Chapter 2: Ghost Gate Secrets

I told Natalie—my best friend and resident paranormal expert—everything. She immediately FaceTimed me, eyes wide as she scanned the dorm behind me.

After seeing the room, her face went pale. "Your dorm backs up to Black Oak Hill, faces the Ghost Gate, and honestly? You guys give off major creepy-vibes energy. Like, if ghosts were looking for a party, they’d definitely crash your place."

A chill shot down my spine. Even over FaceTime, her tone was dead serious, and goosebumps prickled up my arms.

She told me to hit up the local hardware store right away and order a custom poplar wood threshold to install at the door.

"Ghosts can’t lift their feet and can’t cross a threshold. If it can’t get in for three days, it’ll give up and leave," she insisted, her voice urgent, like this was life or death and not just campus gossip.

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I tore through the hardware store, but poplar wood thresholds were nowhere to be found. The place was all fluorescent lights and the whir of ceiling fans. I dodged a stack of paint cans and nearly tripped over a box of Halloween decorations. The aisles smelled like sawdust and WD-40, and I wandered past garden hoses and PVC pipes, feeling more lost by the second.

Just when I was about to give up, an old carpenter with a white beard shuffled over. He said he might have one at home.

He disappeared for a while, then returned with an old threshold—worn smooth from years of use, its faded wood catching the sunlight. Something about it made my skin crawl, but I was desperate.

"Ah, nobody’s wanted this old thing in years. You can have it, no charge," he said, waving it off.

Still, he wanted to know why I needed it. I fumbled out a Halloween prank excuse, left forty bucks in his hand, and hurried out, his eyes lingering on me a little too long.

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Back at the dorm, I grabbed a rusty screwdriver from the maintenance closet and got to work, my hands moving faster from nerves than any real skill.

Just as I was finishing, my three roommates showed up, demanding to know what I was doing.

I spilled everything—how the threshold would keep ghosts out for good.

Their faces drained of color. Instead of entering, they turned and bolted down the hallway, shrieking. The way they scattered would have been hilarious if I wasn’t so freaked out myself.

I shrugged it off. Lights out.

I tossed and turned in bed, every creak and groan of the old radiator making my skin crawl. I clutched my phone under the covers.

Then—bang, bang, bang—from the door.

A chill shot down my spine. I listened hard. It wasn’t a knock—it was the sound of feet hitting the threshold. Like someone was trying to jump over it and failing, toes slamming against the wood in a slow, deliberate rhythm. My skin crawled. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to breathe.

My phone buzzed, making me jump. It was Natalie, messaging on Instagram. When I told her what happened, she freaked.

"That isn’t ghost feet—it’s the ghost banging its head! That threshold is a Ghost Gate Threshold. If the lead ghost bangs its head for three days, the Ghost Gate opens and you’re all dead!"

I froze. She demanded to know where I’d met the old man. I told her everything.

"How could it be such a coincidence that some old guy just happened to have the perfect threshold?" she snapped. Her words echoed in my head, making me dizzy.

I asked what to do. She told me to take the threshold down immediately.

But I was too scared to move. My legs felt like jelly.

She had me download a moving picture of three candles, hold my phone up, and bow three times to the door. That would keep things stable for the night.

Sure enough, after I bowed, the banging stopped. I sat there, shaking, clutching my phone like a lifeline as the silence returned.