Antisocial Scientist

Given that today is Halloween, this seems the ideal time to address an oft-overlooked issue affecting the quality of life on campus.\nIU is insufficiently haunted.\nNow I'm not saying IU isn't haunted. Nor do I mean to disparage the fine work of those ghosts already calling the University home. The Indiana Memorial Union, for instance, is particularly well supplied. In seeking to provide a wide variety of services for the college community, the IMU not only boasts a Burger King and bowling alley but the spectre of a little boy inhabiting the Tudor Room's creepy Halloween painting. Over the years, ghostly happenings have been witnessed in other parts of the building and, according to legend, it proved so unsettling as to cause a dog to commit suicide by leaping from one of the upper-story windows. \nIndeed, much credit must be given to the IU administrators who had the foresight to build the IMU next to a cemetery -- few Big Ten student unions can boast a comparable level of hauntedness. And beyond the Union, the Career Development Center, Read Center, La Casa Latino Cultural Center and a number of the small houses surrounding campus, all play host to some sort of noncorporeal entity.\nAnd, yet, how often do pieces of furniture seemingly move on their own? How long since a cold chill ran down your spine? The last time you heard shrieks in the night, was it just your next-door neighbor's girlfriend "staying over" for the weekend? Yes, for most of us, the Hoosier spirit world is disturbingly quiet.\nAs cited in the Indiana Daily Student, IU and Bloomington possess a number of features that should make them oases for the undead. Ghosts dig history -- we have nearly 190 years worth and counting. Ghosts also like "military bases, bodies of water, sizeable populations and relative seclusion from other large cities," according to Lynn Taylor, founder of the Association for Aerial Anomaly Research and Cataloging. Meanwhile, we have Crane Naval Surface Warfare Base, Lake Monroe and -- as anyone commuting to Indianapolis can attest -- vast tracts of seclusion (IDS, July 18).\nSo why aren't we up to our eyeballs in poltergeists, wraiths and free-roaming vapors? Where are our glowing orbs? Our wispy phantasms? Our howling banshees? \nI work in Woodburn Hall, a lovely old building at the center of campus. On occasion, I've been stuck there late at night. And do you know what I've seen? Absolutely nothing. I can understand ghosts not wanting to hang out in Ballantine, but the lack of even a little chain rattle in Woodburn is shameful.\nClearly, the University must do more to bolster ghost recruitment efforts. We could offer long-term, low interest leases on prime haunting space. We could sell officially licensed shrouds. We could build such ghost-friendly features as staircases to nowhere and un-opening doors. \nLikewise, we must support those ghosts already here. Why, before this season, they made up half the attendance at IU football games.