Ghost stories, urban legends haunt college campuses
Dorms that go bump in the night? Haunted classrooms? Ghostly students who enrolled but never left campus?
While those kinds of urban legends might not be in admissions literature or the main selling point for prospective students, lots of Ohio colleges and universities tout the spooky, paranormal and mysterious stories that are a part of campus history.
In years past, Ohio State librarians and historians hosted campus ghost tours, said Michelle Drobik, a university reference archivist. Tour guides took curiosity seekers across campus and shared historical facts about Buckeyes of note, buildings and locations, as well as interesting legends and hauntings.
Ghost stories and urban legends might seem most fitting around Halloween, but these stories have yearround appeal. And the stories have endured decades thanks to student storytellers.
Thomas Stamp, Kenyon College historian and keeper of the Kenyoniana (all things related to Kenyon), said the college has asked campus tour guides to refrain from telling ghost stories during college visits as not to scare prospective students. Most, however, have not, he said.
Stamp said he doesn’t believe in ghosts (although he wishes he did) and usually spends more time trying to debunk, which keeps him from being able to enjoy them.
But whether the truth is stranger than fiction or purely urban legend, campus ghost stories are an important facet of many colleges’ cultural landscape.
“It’s part of our collective history,” Stamp said. “They are a way of feeling like you belong. Older students tell younger students. It’s another way of showing you are a part of the campus family.”
So join the family and gather round to hear a bit of campus folklore from around Ohio:
Ohio State University
With more than 150 years of Ohio State history, Buckeyes have plenty of ghost stories from which to choose.
Drobik’s personal favorite, naturally, comes from the stacks at Thompson Library.
Olive Branch Jones was the Ohio State’s first, full-time librarian, and she was a major proponent for building the library, which was established in 1913.
Branch died in 1933 at the age of 70, but Drobnik said library staffers still feel her presence. One student employee said she’d heard footsteps and the rustling of an old-fashioned dress through the stacks. Another frightened woman reported she heard footsteps and turned to see a ghostly woman dressed in black walk past her.
“When a co-worker later showed the two women a picture of Olive Jones, they were both shaken and believed the presence must have been that of the former librarian,” Drobnik said.
Not every legend at Ohio State involves a haunting though.
Take the story of Herb Atkinson, for instance.
Atkinson graduated from Ohio State in 1913 and served on the university’s board of trustees for 23 years. When he died in 1952, Mrs. Atkinson told then-president Howard Bevis that her husband wished to have his cremated remains buried on campus.
The trustees unanimously agreed to have Atkinson’s remains interred in Bricker Hall. When climbing Bricker Hall’s main staircase, look for the wall plaque outside the board’s meeting room. That’s where Atkinson’s ashes still reside.
Ohio University
Founded in 1804, Ohio University isn’t only one of the oldest universities in the country, it’s also one of the most haunted, at least according to ranking websites Bestcolleges and Collegexpress.
The campus was also featured in the first episode of the early-2000’s TV show “Scariest Places on Earth.”
So what makes this scenic Appalachian school so haunted?
Wilson Hall, a residence hall on the campus’ West Green, is said to be the most haunted spot on campus, according to OU’S student newspaper, The Post.
Some say that’s because the dorm is supposedly located in the middle of the “Athens Cemetery Pentagram.” When one connects five of Athens’ cemeteries on a map, they appear to form a pentagram, a symbol said to have occult powers. Others say it’s because the dorm was built on top of a cemetery of deceased patients from the nearby Athens Asylum.
The dorm is allegedly so haunted that the university sealed off room 428 from students. In the 1970s, a male student allegedly died under mysterious circumstances in the room. A female student who lived in the room years later reportedly practiced witchcraft there, either attempting to contact the dead or to have an out of body experience.
There are no records, however, that prove the accounts. Joanne Prisley, former curator of the Athens County Historical Society and Museum, told a reporter at The Post in 2001 that she believes students developed the story while using LSD.
Legend or not, students who lived in the dorm years afterward reported hearing footsteps and seeing objects move on their own before the room was closed, according to The Post.
Though university archivists and library records have debunked legends about Wilson Hall, the story remains a campus legend.
Kenyon College also has a history of ghostly legends, some rooted in real-life tragedy and others reported in total error.
One of the college’s most well-known tales is the tragic story of the Old Kenyon fire.
On a cold night in February 1949, after the biggest dance of the year, the Old Kenyon residence hall caught fire. Nine students lost their lives and much of the building was destroyed, in the worst disaster in the college’s history.
After the hall was rebuilt, Stamp said some Kenyon students and professors began reporting paranormal experiences. One student went into his room on the anniversary of the fire and found a 1949 yearbook flipped open to the page on which the fire victims were listed.
Others have recounted more peculiar ghost sightings. Students reported seeing ghostly figures visible only from the knees up on some floors, and seeing suspended pairs of feet on other floors. Stamp said this is because when Old Kenyon was rebuilt, the new floors were built 18 inches higher than the original ones.
“The ghosts, it seems, were still walking on the original floors,” Stamp said.
A more-recent “paranormal” event still haunts Stamp, but not how you might think.
In the early 1980s, a female psychic appeared on the Phil Donahue Show and told the audience that the gates of hell were located in Gambier, Ohio –– which is conveniently also home to Kenyon College.
Shortly after the episode aired, people began calling the college and genuinely asking if the gates of hell were indeed located on campus. Looking to quash the rumor, Stamp, who at the time was the college’s public affairs director, ordered a transcript of the episode (This was the 80s, after all.)
When he received it, he found no mention of Gambier or Kenyon. Instead, the psychic said the gates of hell were actually located about 40 miles away from campus in Gahanna.
The rumor eventually settled, but Stamp said campus security guards have had to stop people on campus looking to enter through the gates of hell.
“Why anyone would want to be transported to hell is beyond me,” he said.
shendrix@dispatch.com