When a security guard arrived at midnight to prevent us from stealing alcohol from the downstairs bar, I knew that we were going to be in for a long and adventurous night. And while I highly doubt that he believed our claim that we were only walking behind the bar to check out newspaper clippings (which was indeed the case), it became increasingly apparent that our journalistic pursuits had reached an all-time high as we prepared ourselves for one of the most absurd evenings in recent Cadenza history.

Last week, eight members of the Cadenza staff decided to spend the night at one of the most notorious haunted houses in the Midwest, the St. Louis home of a former brewery tycoon, known as the Lemp Mansion. Ready to pull off a journalistic feat, we grabbed our sleeping bags, a couple of cases of beer, several candles, and headed out on a Wednesday night, ready for an expedition of ghost-hunting endeavors. At best, we would spot several ghosts, flee the mansion and write one of the most exciting stories Student Life has ever seen; at the very worst, we would spend a fairly restless and uneventful night crammed into one hotel room and two beds that we could later lie about to our friends, swearing to have really spotted the entire Lemp family in various compromising positions throughout the mansion. What we received, in actuality, was definitely something in between the terrifying evening we had hoped for and the dull night we had otherwise envisioned.

Shortly after our run-in with the Lemp Mansion security force, which consisted of one guy wearing athletic shorts and an old t-shirt, and with our free range of the home still intact, we finally decided to begin our ghost-hunting activities by performing a s‚ance in the upstairs attic, which has been touted as one of the most haunted locations in the home. After moving miscellaneous pieces of scrap metal that had been placed there for safekeeping, we formed a circle, lit two candles and prepared to summon the undead. After several failed attempts due to uncontrollable laughter and an overall feeling of ridiculousness, we managed, much like a group of high-schoolers in a B-movie horror flick, to hold an actual s‚ance, complete with a prayer of safety and an invocation of the spirits. To our chagrin, the only noises we heard were the sounds of cars whizzing by outside as they sped down Interstate 55 and the hum of the heating unit behind us.

Things eventually evolved into a full-fledged game of hide-and-go-seek and perhaps the most terrifying part of the evening. Crawling around through a deserted kitchen in pitch blackness in a supposedly haunted mansion will after some time begin to disturb even the most fearless of Cadenza staffers. Midway through the game, the one big scare of the evening occurred when a reporter hid behind a curtain, lit only by the streetlamp outside and appeared for a moment to be an actual apparition. If it wasn’t for his distinctive floppy hair, he might have fooled us all.

After the game of hide-and-go-seek dissipated we resigned ourselves to watching the movie “Leprechaun” and finally hitting the sack. And while the night lacked any actual communication with spirits or the undead, we all had a great time pretending for just a little while to believe in the impossible and pursue the absurd.

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