Omar and Oscar are friends.
Both Oscar and Omar are from Mexico, staying at Plattsburgh State for a semester and then returning home. While they are here, they want tons of pictures that will aid in telling the story of traveling abroad.
One day, the pair was hanging out in Omar's fifth story dorm room in deFredenburgh Hall, fooling around with their digital cameras, when something out of the ordinary happened.
While they were snapping away, an unnoticed, as well as abnormal, entity entered the picture frame. A small black orb, with a blotch of light brown, marks the top right corner of the photo. In this orb, it is possible to decipher an eerie looking face staring out of the misty brown blotch.
"There were two pictures on two cameras in the same spot," said Omar Valera, a resident of Suite 54 in deFredenburgh Hall. "We were pretending to study, and I was lying on the bed."
Oscar Espinoza was sitting next to him, on a couch. They set the camera on a timer - they were the only two in the room.
Another camera snapped a matching picture. However, the photo was hastily deleted. The dark picture looks eerie, even without the ghoulish orb sitting in the corner.
A few days later, something even more strange happened. Nikko Milton, a fellow suitemate of Valera, was in Valera's room, and they were all talking about the mysterious picture. As a lighthearted joke, Milton began taunting the ghost.
"I was hitting the spot where the spot appeared," Milton said. "I must have had a fishing lure in my North Face (jacket), and it got snagged in my stomach."
It took a few hours to get the lure out and for the crisis to pass.
"It really freaks me out," said Espinoza, who appears in the picture with him.
"I try not to come around here as much. I'm not the kind of person who would see that kind of stuff as brave."
Valera stated that after the picture was snapped, numerous friends became uncomfortable in what was once a main hangout for his group of friends.
"Spirit orbs weren't even invented until digital cameras came around," said Gordy Little, a local access television host, journalist, and ghost enthusiast. Little has a weekly column in the Press-Republican, which sometimes features North Country ghost stories.
Little is passionate not only about Plattsburgh's history, but the effect the past has on today, as well. He claims to have seen and felt unexplainable things in his life, and he can attest to countless stories told to him by local residents. He is, however, skeptical about a haunting in deFredenburgh.
He told of public hangings taking place around the Clinton County Courthouse, and of a ghost that now haunts the building's old jail cells.
He also told the tale of the pair of bodies that were dug up, only to end up mysteriously missing days later, while Macdonough Hall was being constructed.
He believes that there may be a ghost presence on campus, but not in deFredenburgh.
"There have been deaths on the property," said Cathy Moulton, director of housing at PSUC. She was skeptical if any of these deaths, before or after the college purchased the property, had anything to do with a creepy photo taken in a student's dorm.
Little believes that the possibilities are endless. As a self-described ghost hunter, Little takes it upon himself to investigate all possibilities surrounding ghost stories.
"None of us can really know what happens when we die," Little explained. He added, "After you die, there is an energy - you can call it a soul, you can call it whatever you want. This energy has to go somewhere when you die."
Both Valera and Espinoza have been deeply affected by what seems like an anomaly in photo.
This anomaly, however, has been surrounded by odd and possibly connected events. It is important to remain skeptical and to always ask questions.
"Now is the first time I have ever paid attention to any of this stuff," Valera said. "I am still trying to find an explanation."
Perhaps Valera will never receive his explanation, but the effects of this incident will never leave.
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