The Sock Monster

By: M.A.

I am certain that I am not the only person that thinks there might be a monster that lurks under my bed. I say this because I generally don’t take off my socks in many other places other than my room. Yet somehow, slowly but surely, socks begin missing and suddenly I’m wearing one red, snowflake covered, crew length, sock it, but it's folded down so it can’t be seen with my combat boots and the on the other foot, a black, ankle sock that probably has holes.

I thought that I couldn’t be the only person that this happens to. So, I asked around and it seemed I was not the only one with the mismatched footwear issue. Personally, I am convinced that there was some ghoul obsessed with stealing socks, and others were amused by the theory when I told them. So why not investigate? We decided to stake out the Engineering Quad’s dorms, Aden, Brackett, Crosman, and Cockerell (the most haunted and creepiest dorms on campus), and lurk in their laundry room for these supposed creatures to show their faces. In addition to this, we placed a GPS tracker inside two socks we left sitting on top of a washing machine. With this investigation, our hopeful hypothesis was sock-stealing-ghouls, but the expectation was spazzy students.

We had 1-2 members in each laundry room. Each team was supplied a walkie-talkie in case movement or activity occurred and the stakeout began at 10:00 pm and planned to last until 3:00 am, with members taking sleep shifts. There was a GPS tracker placed in a sock at all locations in case only a single dorm had a sock-stealer OR if the ghosts were invisible. Throughout the night, nothing occurred, the only activity we witnessed was the stumbling of drunk freshmen and shenanigans. We decided at the end of the night to leave the GPS trackers and check-up on the location the next morning.

The next morning, we noticed the strangest thing. All four GPS trackers had been temporarily disabled. We went back to the dorms to check the socks and they were missing. We poured over the GPS data, looking for some inconsistency or hardware/software error, and found nothing. Then, all of a sudden at 3:07 pm the next day, the GPS trackers came back online at the location 25.0000° N, 71.0000° W… the Bermuda Triangle. Here at the AURA Club, we have no explanation to explain that. None whatsoever. Maybe just a prank done by a freshman who became aware of our investigation or maybe the ghouls are real, and all our socks end up in the Devil’s Triangle. I suppose we may never know, but here’s to continuing to research and authenticate!