As if fears of residence closure and hiking tuition costs on campus weren’t bad enough, residences on Burnaby campus are now facing a scare of a different kind: the occult.

Last week, police were called to respond to what initially seemed to be a run-of-the-mill noise complaint. However, they made a startling discovery when they found a physics major attempting to sacrifice a first-year arts student to a demon.

The student, identified as Xavius Lucifus, was apprehended wearing a pair of light-up devil horns and chanting an incoherent babble of words from the Chicago style guide. He was brandishing a replica Skyrim sword that he had dipped in “unholy water” — which forensics later determined to be hot dog water — all the while dancing around to The Lord of the Rings soundtrack.

The unidentified first-year student was duct-taped to a ceremonial pyre made of failed exam booklets and surrounded by a pentagram drawn in Kraft Dinner sauce.

Classmates of Lucifus confided with The Peak that his academic struggles might have pushed him to this devilish act.

Lucifus was taking a history course for the first time and found himself floundering. He needed to write his term paper on the relevance of ritual in early modern Europe in one week, and had no ideas.

According to a former group member, Lucifus began researching ritual sacrifice, as well as demonic and deific pact-making on Wikipedia. Combined with a patchwork of unreliable sources — one such working being a fictional magic book from The Elder Scroll series — led him to create his strange ritual.

Notes found in his dorm showed that among a list of other questionable items, the crazed physics major’s ritual called for “the blood of an undeclared arts major.”

Lucifus now sits in his jail cell, with ritual blueberry juice still smeared on his face, awaiting trial.

Lucifus’ history professor spoke with The Peak later, remarking, “When I said a good essay takes blood, sweat, and tears, this is not what I had in mind.”