It must have been about 3 a.m. I was designing my pages for the paper, as I do every Monday night, when in the reflection of my computer screen I caught the glimpse of something.

I still can’t be sure what I saw, but I know what I typed into our staff’s Facebook group.

“Guys I’m hallucinating ghosts in the office,” my comment said. “I’m praying over the building and going home. Don’t talk to me.”

Now, I have a bit of a reputation for making ridiculous statements, but this one was a stretch even for me. So what did I see?

Like I said, I can’t be sure.

“It looked like a woman with long hair in a blue antebellum gown was standing in the doorway watching me work on the computer,” I told Blythe, our managing editor. “She didn’t look angry, she just looked perplexed. Then she was gone.”

Though I assured my colleagues that I had been up very late drinking too much coffee and staring too long at a computer screen, they were convinced there was some truth to my statement.

The following day I was called into the office of our media adviser.

“Tell me exactly what you saw,” she said with quite possibly the most serious look I’d ever seen her wear.

I told her my story in it’s entirety: coffee, up late, antebellum ghost, etc.

“It’s not the first time I’ve wondered if there was something in the office, but I know the building just creaks,” I said.

“What do you mean, creaks?” she asked.

“Oh you know, the air conditioner, comes on and it sounds like someone is slamming the cabinets shut in the archives room, when there’s no one in the office.”

That’s when she told me about Opal.

Before The Flor-Ala office moved to our current location, we were located inside of an old house about a block from campus.

To sum it up quickly, the house was apparently haunted.

Papers would shuffle in empty storage rooms, kitchen cabinets would open without being prompted, the works.

One editor apparently became so curious regarding the cause of the “supernatural” happenings in the office that he brought in a ouija board to attempt to communicate with the ghost.

Although not much was gained from the experience, the spirit in question did apparently give a name: Opal.

Once named, the specter became a more prominent figure in the office. More bizarre acts occurred, climaxing with the markers of a white board flying across a room in front of my advisor.

“Stop Opal,” was the term the entity apparently responded to the most readily, and it began to be understood that the ghost, or whatever it was, was not a harmful soul, so much as a presence.

That was the old office, which was bulldozed away. It seemed that Opal went away with it, until my sighting.

Shortly after my first encounter, things began to happen in the office.

“We walked in to the office today and there was a cup rolling back and forth on the counter,” said Blythe. Apparently when they encountered this sight, our advisor resorted to the old incantation: “Stop Opal!” Of course the cup immediately stops moving, before slowly resuming it’s pace. She is a friendly, playful being afterall.

With that, the chase has begun. We’ve got Opal fever in the office, and I’ve instructed our staff to leave me post-it notes recording any encounter with our new friend.

If paper’s move, it’s Opal. If the fan cuts off randomly while people are working, it’s Opal.

If twenty poptarts disappear in 2 days, it’s Opal.

Actually, that’s James, our Sports Editor.

The point is, we’ve got a ghost, or psychosis. Or maybe we’ve just got an air conditioner.