Road Map to a Suicide

I was in a fraternity in college, and we had all these deep, dark secrets that you're never supposed to tell anyone about. You are supposed to take them to the grave. Enhanced interrogation techniques should never pry these stories out of your tortured breast.

Wanna hear one?

We had a ceremony that we enacted in December that was supposed to kick off the end of pledge training in the fall semester. This was back in the days that pledge training meant hazing, pure and simple. We heard about how much harder it was in the old days, and how much easier we had it than our fathers. Nowadays, there is no pledge training. Nothing much is required to get in, so I guess I sound like those people that used to tell me what a wimp I was for the pledge training I endured.

We called the week before Finals Week Dead Week. It was called Dead Week because you didn't do anything but study, and if you did attend class, they were just review sessions, no assignments. So, in the spirit of Dead Week, we had to dial back the intensity of pledge training for finals. So the Friday before Dead Week, we did an interesting thing. We kidnapped each of the pledges separately. We did it during study hours, so no one would be able to see the others being taken. Two actives would go up to the pledge and tell them to close their books and come with them. We took them down to the sleeping dorm and had them get a pillow case off their bed. Then we took them out to our car, handed them a bent dime, and had them put their pillowcase over their head and get in the back seat. We then took them out to some remote place, sometimes after driving for a long time, and assembled them together in a group, yanked off their hoods, and shouted "Surprise!" We gave them a bunch of beer and told them to have a party and have fun and when they came back, pledge training would be over. So you spend this tense hour or so thinking you're going to be dumped somewhere out in the countryside and you'll have to bash the dime out flat and walk a couple of miles to the nearest pay phone. Instead, you get released from PT (Pledge Training) torture and you get a party.

We all had it happen to us, and so we all enjoyed turning around and doing it to others. It was a fun story and a fun little trip. The year I was a junior, my cousin Jerry and I were asked to find the party location for the affair. We went up to Tuttle Creek Reservoir north of Manhattan (Kansas - we were at KSU) for a location. We found this place where a road ran into the lake from before the lake filled up. It was a parking lot, and there was the remnant of an old rock quarry right next to it, making the perfect party protection area. We drew a map up, made copies and distributed it to the Actives. Obviously, you were supposed to keep it away from the Pledges so as not to ruin the surprise, but someone left theirs out and it got stolen. The pledge that found it took a friend and followed the map one night right before the ceremony.

You have to put yourself in the Pledge's state of mind. They were being messed with and harassed constantly and this strange map had an unspoken promise of something unpleasant to come. So the night they followed the line on the map to the big X that it ended at, they did not know what to expect.

What they found was a dead body.

By some very strange coincidence, some guy decided to end it all right where the X marked the spot on the map, right before the Pledges went out to follow the map.

The freaked out, drove away, and anonymously phoned it in to the police. Then they spent the next few days quietly asking themselves "What the f***!?"

I found out about it the night of the ceremony when two of the Freshmen found out who drew the map and selected the spot and dragged Jerry and I out to the gravel parking lot to show us the spot. There was a dark stain on the ground where the guy landed and bled out.

That's the secret story and as wild as it sounds, it is 100% true.