I was expecting a creepy painting or a scary doll. Instead, the haunted/cursed objects that were being carried into the gallery were surprisingly modern: a plasma TV, a recliner armchair, a turquoise necklace, a miniature fire station, and even an animatronic singing fish. Without additional decor, the exhibit looked more like a yard sale.

The haunted/cursed objects exhibition was another low-effort stunt by professor Eric Melvin. He asked us student assistants to help with setting up the show, but we all politely declined. I was not going to touch any of those cursed things.

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I was an art student at a community college near Shady Grove, Maryland. I applied for a job as a student assistant so that I could have a place where I could put my things down between classes. My jobs were to make photocopies, answer the phones, and look after the art gallery on the first floor. Other student assistants and I also took turns guarding the gallery until 8 pm.

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Professor Melvin was one of those professors who thought he was too good for this little community college. I took his art history class once. His teaching slides were just blurry photos that he took of the pages from a textbook.

Even this haunted/cursed exhibition stayed true to his minimal-effort brand. All the haunted/cursed objects in the exhibition belong to a single person, an art collector in New York.

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The owner had a list of rules for her objects, but Melvin never bothered to look at it. I decided to read the rules aloud so that the professor can hear.

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Dear profesor Melvin. Thank you for your interest in my collection. All of these objects have caused numerous misfortunes and deaths in the past. It is my sincere wish to not add any more tragedy to the collection’s history.

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Melvin shook his head and scoffed. If this guy was not a believer then why did he host this exhibition, I wondered. I hope he wasn’t planning on breaking the rules to prove a point.

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• Rule 1: Do not be in the same room as the objects when the lights are off.
• Rule 2: Do not allow pregnant women anywhere near the haunted/cursed objects.
• Rule 3: If one of the objects makes a sound or lights up without anyone touching it, the best course of action is to just ignore it, EXCEPT for the miniature fire station.
• This is unlikely to happen, but if the little light bulb above the front door of the miniature fire station starts to flicker, cover the entire thing with a piece of cloth that I provided and call me immediately.

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The most dangerous object in my collection is the plasma television.

My collection contains both cursed objects and haunted objects. Haunted objects are possessed by spirits and can cause fear, while cursed objects are deadly to anyone who interacts with them. This plasma TV is both.

I guess it is pointless to ask you to not plug it in and turn it on. If you must turn it on for your show, then pay close attention because the plasma TV has its own set of rules.

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• Plasma TV’s Rule 1: Do not change the channel. If you or someone else did, you must change the channel back to channel 33.
• Plasma TV’s Rule 2: Do not connect any other device to the TV.
• Plasma TV's 3: This is the most important rule. Do not let any person with the last name Sutter go near the television.

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On the first night, I was guarding the gallery with another student assistant. We behaved just like any other night as we just sat in the mailroom and watched YouTubers play Dead by Daylight. We could see what was going on in the gallery next door through the CCTV monitor.

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At 7.50, both of us heard a very loud thud coming from the gallery. I didn’t see anything abnormal on the CCTV, so the other assistant and I both walked over to the gallery to check.

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A bird with a broken neck was laying dead right in front of the plasma TV. It must have flown into the building and hit its head on a column. That was enough for me to freak me out and call it a night.

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I had to turn off the lights and realized that the light switches were at the back end of the gallery. Not wanting to break rule number 1, I told the other student assistant to keep the door open and light the room up a bit with her phone’s flashlight. I shut off all the lights and ran out the door.

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The other student assistant asked me what I would do the next night when I have to guard the gallery alone. I told her I would probably just leave the gallery’s lights on for one night.

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I got to the mailroom the next day at around 10.00 AM and there was a commotion. One of the haunted/cursed objects, a turquoise necklace, was missing. I asked our supervisor bluntly if it was our fault, but one of the professors said he saw it early that morning which means that it wasn’t stolen overnight. Melvin could not be reached by phone, so I just went to class.

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In the evening, it was time for me to guard the gallery alone, and I just watched Ohm plays Dead by Daylight to pass the time. I looked over at the CCTV monitor and saw a lanky man in ragged clothing staring at the plasma TV. Normally, a strange person walking into a gallery would not be a cause for concern. I mean, that was the point of having an exhibition.

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But, two things made me run to the gallery. One, I could see that the man had a flickering glow on his face, which meant that the TV was turned on. It wasn’t supposed to be plugged in and turned on until the official opening on Friday. And two, he was changing the channel.

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The man did not notice me despite the fact that I made a lot of noise. He kept staring at the plasma TV with his mouth slightly opened, seemingly in a trance. Upclose, I could see that he was unshaven and his eyes were bloodshot red. His fingers kept pushing the button that changed the channel.

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I did not know what to do. The man broke the rules, but no one knows the rules except us assistants and Melvin. I can’t tell the security guard to kick him out just because of his disheveled appearance. This is a public college, so he has the right to be there as much as anyone else.

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When it was near closing time, I realized that the man was not going to leave. I called my supervisor and she said to ask the security guards at the front of the school for help.

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I brought two security guards back with me to the gallery. Once we arrived, we found the man seemingly strangling himself on the floor in front of the plasma TV. The TV screen showed a very old black-and-white clip of a man strangling another man. One of the security guards rushed in to help the man while the other one radioed his superior to call for an ambulance. I didn’t know what to do and just backed away from the chaos.

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Then, an elevator next to the gallery made a sound. Something was coming down from the fourth floor. No one should have been upstairs since this was already past 8 pm, and our building did not have any night classes.

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Once the elevator door was opened, a cleaning lady turned around. Her eyes were gouged out and there was blood all over. She held her hands up and ran out the elevator toward me. She tried to grab onto my shirt collar but her hands missed, and she collapsed on the ground. She was wearing the missing necklace.

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I was so scared, I was on the floor and didn’t even remember falling. The security guards, who looked shocked and traumatized themselves, told me that I didn’t have to wait for the paramedics with them. And so, I just bolted home.

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The next day, there were a lot of professors gathered at the dean’s office. I thought this was going to be about the cleaning lady and the man, who I later found out was named James Sutter. But, this was about professor Melvin.

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Another professor found professor Melvin dead in his house. He fell down the stairs and broke his neck. She said his body was contorted in an unnatural way, with his legs twisted and wrapped around the stairs’ railings. He died with his eyes wide open, glaring intensely at whoever would walk through the front door.

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While everyone was talking about all that went down, I glanced over my shoulder and saw a reflection of a small blinking light from within the gallery. I didn’t have to look, I knew that it was the light coming from the miniature fire station.