It sounds like an ominous threat or prophecy: "There'll be a vacant chair at home tonight."  Actually, it's from an ad trying to make one feel guilty enough to place a long distance telephone call.  From the Muhlenberg Weekly, 1938.

From Twilight Zone magazine, 1981 (courtesy of Archive.org).

We might assume a production of Dracula, but given the occult nature of old yearbooks …  From Mars Hill's 1979 yearbook.

From Tulane's 1917 yearbook.  See How to Hoodoo Hack a Yearbook.

Memories of college.  From Mars Hill's 1979 yearbook.

"Right past me where I stood, rigid with horror, looking through those bars, fell a white-robed figure--down, down into the fiery pit, a hundred feet below."  An illustration by J. C. Coll for Collier's, 1921.

From Werewolves and Vampires (1962).

From Spellbound, 1976.  (Courtesy of Archive.org.)

Memories of college.  From Pembroke's 1974 yearbook.