-9 PM. Tune in for the best (and the worst) in rock'n'roll, country, punk and metal, only on CJLO!

Hosted by: Marilla Steuter-Martin

Stories by: Marilla Steuter-Martin, Celeste Lee 

Produced by: Emeline Vidal