With Halloween around the corner, mysterious frights emerge once again across Kennesaw State’s campus.
Reports of strange behavior and disconcerting omens have grown across campus since the construction of a mysterious pumpkin patch near Kennesaw Mountain off of Barrett Parkway. Attending seniors and freshmen alike have seemingly returned changed, unfamiliar to their peers, friends and professors.
The pumpkin patch, which appeared suddenly on the morning of Oct. 13, has been the source of much inquiry among the student body. The attraction offers locals the chance to scavenge for pumpkins in a labyrinthine maze of stacked hay across the former Civil War battlegrounds.
Students who have visited say they recommend the experience, though many warn that the staff, adorned in convincing Civil War era outfits, might come off as rude and smell particularly foul.
However, despite the pumpkin patch’s high rating on Yelp, many KSU students have expressed a deep concern about the appearance of the patch. Sally Yeats, a sophomore engineering student, claims that she found one of her sorority sisters acting strangely on the night of Oct. 24 — only a few days after visiting the pumpkin patch with other Greek-life students.
“Brenda was just standing out there staring at the full moon like wearing these gaudy looking Uggs,” Yeats said. “She doesn’t even own Uggs, she hates those things. It’s just unnatural.”
Dave Hernandez, a senior majoring in religious studies, also expressed concerns after finding a pentagram drawn in a syrupy, pumpkin scented liquid across the Democracy Wall.
“My roommate visited the pumpkin patch and now, every day, he reeks of pumpkin spice. I keep finding sticky residue on all the door handles and he spends all day in his room,” Hernandez admits. “I wonder if he drew the pentagram on the wall, but I’m scared to ask if he had anything to do with it.”
Other strange occurrences — such as students finding exactly 13 chips on every plate of nachos in the commons, hearing howling noises in the labs by the Clendenin Building, or experiencing a palpable sense of malice and dread in the English Building’s elevator — appear to be on the rise as Halloween draws closer.
Some students have taken to capitalizing on the recent events, selling homemade garlic charms and other anti-curse knickknacks to their peers. Sophomore marketing major Dan Floyd has made record sales peddling lucky rabbit’s foot keychains by the student center.
Floyd attributed his success in this new market to an influx of peculiar illness among art students. While many have drawn a correlation between the recent outbreak and the art history program’s acquisition of several occult artifacts of mysterious origin, public health experts have been quick to note that flu season is in full swing.
In addition, the number of sickly art students chanting in a semicircle atop the East Parking deck has increased nightly since Oct. 13. Campus police have recommended that KSU faculty consider a temporary curfew for public safety, though some staff members have repeatedly countered with assertions over students’ right to assembly.
Still, students report that this October continues to be overwhelmingly positive when compared to the ill-remembered Punk’d Patch fiasco of 2016, in which several KSU students were hospitalized from shock after being ambushed during local hay rides by a camera crew and the ghost of Ashton Kutcher’s career. In all, this October continues to reveal an eccentric side of KSU’s campus that students should all be ready to celebrate.