Tunnels

Once you’ve been at Clemson for a couple months, you’re bound to hear about the tunnels – the various underground tunnels scattered around campus.  Some entrances are in mechanical buildings, one is by Tillman Hall, and a few are located behind the library below the huge metal grates on the ground that occasionally releases steam.  Rumor has it that if you are caught down there you will be arrested and/or expelled.  But why are they so strict? Long ago, before Clemson University was even built on this land, there was a man named Jasper.  Jasper was born with a deformity of his face that made people run and scream at the sight of him.  The unfortunate effect of his mutation pushed Jasper off the edge into insanity and turned him into a cold –hearted killer, not unlike the cold hearts of those who laid their eyes upon his face in terror. 

So Jasper would sneak into his victims’ house at night and would first eliminate their eyelids so they were forced to stare at his disfigured form.  Then he would kill them.  The story is that Jasper hid all the bodies of the helpless, wide-eyed victims in huge pits that he dug underground…the same location as the tunnels under Clemson.  The bodies were eventually found after Jasper had mysteriously disappeared from town, with all of their eyes staring up into nothingness. 

Not long after Clemson University was built on top of these burial grounds, a naïve freshman named Pete decided to be adventurous one night with his friends.  They had found the openings to the morbid pits before they were off limits and Pete was double-dog-dared to venture in.  They found him the next day, sprawled in the tunnel in the fashion that accompanies the dead, with no eye-lids and his huge, doe eyes staring into nothingness.  After that incident the university forbade entrance into any of the tunnels and put iron grates over them so that no student would again meet the fate that young Pete did.

So who knows what happened to Pete that night? Is Jasper’s ghost still alive and claiming victims? Or is it the souls of the victims of Jasper’s slaying, making others pay for their gruesome death? I guess we shall SEE.