School Spirit... Haunted Since 1820

Since its founding in 1820, IU has gained a national reputation for itself in several respects, including basketball, business and partying. \nBut it's also deserving of another title: one of the most haunted campuses in the country.\nOne of the most haunted sites is Read Center. Sometime in the late '50s or early '60s, when it was an all women's dorm, legend has it that the quad was the site of a heinous murder.\nApparently, "the girl's boyfriend was a medical student and she tried to break up with him," Read secretary Kristi Tanksley says. "He didn't like this very much, so one night he snuck in, killed her in her room on either the second or third floor of Clark, and put her body in the boiler room. Since then it's been said that a girl in a bloody yellow nightgown roams the halls."\nSenior Rachel Merritt, a residential assistant at Read, recalls an encounter she had with the girl in yellow during the summer of 2002.\n"Before the semester started and the freshmen moved in, me and another RA were doing (bulletin) boards in the 'X' part of the dorms where all the halls intersect," Merritt says. "We had the doors propped open but they kept slamming shut, and every time we'd turn around, out of the corner of our eyes, we'd see a yellow nightgown. We were so scared we couldn't even finish the boards."\nOther students living in Read say they've had similar strange encounters.\n"Sometimes I'll be standing in my room working at my computer and the bathroom door will shut for no reason," freshman Kate Canepa says. "I know it's not the wind because I'll look at the blinds, and even if the windows are open, the blinds aren't moving, and I know it's not my roommate because she'll be at class or it will be late at night and she's asleep."\nThe paranormal activity is not contained to just the girls' dorms, however.\n"Around two in the morning my door will be locked, and just open wide and slam against the wall," freshman Luke Bauer says. "Then I'll look out in the hall, and no one's there. And over the summer, I'd be sitting in the room when it would be really hot, then it would suddenly get really cold for no reason, and then it would get hot again."\nThe girl in yellow is not the only spirit said to haunt Read. Another legend has it that many years ago an RA named Paula was feeling particularly overworked and flung herself down the sixth floor stairs. Supposedly her screams can still be heard annually on Dec. 12.\nLocated not far from Read, another IU building is said to be inhabited by the supernatural unknown -- the Indiana Memorial Union. \nThough not many students report encounters, custodians swear that the older portion of the IMU is haunted.\nLate at night maintenance people will turn off the lights in the Bryan Room, only to find when they exit the building someone (or something) has mysteriously turned the lights back on. They say it can happen as many as five times in a single night.\nMost of the paranormal activity at the IMU is centered around the west wing's fifth floor, where the elevator will mysteriously stop. \n"It was after midnight one night on the fifth floor when a custodian heard talking on his radio," says Ruth Stone, chairman of the folklore department. "He called everyone to see if anyone was calling him, but no one was. Just then, as he was turning to the elevator, he felt a cold breeze and saw the dark shadow of a man running past him."\nThere could be any number of spirits haunting the IMU, or several of them. Since the building was completed in 1932, it has been the site of several suicides, including that of a dog who jumped out a window. The most recent occurred in 1991.\nSome of the most grisly tales surround the Career Development Center, however.\nSeveral variations of the legend exist, but all agree that sometime before World War I a doctor who performed illegal abortions lived in the center. From there, things get a little murky. Some reports claim he accidentally \nkilled a girl during one the procedures, which led the police to an investigation.\nOthers say that his activities were reported to the authorities, though he was eventually released and ended up hanging himself in the basement.\nBut that didn't keep the Phi Kappa Tau fraternity from making the so-called abortion clinic its new home. Several members reported hearing babies crying, as well as mysterious footsteps and shadows.\nToday none of the employees at the center have had any strange encounters and many aren't even aware of the house's history.\nSurprisingly enough, not all of these stories involve actual ghosts. \nJunior Steven Kuhn, a ghost hunter and public relations representative for the Bloomington chapter of Indiana Ghost Trackers, says there are three different types of "ghosts."\n"The first type is the one that repeats. It's an emotional imprint that keeps repeating over time. It's not really an entity," Kuhn says. "The second is a presence that sometimes results after a quick death when the person doesn't know they're dead. They stick around for some reason.\n"The third category is just for other entities, things that don't fit the normal archetype," Kuhn says. \nThough most encounters with spirits leave the witness frightened, Kuhn assures ghosts have no interest in harming people.\n"Ninety percent of ghosts will not even interact with this plane of existence, and those that do don't hurt anyone," he says.\nKuhn also suggests that those looking for proof of a ghost need nothing more than a camera or camcorder.\n"A lot of times you'll see them on that, but not with the naked eye," he says.\nFolklore professor John Johnson is more skeptical.\n"These are all folk beliefs," Johnson says. "And what people believe is more important than science. What people believe dictates their actions, not science. People really do see things. Whether they're there for physicists to test is up for debate"