Post by Joanna on Feb 18, 2015 22:59:12 GMT -5
Top Five Haunted Campuses in the US
Every August, college campuses across the country are packed with families moving eager students into their new dorms. Unless you were lucky enough to move into a brand new building with state of the art air conditioning and a new mattress, you might remember the eerie feeling of taking over an empty room that has been called home by dozens of students before you. The thumbtack holes are still on the walls and the mysterious stain on the carpet will keep you and your roommate guessing until you add stains of your own to the room’s history. It’s almost like the ghosts of previous tenants still haunt the dorms they once occupied. Once some posters of your own are up and the dorm starts feeling like home, college campuses begin to feel more like Animal House than a horror movie by the time Halloween parties come to mind, but some campuses have haunts that rival Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights. Next time you’re scared to death by that physics final, think of the five most haunted college campuses and be glad your campus doesn’t have more to fear ....
5. University of Virginia (Charlottesville). Almost every college tour guide has a ghost story to tell prospective students and the better the story, the more likely it is to stick around long past storyteller’s graduation. Of all the storytellers, however, no one tops Edgar Allen Poe when it comes to horror and his old school begins our list. “Dr. Green,” a Confederate surgeon, is said to haunt the library to which he donated all his books and his spirit moved with the books when the library transferred from the University’s famed Rotunda to Alderman Library. There are other haunts at UV, however, none is more disturbing than the note Edgar Allen Poe left a on his windowpane when he was forced to leave school because of debt:
O Thou timid one, do not let thy
Form slumber within these
Unhallowed walls,
For herein lies
The ghost of an awful crime.
Student loans are scary enough, but how would you like to find a note like that on your first night in a new dorm? If you want to learn more, the University Guide Service at UV even offers a Ghost Tour of the campus.
4. Fordham University (Bronx, N.Y.). Waking up to the sounds of an inebriated roommate stumbling into the dorm well after midnight is pretty common at colleges throughout the US, but students at Fordham University’s Bronx campus have to worry about something else that goes bump in the night. Students living in Finlay Hall (above) have told of ice cold hands grabbing their throats late at night – a reminder that Finlay Hall was built atop an old morgue. The spirit of a young blonde also haunts the showers in Keating Hall, so freshmen have more to worry about running into a girl while wearing nothing but a towel. With any old college campus, ghost stories are inevitable, but Fordham will seem eerily familiar to horror fans because some scenes from The Exorcist were filmed at the university.
3. California State University (Channel Islands). When it comes to haunted campuses, it’s all about location. Cal State’s campus in the Channel Islands opened in 2002, but from 1936 to 1997, the location was home to the Camarillo State Mental Hospital. The campus (above) is haunted by apparitions and phantom voices of the long dead who are, apparently, unaware the area is now an institution of higher learning. The old bell tower is a prime location for supernatural incidents. If living in an old asylum isn’t cause enough to scare you, watch The Ring and keep an eye out for scenes shot on the campus.
2. Gettysburg College (Gettysburg, Penn.). Rivalries are popular on college campuses across the country, but Pennsylvania Hall at Gettysburg College was used as a hospital by both Confederate and Union troops during the Battle of Gettysburg. Med students know that Civil War era hospitals were more on the order of butcher shops, so it should come as no surprise that the ghosts of bloody doctors still haunt Pennsylvania Hall’s basement. College romances can become dramatic, but men should also fear Glatfelter Hall. A young couple made a suicide pact to jump from the bell tower, but the boy bailed after the girl jumped. Her ghost – only visible only to men – haunts the bell tower, attempting to lure a potential suitor to jump from the tower in her cowardly boyfriend’s place. After checking out the ghostly version of Romeo and Juliet at Glatfelter Hall, head over to the Kline Theatre at Brua Hall, the backstage of which is haunted by “the General.”
1. Ohio University (Athens). OU has been universally dubbed the most haunted campus in the United States – some say one fo the most haunted locations in the US. From the girl’s basketball team that died in a bus crash haunting Washington Hall (above), to a student named Laura who fell to her death from the fourth floor of Crawford Hall and now stops the Bob Marley song “Laura” from playing in her old building, paranormal experiences are pretty much a prerequisite for graduation. The real haunt at OU, however, is room 428 in Wilson Hall. Ohio University stands in the center of a pentagram of Athens cemeteries and Wilson Hall just happens to stand at the very center of the pentagram. Precise explanations of the events that have occurred in room 428 vary, but OU officials have sealed off room 428 and dubbed it uninhabitable for students. If you never got off the wait-list for Ohio University’s freshmen class, the violent death of a student in the 1970s whose spirit practiced satanic rituals in 428 might be the reason for the lack of an extra bed. Those undergrads missing out on ghost stories will have to settle for OU’s killer Halloween party.
Source: Jamie Gillespie, CollegeNews, February 18, 2015.