Three in the morning is not the best time to get a flat tire. One could argue it’s one of the worst, especially when your car is over capacity and just happens to be an hour from home and a block away from a haunted ridge. This is the exact circumstance senior television arts major CJ Feist and five of her peers found themselves in last semester.
“All of a sudden my car starts veering way to the right and I couldn’t move it at all anymore,” Feist said. “We got out and checked and my tire was not only flat, but completely gone.”
Of course, everyone should have their spare tire ready for situations like this. Feist did, but her luck wasn’t about to break quite yet.
“We couldn’t get the tire off because it had been rusted onto the bolts, and so none of us were strong enough to get it on our own.”
The obvious next step in this story would be to call for help, but Feist and her friends were just out of reach of civilization – and cell service.
“One of us got enough bars by standing on the top of our car to call the police department, and they sent a sheriff to come and help us.”
But that wouldn’t be enough to save the day. Once the tire was fixed and the six friends loaded back into the five-person car (Feist said the officer was kind enough to look away and pretend not to notice this indiscretion), the moment of truth came. Feist put the key in the ignition with hope that her car would spring to life and carry them safely back to campus, but there was no such luck.
“Because we had been out there for so long, the second we tried to turn on our car, it also died, because we had the lights running. So he had to jump our car.”
For most, this shouldn’t be too difficult a task, with access to Google and the hopeful fact that most drivers do keep jumper cables in their car. However, unbeknownst to all parties involved, police vehicles cannot jump civilian cars.
According to Feist, this is due to “the electronics inside of it, because it could short circuit them and they’re really expensive.”
“He had to leave us there and go get his other car from home, and luckily, he only lived like 10 minutes away, so then he came back and jumped the car as well.”
What was supposed to be a daring trip to a haunted location turned into a bonafide nightmare for these Bradley students.
Feist’s first time getting a flat tire is a story she will always remember, and one that will hopefully show students the importance of being prepared for anything when ghost hunting.
