Aileen Santiago
Silence lays steadily against the wood and stone of the houses on Hillhouse Ave, and whatever walks there, walks alone.
A walk down Hillhouse Avenue is, in the words of Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, and every Yale tour guide ever, “a walk down the most beautiful street in America” — but I beg to differ.
The gorgeous iron street lamps may cast a warm, inviting glow, but beware — Hillhouse Avenue is by far the scariest place you will ever be.
Just last week, in the shadowy corners of Commons, my friend told me the most chilling ghost story.
“Yeah, he was nice you know, so so sweet. We went out for like a month and it was cute, but then he just — I don’t know — stopped texting me.”
“No texts? No calls? Really? Nothing?”
“Nothing. Gone. Disappeared like a ghost.”
I wish I could say we never saw him again, that his soul has been laid to rest six feet underground in Grove St. Cemetery; that he was abducted by his frat brothers or was on a finance club retreat (cough, bender) and therefore had a valid reason for never sending a poorly crafted breakup text. But, alas, there he was, summoned from beyond the grave, drifting through our line of sight on his way to Econ 115 like some apparition who still has “unfinished business.”
But, that’s the spirit, the cruelty of Hillhouse Avenue; a street of a special kind of social purgatory, filled with the ghosts of connections that could have been.
Every few steps, there’s a chance you’ll spot someone who’s become a stranger; someone you used to pull all-nighters with, a p-set partner who you looked forward to seeing at section or the person you kept running into at Woad’s, sharing laughs, sweaty dances and late-night confidences that now feel more like secrets buried with the past.
You could be minding your own business — strolling on your way to office hours, caught up admiring the beauty of the foliage, grabbing that cup of Jitter Bus coffee on your way to lecture — when they apparate right in front of you: the one who swore they’d text you back “later” but never did.
Suddenly, they’re the walking dead, haunting your day with the quiet power only the ghost of a former crush can wield.
As you pass these people, there’s this moment of recognition — a flash of eye contact, and for a moment, you’re both stuck in a supernatural standoff. They give you a stiff, almost sly half-smile, as if they’re in on the joke of their own undead status, while you’re just trying to pretend like seeing them doesn’t chill you to the bone.
It’s as if each of you is briefly acknowledging this past connection before letting it die in somber silence once more. Your mind can’t help but flit back to the countless texts left on “read,” the casual plans that fizzled out, and the shared moments — the fingers intertwined and the arms wrapped around waists — that have now become just as transient as the rotted, bruised leaves scattered across the cracked pavement.
And so, Hillhouse Avenue becomes a corridor of unfinished conversations and wincing reminders of love stories tragically turned ghost stories just waiting to be whispered around a fire — or in hushed tones at a table in Commons.
The grandeur of Hillhouse only amplifies this ghostly atmosphere; the Gothic facades of the mansions watch over these silent, painful encounters, slicing students’ hearts open. Every crunch of leaves underfoot, every gust of cool October wind feels like a dramatic Oscar-worthy special effect added to your very own personal Yale horror story.
Every building feels like it holds a thousand stories, every house a place for illicit affairs, a thousand meetings that could have happened — but didn’t. Even the blood-red leaves cascading like tears from the towering oaks add to the sense of mystery, branches casting shadowy webs over familiar faces and reminding you that some things are better left in the dark.
In this sense, Hillhouse feels less like a place and more like an artifact of things left unfinished. It’s a stretch of campus that, for all its beauty, is a graveyard that holds memories of every conversation cut short, every plan that fell through, and every potential friendship or romance that died and got resurrected as a mere nod of acknowledgment.
Walking along the street, you feel the weight of every message you typed and furiously deleted, every excuse you made for why they must have been busy, and every reason you convinced yourself that maybe it was better to leave things as they were. But, there they are, like the ghost of crushes past, reminding you that Yale is, and indeed always will be, too small a place.
And to make matters worse, there’s no easy exit; Hillhouse is a straight shot, and you and your “he who shall not be named” are stuck in the very middle of it. Inevitably, the two of you will be drawn closer and closer, because as luck would have it, the never-ending construction leaves just one path: to each other, to the person you should be asking yourself if you should be running away from.
And so you must carry on, wishing you had taken Prospect Street instead, possibly feeling a bit hexed, because deep down, here on Hillhouse Ave, you realize that this wasn’t a one-time haunting. If they’re here today, you’ll undoubtedly see them again, lurking somewhere between seminars and lectures, in the very sanctity of your college’s dining halls and courtyards — appearing when you least expect it, like a horror movie sequel you never asked for.
I mean, what are you to do? What do you even do when you see a ghost? Do you wave? Do you scream? Look away? Pull out some sage and run? Anything to banish them from the memory of what was once your hope-filled life and grant the tiniest ounce of closure.
But, as much as you want to exorcize them from your brain, their face is forever etched in that ghostly catalog of missed texts and awkward encounters. They walk by with the same half-hearted energy they used to send that last haunting message, “see you soon!” And, as they disappear around the corner, floating back and joining the pilgrimage of students heading to Commons or Science Hill, you can almost feel the eerie draft in their wake, a reminder that some spirits simply aren’t meant to be forgotten… or forgiven.