I remember being a kid and experiencing times when I accidentally split from my family in the department store.

Realizing I was alone created this immense feeling of dread. There’s just something freaky about knowing there’s no like-minded folk around, no one to damper your emotions and no one to run to.

Now that it’s getting dark on campus at 5 p.m., things are getting creepier earlier. Trees that have lost their leaves cast shadows of hands lurching out at you.

The area behind Davis Hall has been mentioned in a few NIU Reviews, but once again, it’s being revisited. Why? It’s creepy at night, there are silent construction sites, large trees hanging overhead and eerily silent chain-link fences just waiting to be rattled.

And the addition to Altgeld Hall – which hasn’t been used for five years – creates an open wound of inactivity.

As I recall, about this time last year the lagoon was fenced off for reconstruction, and what has been done is beautiful in the springtime. Now, it’s a cold, dark place avoided by passersby at night. Surrounded by trees and eerie silence, this place should be avoided like the plague.

Senior communication major Craig Cowan thinks a barren DuSable Hall is the creepiest place.

“At night it’s completely dead. … It just creeps the hell out of me,” he said.

It’s a contrast situation. During the day there are so many people that it’s hard to make your way down the halls. Therefore, it isn’t creepy until nighttime.

The area between Grant and Stevenson towers, Central Park, ironically is nowhere near the center of campus. At night, it is only lightly trafficked.

“That’s always creepy,” Cowen said.

The lumbering giant on the edge of campus known as the Convocation Center is pretty creepy all the time, considering how rarely it is used — especially if you know how much students paid for it ($35.8 million).

It’s easy to get lost in the many levels of the round giant, so beware.