A journalism sophomore recently revealed to the Phoenix Diablo that he discovered the 13th floor of Taylor Place last weekend which, he said, houses the residents of ASU’s College of Witchcraft.
Max Dennison said he noticed an extra button between the buttons for the 12th and 14th floors in a Taylor Place elevator when he was returning to his dorm early Saturday morning after a night in Tempe.
“I was still kind of hazy from that night, and things still aren’t really clear,” he said. “But I know what I saw.”
Several ASU officials denied the existence of the residential hall and the college. Repeated attempts to locate the 13th floor by every single Phoenix Diablo staff member were unsuccessful. Attempts to locate the College of Witchcraft on the Downtown campus were also fruitless.
But, according to Dennison, he visited the 13th floor less than a week ago.
Spurred on by drunken curiosity, Dennison said he pressed the 13th floor button and arrived at the “Residential College of Witchcraft.”
“I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “I started to get really scared at that point — but not too scared.”
Dennison described the floor as painted black and orange with a musky, pungent odor not unlike wet socks. A dense fog covered the floor and, as he stepped out of the elevator, he said a black cat darted in front of him.
He said he saw a young woman dressed in dark robes and fitted jeans who seemed just as shocked to see him as he was to see her.
“She was one of the most beautiful girls I had ever seen, even with the huge mole on her nose,” Dennison said.
Dennison said she quickly grabbed him by his jacket and dragged him to her room. The hallway was splashed in what looked like fake blood, Dennison said. He added he hoped it was just a Halloween decoration, but at the time he couldn’t be sure.
“When I think back on it now, there were things that I probably should have scared me more,” he said. “On a normal day, a floating, glowing skull in the hallway would’ve freaked me out.”
When Dennison and the girl entered her room, she began yelling at him in a language Dennison couldn’t understand. He said her walls were covered in posters of gothic bands he had never heard of and paintings of strange symbols and scenes.
“Everything was blurring together at this point,” Dennison said. “It felt like I was going to pass out at any moment.”
Dennison said the girl handed him a green bottle and, without a second thought, Dennison drank the liquid.
“That was probably a stupid thing to do,” he said later.
Dennison says that was the last thing he remembers. He said he dreamt of shadows running across the moon, glowing eyes hiding in Phoenix alleyways and hands carrying him to an ancient volcanic beach.
He woke up the next morning in his bed on the 11th floor with what appeared to be worms in his pocket and a black lipstick stain on his forehead. Dennison said his roommate hadn’t noticed anything strange from the night before.
Downtown campus spokesman Marshall Terrill declined to comment on the possible existence of the 13th floor.
Christopher Callahan, dean of the Walter Cronkite School and vice provost of the Downtown campus, also denied any knowledge of the place.
“There is no College of Witchcraft and, if there were, it would probably be at the Polytechnic campus,” Callahan said. He then disappeared into a crowd of swarming freshmen.
In a phone interview, ASU President Michael Crow did not respond to questions about Dennison’s discovery. When questioned, Crow stayed silent for a long time, followed by a sharp screeching as if he had turned into a thousand angry bats.