This story was originally published in print, on April 9th, 2024, in the Satire Edition of the Scarlet, the Shartlet.

Between back-to-back activities, virus-inducing dining hall food, and the sweltering August heat, orientation week at American universities is no easy feat. But here at Clark University, there is an added threat: the tortured ghost of Robert Goddard. 

Known for launching the first-ever rocket here in Worcester, Goddard now haunts the Clark campus. These days you can find him stalking, hunting, and haunting the souls of Clark’s undergraduate students. And nowhere is a student’s will tested more than during first-year orientation. 

Fargo Sploinger ’25 is one of Goddard’s victims. They recall the horrors of their first-year orientation with a haunted, faraway look in their eyes. 

“I lost track of time that weekend,” Sploinger said. “The days sort of blended together. I began to forget who I was.”

Not only did orientation deprive Sploinger of their sleep schedule, but it also took their spirit – literally. Reporters discovered on Wednesday that the ghost of Robert Goddard himself has been harvesting the impressionable souls of orientation participants since at least 1993. 

The souls are stored in floating, sulfuric-smelling glass jars deep within the bowels of the Estabrook Hall basement. Biology professor Dr. Bingus Dingus explains that the process of stealing souls is a complicated ordeal. 

“First, you really have to wear the victim down,” Dingus explained in an exclusive interview. “Orientation is the perfect environment for this, as the constant icebreakers and get-to-know-you games do such significant damage to the psyche.”

As first-years listen to Clark University President David Fithian’s convocation address in the Kneller, Goddard floats among the aisles, plucking the souls from bored, unsuspecting students.

“How Goddard fits the souls into those glass jars and gets them into Estabrook… that’s the real mystery,” Dingus said. 

In an email to the Clark community, Fithian promised that all souls would be returned to the vacant, dead-eyed students currently shuffling around campus in a sort of purgatory-esque limbo. 

“We apologize for the inconvenience caused to the 600+ students whose very lifeblood has been taken by the ghost of Robert Goddard,” Fithian wrote. “But the cost of releasing these souls is high, so we’re increasing tuition again.”