The Writing on the Wall (Addison Gaspard)

## Legend Summary

One holiday on a college campus there are two roommates who decided not to go home, due to living out of state. During the holidays the campus looks almost deserted, besides the occasional skater looking for open ground to practice. One of the roommates decided to go out on a date one night while the other stayed in and went to bed early because she was feeling sick.. When the other roommate returns, they try to be quiet and keep the lights off in order to avoid disturbing their roommate. However, sounds of heavy breathing and rustling come from the roommate's bed, although frightening not much was thought of it, at the time. Once the morning comes, they wake up to find their roommate dead with her throat cut and the words “aren’t you glad you didn’t turn on the lights” written in blood above the tortured roommate’s bed.

## History:

This story, in its current adaptation, is believed to have originated in the early nineteen sixties. However, this story has similarities with the “humans can lick too” legend, where a dangerous stranger pretends to be a dog licking its owner in the dark to avoid detection. This legend has its first mention in early eighteen seventies England, and plays on similar fears.(Mikkelson) Although there are different adaptations of this legend, all of them play on the fear of the unknown, fear of freshly moving out to college, and fear of what seems safe. In each of these stories we see the roommate coming home and keeping the light off in order to be courteous to their roommate, which in turn is the reasoning behind the bone chilling nature of this story, the ignorance of danger.

## Adaptations of the Legend

Though this legend has many adaptations, the core of each is very similar, one roommate always stays home, the other comes back to grab something/study and is unaware of their deceased roommate, and finally the roommate does something to discover the body as well as some writing left by the killer. Some of the variations between adaptations include a different brutal way that the roommate is killed, sometimes being decapitated with a butcher's knife, sometimes having their throat and wrists cut, but these killings are always done with a sharp instrument and never blunt force. Another small variation is why the roommate is absent, sometimes they go to the store, other times they will be on a date/out with friends. Sometimes in the legend, the roommate hears something from the other's bed that prompts her to hide/stay somewhere else.(Mikkelson) However, they always come back/turn on the lights to see what happened to their roommate and the message “aren’t you glad you didn’t turn on the lights” written on the wall/mirror, usually in blood but sometimes in lipstick.. Further variations of the story include the roommate turning completely white when seeing their lifeless roommate, the roommate's fingernails being ground to a stump, or it being a coed dormitory. In one of the stranger adaptations, one of the roommates is in theater and is a huge success after her first performance. She then comes home to hear her roommate reciting a line from the play to her, at first this is trivial, but soon becomes annoying. She yells at her roommate to stop while flicking the lights on, but before she could finish screaming in rage she gasped and was frozen with fear. She saw her roommates headless body sitting in a chair with the killer nailing her head to the wall, the killer then recites lines from her performance while she is pinned to the wall next to her roommates dismembered head.(Miller)

## Analysis of Adaptations

Each of the adaptations to this legend contains some similarities, these similarities show the core of the story and reveal the motifs contained within these legends. For example, all of these legends portray young, female college roommates who are newly out of the house and starting their lives.(Mikkelson) This is an important detail that does not get lost between adaptations, this detail serves to portray young, naive college students who don’t know any better. However, perhaps the most bone chilling portion of this story is thoughts of what lies in the dark and the ignorance to any danger due to no perceived threat.

## Citations

Mikkelson, David. “Aren’t You Glad You Didn’t Turn on the Light?” Snopes, Snopes.com, 8 Sept. 2000, www.snopes.com/fact-check/arent-you-glad-you-didnt-turn-on-the-light/.

Mikkelson, David. “The Roommate’s Death.” Snopes, Snopes.com, 1 July 2011, www.snopes.com/fact-check/the-roommates-death/.

Miller, Holly, and HollyMiller5                                                                                            Follow. “The Roommate’s Death - Urban Legend.” Wattpad, www.wattpad.com/5170440-did-you-hear-about-short-stories-to-thrill-chill. Accessed 12 Oct. 2023.