Renee Mallett - Haunted Colleges & Universities of Massachusetts

Published by Haunted America

A Division of The History Press

Charleston, SC 29403

www.historypress.net

Copyright 2013 by Renee Mallett

All rights reserved

First published 2013

e-book edition 2013

Manufactured in the United States

ISBN 978.1.61423.973.4

Library of Congress CIP data applied for.

print edition ISBN 978.1.60949.849.8

Notice: The information in this book is true and complete to the best of our knowledge. It is offered without guarantee on the part of the author or The History Press. The author and The History Press disclaim all liability in connection with the use of this book.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form whatsoever without prior written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

CONTENTS

DISCLAIMER AND WARNING

This is a book of real-life ghost stories and other paranormal or otherwise unexplainable occurrences that have been reported to happen at colleges and universities all over the state of Massachusetts. Many of the stories are based on first-person accounts, and some of the cases are quite famous and have been reported both online and in other books or magazines as well. Most of the stories, like all great ghost stories, have an element of local legend or folklore to them, and they walk the thin line between fiction and fact.

This book would not exist without the generosity of the people who decided to share their experiences, and as the old saying goes, many of the names have been changed to protect the identities of the people involved.

Please keep in mind that all of the places written about in this book are real schools that offer you, the reader, the opportunity to go and visit yourself. That being said, all of these places are institutes of higher learning. Before visiting any haunted site, remember that the people living, learning and working in these places deserve respect and privacy first and foremost. Never trespass; always get permission before you decide to go ghost hunting or to visit a haunted site. All ghost hunters are legally responsible for their own actions.

Many schools embrace their haunted histories, particularly around Halloween, and offer various lecture or walking tours where students and the public are invited to come learn about the colleges ghosts and haunts. Even schools that do not hold these kinds of events themselves are often included in town walking tours. Boston and Cambridge in particular offer many of these ghostly themed events in the month of October. These kinds of events are a great way to learn about ghosts in your area in a very safe and legal way.

INTRODUCTION

I keep a workspace at Western Avenue Studios in Lowell, Massachusetts. Western Avenue Studios is one of many old mill buildings in the city that has been converted into new use, in this case into work spaces for artists ranging from quilters and painters to photographers and glass blowers. Along with the nearly two hundred visual artists who work in the building are the Loading Dock Art Gallery; The Space, which is both a caf and a recording studio; and a small handful of writers like myself.

My studio is a calm sanctuary within this vibrant and colorful community of creative people. During the breaks between songs, I can hear laughter coming from Cultural Shock, the screen printers next door, or the soothing and rhythmic sound of fabric artist Tarja Cockells loom on the other side. Throughout the building, there is always the sweet jingle-jangle of a dog leash as someone takes his or her pet out for a bathroom break. Sometimes in the middle of writing, I look up at my sea glasspainted walls and try to imagine what the factory workers who once put in long grueling hours in the old building would think of what we do here now.

There are many who say that the factory workers of yesteryear make themselves known to the current-day artists of Western Avenue Studios. And everyone in the building, it seems, even those who dont believe in ghosts, has had his or her own odd experience while working in the studios late at night or walking down the stairs to leave for the day. Being one of the rare writers in the building, and especially being one who is known for liking spooky stories, a lot of these tales filter their way down to me.

Artists come by the studio often while Im at work to tell me their inexplicable experiences.

I felt like someone had walked right into the room with me but

And then I turned around and the paintbrush I had just put down was gone

It must have been eighty degrees out that day, but all of a sudden a chill just washed over me

And I nod and say, Yes, I have heard of that before. Yes, that is a classic sign of haunting. Yes.

Many readers who come to visit my studio during our monthly First Saturday Open Studio events like to joke that I must have picked Western Avenue Studios as my workspace just because everyone knows how haunted these old mill buildings are.

And yes, there are a lot of ghost stories attached to these old factories. Workers put in long hours in the factories, arduous hours where accidents were the norm, and the bricks the mills were made of seem to be unusually receptive to holding the kinds of emotional energy that create long-term hauntings. But if spending years writing about the paranormal has taught me anything at all, its that sometimes the most haunted places are the ones youd least suspect of being haunted at all. In the course of my writing career, Ive come across scarier ghosts in a newly built hair salon than in an old Victorian cemetery and a brand-new apartment building that seemed to be more haunted than the old 1700s mansions that dot my little corner of New England. So while it might be easy to imagine a grizzled old millworker who died in some terrible factory-related accident groaning up and down the now bright hallways of Western Ave Studios, you are much more likely to run across spooky spirits in the more or less modern hallways of the ever-expanding University of Massachusetts in Lowell.

The two universal truths I have come to regarding true ghost stories are:

1) Police officers know the best ones.

2) Youll never find a library or theater without a good ghost or two hanging around.

If theres a third truth, and there probably is, its that colleges and universities have the most ghost stories of all because, hey, they usually have at least a library on campus, and a lot of times they have theaters, too. Plus, they keep their own campus security officers around who can tell me the tales after the fact.

That doesnt mean that writing a book about campus spirits is an easy task. The thing about ghost stories on college campuses is that they tend to be a lot more legend than anything else. This goes doubly in Massachusetts, where the colleges are, usually, very old institutions.

Imagine the possibly very real sightings of ghosts on a college campus as a very long and disjointed game of telephone. One person thinks he sees a ghost; he tells his roommate, his best friend and also the cute freshman girl in his math class that hes been trying to find a way to break the ice with but hasnt yet been able start up a conversation. Two years later, the eyewitness has graduated, but the girl who looked so cute acing all the math exams is still in school. She mentions to an incoming student the story about the guy who once tried to hit on her with what had to be the stupidest pickup line eversomething about a ghost he was supposed to have seen in his dorm room one night. The incoming student thinks its a pretty funny story, so she tells it to several of the people in her building. But to make it even scarier, she sets it in their own building, not the mens dorm on the other side of campus.