The Spirit of Westhollow University

I sat there blinking in confusion as I stared at the still classroom around me. I glanced back down at the now stopped watch again, muttering "What the fuck?!" loud enough that everybody in the silent classroom should have been able to hear me. But nobody responded. Or moved. Or did...anything really.

I slowly stood up from my desk and began to look around for some sign that this was a prank. It had to be, right? As I slowly walked down the rows of desks, I realized something: _everything _was silent. Not just my classroom, there were no sounds of traffic, buzzing insect, or other students in the halls or outside.

I quickly strode over to the window to peer through the glass, and my breath nearly caught in my throat. The world outside was frozen too. A few dozen yards away I could even see a pigeon frozen mid-flight, hovering impossibly in the air.

"This...this is impossible!" I muttered to nobody as I looked back down at the watch.

I turned it over in my hand and noticed something etched into the tarnished brass casing on the back. I held the watch closer to try and decipher the cursive script.

I am the Spirit of Westhollow University. At east, that is what I have come to be called. To whoever finds my little invention, I have only one request: continue my legacy. There comes a time when this school needs a little debauchery and mayhem. If you have found my watch, that time has come again.

-Professor Filgreave, 1878.

I stared at the writing with growing incredulity as I scanned it again. I looked back up again at the frozen classroom and felt my heart beginning to beat rapidly in my chest.

Of course I had heard of the Spirit of Westhollow, every student here had despite the faculty's attempt to quash any such rumors as childish stories. Every few decades or so, there would be a sudden rash of strange and scandalous occurrences that would haunt the university like a curse. The details of most of those events were hidden or lost to time, but a few snippets were still whispered or laughed about at parties. The entire cheerleading team somehow stripping down to lingerie on the sidelines with nobody noticing, a guest lecturer getting more and more flustered at the podium until she suddenly orgasms, and even an entire sorority formal devolving into a raucous orgy before everybody miraculously vanished out of the ballroom when security arrived. Was this watch really the source?