It was the oldest dormitory on campus. It was also the largest. Four levels of rooms, a twisting labyrinth of hallways, and endless rows of doors. Being a resident student at Montevallo one summer, I had the pleasure of being one of the few guys to live in Main Hall. But only a few of the rooms in the building were occupied, making the rest of the building a playground for shadows and echoes.

It was through these endless corridors of doors that I had to walk to reach the laundryroom one Saturday evening. The few students there had gone home for the weekend, so I was basically alone in the building. I took a left turn, then another, past the Grande Staircase and through the empty central hallway. And the doors. They sat still, but it seemed that at any moment one would fly open to reveal dark secrets inside.

I hurried back through the central hallway back to my room in Main South when my clothes were dropped off. But I stopped for a second at the Grande Staircase. I looked up the long winding structure to the skylight at the very top. Through it I could see the waning signs of sunlight. Before I knew it, the burnt amber sky had given way to darkness.

As I turned my eyes back toward my own hallway, I noticed something. Toward the front of the building, at the top, were four solitary rooms. For some reason, I felt drawn to them. What the hell, I thought. I was bored. So I started climbing the twisting staircase.

The air seemed to get thicker the higher up I went. But the old building still beckoned. I walked until I faced the third level central hall. Behind me, just one flight up, were those four rooms.

I looked up at the ten or so steps separating me from that last landing. I laid my hand on the solid wood railing and took a deep breath. I took a step. My foot rose slowly off the carpet and met the first step. I felt every bit of gravity then, almost as if it were trying to pull me down. I took another step and could barely get that foot past the other.

I never took my eyes off the rooms.

My sweaty hands held tightly onto the bannister. I stepped again. The floor creaked and whined, as if in pain. But I kept going. I took one more step. The old wood beneath me cried again. But it almost seemed like laughter.

I stopped for a second. My steps were getting heavier and the stairs seemed to be collapsing beneath me. For the first time, I took my eyes off the rooms and looked down the twisting Grande Staircase, past the various landings and hallways to the foyer three levels beneath me. Everything beneath me started spinning and blurring. I swear I could hear voices coming out of the darkest corners of the building. And there were many.

The sun and its light had left me. The landings beneath me seemed to grow darker. The whispers became louder. I looked back up at the rooms. I stared for a second and breathed heavily. I turned around and started descending. All at once everything stopped.

I later found out that those four rooms are known as "The Falcon's Nest," after Montevallo's mascot and it's place as the highest in the building. One of those rooms is the place where they store the famed "Door of Condie," one of the most famed pieces of ghostly paraphanalia around. A century ago, when a student was a victim in a fatal fire, her face, full of agony and pain, was burned into the wooden grain of her door. Perched up there, overlooking the entire building, sat her door.

And some say Condie herself.

They say that her famous ghost is fairly benign and benevolent. But, judging by the damp and wrinkled clothes I didn't touch again until the sun showed itself the next morning, I wasn't willing to find out.