Ghosts Spotted at Courtyard Café

Custodians walking through the empty halls of the Hopkins Theatre have reported that, though it is closed for the summer, the Courtyard Café is being haunted by the ghosts of students still trying to order food, according to Dartmouth’s Facilities, Operations, and Management Office.

“It was just a normal Wednesday night, maybe around 9 or 10,” recalled janitor Esau Goess, who had been cleaning the floor as usual when he first heard noises coming from the Café. “Normally, investigating that shit would have been far above my pay grade, but it wasn’t like I actually had anything to do, so I figured why not?”

However, when Mr. Goess went to examine the cause of the clamor, in his own words, “shit hit the fan.” While his first observations, which included lights flickering above the fruit shelves and flames suddenly rising from the burger grills, were nothing to get excited about, Mr. Goess’s narrative quickly took a turn for the paranormal.

“As I walked over to the seating area, the noises just got louder,” Mr. Goess said. “Drink fridges rapidly opening and closing. Chairs sliding back and forth across the floor. The faint voice of a woman saying ‘DBA or meal swipe?’”

At that point, Mr. Goess fled the scene.

A more intrepid custodian, Mary C. Spektor, had even more inexplicable manifestations of the supernatural to report.

“As I cleaned around the front counter of the Café—and I swear I’m not making this up—some misty forms rose out of thin air,” Ms. Spektor reported. “It was a little hard to figure out what exactly these ghosts were doing, but they looked a lot like students fake texting as they waited for their food.

“I definitely heard voices, too,” Ms. Spektor continued. “Stuff like ‘could I get the burger special?’ and ‘how long does it take to make a tender queso anyway’. Maybe a ‘I don’t even know why we go to the HOP, everything’s insanely overpriced and unhealthy anyway, and it’s run by a third-party organization so really we’re not even benefiting the College by going there’, but that may have just been me projecting.”

At press time, other custodians reported that House Center A’s snack center is just as empty of paranormal life over the summer as it had been of human life throughout the school year.

– HC ’20