//////////Despite the air of hostility that pervades Bramford, New Cambridge University’s first president, Victor F. Shelley, had an unbridled fascination with the occult. He alone is the reason that, today, NCU’s library has the largest collection of first-edition occult texts in North America. His obsession was so intense that it sparked rumors among the staff and students of the university, the most pervasive being that underneath the president’s residence lay a cellar, its sole purpose to exist as a space for Shelley to perform dark rituals of the occult undetected. The cellar was often used as a hazing ritual for campus groups, as leaders instructed inductees to break into the residence and retrieve evidence of its existence. None was ever found.
Over time, Shelley’s peculiar hobbies cultivated such an air of suspicion that rumors of a mysterious figure began circulating around the campus. It was often described as a dark figure, at first representative of the university’s mascot: Black William, a horned buck goat. But he was distorted; while it had the head and horns of a goat, its shoulders and body were that of a man, naked from the waist up with symbols carved into his chest that were speculated to be the same as those found on the body of Molly Lowell. The legend of Black Billy was born, innocuous sightings regularly reported by students and staff alike until Shelley’s death in 1863.
After Shelley’s death, accounts became increasingly more insidious, students claiming that Black Billy watched them from the library’s stacks late at night, where the former president’s books now resided. Billy had not disappeared with the death of his master; he was wayward and lost, searching for another to take Shelley’s place and give him purpose. The reports became more and more sinister as time passed, Billy increasingly desperate in his search. There were claims that Billy had begun to physically interact with library goers when they weren’t looking, off in the stacks retrieving another book. He would steal trinkets – pens, notebooks – pick up students’ belongings and shift them to other surfaces or push them off the desks entirely. Accounts escalated until students and staff avoided the library after dark altogether, motivated by the disappearance of a student one March night. Her body was discovered a week later among the books of the occult Shelley had bequeathed to the university.
Today, Black Billy is an institution. Sightings are still regularly presented as evidence of his existence. On game days you will find members of various groups costumed to appear as the sinister variation of the campus’ mascot. He remains a popular icon, used to scare freshman, and often there will be at least half a dozen Black Billies at any one of the Halloween parties held by the various fraternities of NCU.
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