The most amazing paranormal phenomenon I have encountered during my time at Cambridge is one’s infinite ability to procrastinate. We all do it. Sometimes listlessly scrolling through Buzzfeed isn’t enough and our efforts become more creative. I’ve come across some amazing feats of procrastination: once my friend got a train to London just to visit a Starbucks that wasn’t in Cambridge; another bought a pot plant, named it Katie and now spends hours pruning away at it. Hell, even now I’m writing an almost droll article in the UL simply because it doesn’t involve looking at poetry.

Last Michaelmas some friends and I became obsessive in our chosen form of procrastination; it involved watching every episode we could of an offensively 80s TV show about people’s supernatural experiences. One episode was just a pretty xenophobic account of a couple’s holiday in France, which they blamed on ghosts. The denouement of every supernatural encounter was just Michael Aspel rasping, “Strange… but true”.

Everyone at some point in their time at Cambridge, has the realisation that college is really, really old, and must be haunted? If you haven’t had this irrational fear yet then I highly recommend it, it is so much more fulfilling to lay awake at night being scared of the ghost of a Music DoS than it is to be kept up by the recurring nightmare about a supervisor asking you if you really understand what you mean by post-structuralism.

We wanted to know more about the ghosts of Cambridge, and had come to accept ourselves as paranormal enthusiasts. After this moment of self-actualisation we booked ourselves tickets for the Cambridge ghost walk.

If you are looking for alternative tourist activities, which aren’t afraid to break away from the monotony of chapels, bridges and cloisters, then I highly recommend the ghost walk. If, however, you are at all conscious of your social standing I would avoid at all costs. If anything can act as testimony to this, then it is the fact that the friend who booked the tickets (who is normally unapologetic about his eccentric pursuits), did so under a pseudonym.

We met for the tour outside the Guildhall. Here it dawned on us quite how exposed we were, as we stood in full view of everyone heading out to formals. The next thing we noticed was that all of the other tour participants were middle-aged couples, and we were an awkward group of three who were twenty years younger than the others; until then we hadn’t realised that Ghost walks were such a hallowed feature of sexual companionship in later life. Just as we began to look at each other slightly differently, longingly, beginning to wonder whether our bond over ghost shows had all along been about more than just wanting an ally to leave the library with, our ménage à trois was interrupted by the tour guide springing into action.

I am not exaggerating when I say I have never heard such a loud, chilling exclamation from such a tiny woman. “GHOSTS AND GHOULS”, she bellowed, and at this moment, we realised how far out of control we were, and how mortifying a mistake this tour had been.

We proceeded through the streets of Cambridge, us acting as awkward oddballs third/fourth/fifth wheeling on everyone else’s date night, following our unconventional leader. The tour itself was actually fascinating. Did you know that there is a window in the Eagle that has to be kept open or the place will burn down because of the trapped spirits of children in the kitchen? Or have you heard the (definitely un-)true story of a girl who had an affair with a scholar at Corpus? It ended with her locking him in a wooden box to hide him from her father, he then suffocated (duh) and the lovelorn couple now haunt Corpus.

I won’t give you any more spoilers from the Cambridge ghost walk, but at £5 it is a cost-effective and entertaining way to spend the evening. I reckon if you took a bottle of wine with you (which I highly doubt the guide would be critical of/notice at all) it would be more fun than a swap, and definitely more informative. Besides, when the tour costs the same as Cindies entrance, I would far rather be haunted by some genuine Cambridge ghosts than with the spectral presence of past conquests eyeing you up to the soundtrack of Cotton-Eyed Joe.