Chapter one - A Ghost Story...

I had sat through four end-of-the year award ceremonies in that room before I told anyone the story. Even then it was to my own children. I swore them to secrecy. Since no one believes stories that children tell, I figured it was safe to tell it like a fairy tale, or ghost story. If they spilled it, no one would believe them. It happened in the CMA building on the University of Texas at Austin campus; a large, industrial looking building with not much curb appeal, except that it does have a nice outside courtyard connecting it to CMB and CMC that gives it a kind of community feel. When someone comes into the building for the first time and steps into the elevator, one of the first things they notice is that the building has no first floor. In fact, the elevator buttons run 2-7, and the second floor is the basement garage. The first level of the building, the main lobby level, is the third floor. One might find that odd, and yet no one seems to question it. Students are occasionally confused and end up on the wrong floor. It happens when they take the stairs and count floors rather than ride up the elevator, but after a bit of practice the floor number discrepancy fades into the mindless meaninglessness of busyness and everyone forgets. Except my children. Which is why I had to tell them. They were never going to let it go. It was driving me crazy too, year after year, watching people casually walking back and forth over the trap door in the second floor auditorium knowing what was there; knowing what had happened and what had to be done and wondering if the proper measures were being taken.
I did not dare tell anyone while I was working my way through graduate school. If someone else knew, I might be exposed and sent away; getting rid of me so I could not tell anyone else. These kinds of things can kill the reputation of a school, and that would mean no more students, no brilliant Profs, and the sudden death of the program that had built to a national stronghold. If they didn’t know (I couldn’t think of which would be worse, really) then they might think I was cracking under the pressure of grad school, and they would probably send me away on medical leave or something – I couldn’t let that happen. I had to finish. I was driven to finish: for my own sake, and and for my family.

Now that they are going to tear the building down and put up a new one, I have no choice. The story has to be told. You have to know what dangers are hidden in that building.

The road to hell, and the foundation of that building, are laid with the best of intentions. Good intentions rarely are enough to compensate for evil. You see, there was a time before this one when graduate students and senior faculty members in the College of Communication mingled together in a rather collegial manner. This was 1965, and although there were many who wished for the old Ivory tower to remain the way it had always been (with great separation between the professors and the students) the new guard of Communication scholars believed that graduate students needed close mentoring and training. They thought that graduat students should be working with their Professors closely and should be guided through collegial relationships rather than the former crushing relationships of the 'master and bondservant' model. To facilitate this new enlightened collegiality, the college of communication building, the Jesse Jones Communication building (also known as CMA), was built on the UT Austin campus. It had a basement level full of offices and meeting rooms surrounding a large, open lounge that was accessible to both graduate students and faculty alike. The idea was that graduate students assisting the faculty would be able to pop their heads into offices at a moments notice, and would be able to sit down and chat with faculty members casually about complex subjects over coffee in the lounges. It was an academic utopia.

It wasn't everyone's Utopia. There was one professor, Dr. Evan B. Simien, who refused to adapt. He was not particularly older than the other professors, on average. Nor was he particularly more conservative or liberal, or particularly more or less anything, other than stuck in his ways. He simply did not think it was a good idea to fraternize with ones students. How could you fault him, really? Here he was going about his business building a comfortable reputation for himself at a University he believes he can really make a name for himself, and suddenly the playing field shifts in a way that is not just huge, it is seismic! It was not just bad for Dr. Simien; it was bad for his graduate students. For awhile, they acted as if everything was fine and that he would come around; wearing pasted on smiles in the common room and walking a little more quietly around their mentor. Then, after a few months, it became clear that the situation was worsening. The few graduate students working with Dr. Simien began to come to the graduate dean one at a time, in secret, begging for reassignment. One transferred to another University. Rumors began to surface of abuses, although nothing was substantiated. The graduate dean, deeply unsettled by what he was seeing and hearing from these graduate students called Dr. Simien aside for a private meeting one morning to discuss the accusations and his concerns. After an hour, both men emerged, Simien looking gaunt and resigned and the dean appearing shaken and pale. Nothing changed. Nothing was ever shared about the meeting that transpired between the two, but the Dean kept his distance from Simien after that meeting and most of Simien's graduate students were reassigned.

Just past the holidays that year, Dr. Simien had only one graduate student left under his care. She had been a bright and promising young woman with a lot of determination, but she was showing great strain and barely holding up under what had become constant belligerence. Other professors had approached her with offers to take her under their wing, but she prided herself in being able to handle the worst, and the worst she handled. Her name was Helen, and she had just returned from a refreshing two days of Christmas holidays to come back to campus and work on another of Dr. Simien’s endless projects. She was in a relatively good mood, and was pouring herself a cup of coffee. The way I understand it, Dr. Simien entered the lounge from another door just as she was exiting to her office. Apparently, he saw the empty coffee pot, became enraged that she had not thought to make a new pot of coffee in the expectation that he would be there and want his coffee. In the few seconds before she had completely exited the room, he ran to the coffee pot, grabbed the empty carafe and lobbed it across the room where it exploded with a loud POP against the back of her head.

Helen, momentarily stunned, stumbled out of the lounge and then turned around to see what had happened. She turned to see her advisor, apoplectic, screaming something about her stealing his coffee, and she did what any sensible girl would do. She ran. She did not wait for the elevator. She ran up two flights of stairs to the pay telephones in the garage and called the police in a barely controlled panic. She then ran to her car, locked the doors, and waited there until they arrived.

When the police arrived about ten minutes later, they found a frightened, coffee stained graduate student with glass from the coffee carafe embedded in the back of her head and matted into her hair with drying blood. They found Dr. Simien where she had left him, in the lounge, quite dead. Apparently, his enraged act had been his last. He had died of an aneurism on the spot.

But that is not the end of the story. That is just where the story begins....