[ChioLu]

Been saving this ghost story for Halloween.

I was House Director at Chi Omega at UCLA for a few years -- my 1st PAID job with Chi O! (The scary part for the actives is that I went to college with the (at that time) National President.)

I moved in right before Thanksgiving and during the break, one of the freezer alarms and the reset for the fire alarm would go off at odd times, like 2 or 3am ... every night of the break & when I was alone in the house. I would reset them, but had to go to the basement for the fire alarm & behind the kitchen for the freezer alarm.
During Christmas break, I was gone part of the time, but when I got back, the same thing would happen, though not every single night.

When you would walk by ONE of the 3 freezers, sometimes you'd walk thru a cold spot. (BTW, the freezer door was NOT open and actually, those were older freezers and not great at energy efficiency, so that gave off some warmth.) I started thinking we had a ghost in the house. Not in a scary way, just mischievious.

After Spring Break, with the same alarm resets happening in the middle of the night, I decided to give our ghost a name and talk to her. Not sure why, but the first name I thought of was "Annie". Since it was only happening when the actives were out of the house, I thought she might be lonely, so I would say "Hi Annie", that I was a Chi Omega too, that she wasn't alone in the house and not to be afraid. The alarms happened less frequently over the summer, except after I went on a week's vacation, but stopped when the members came back for Recruitment.

That fall, we had a reunion of 50-year alumnae and about 60 or so members from the 1950's came to the house for 2 days of catching up (& toasts & singing). We found out interesting details like: 1 room had actually been a 2 car garage, 2 rooms were the original Pledge Sleeping Porch, and the TV room plus the BR above it used to be part of the center courtyard.

While I was talking to a group of 50-year members, it dawned on me to ask if they had ever heard of anyone had passed away in the house. They said they knew of any member who was about 3 or 4 years earlier than when they lived in had passed away from a heart defect. To follow up, I asked if they remembered her name.

My jaw dropped when they told me her name ... Maryanne