Haunted Mount Holyoke

Jaime Tung

2008-10-31T13:02:00.002-04:00

I have only ever experienced "hauntings" in Torrey Hall during my first year, along with my roommate. We lived on the first floor and would often wake up hearing a woman sweeping up and down the hall, sometimes whistling or softly humming. But when I opened the door to go to the bathroom, no one was ever there. The second time we experienced a ghost was when we were both asleep and our door was locked. It was a single converted into a double so we had bunk beds and I was on top. My roommate's desk was on our left (if you were lying down), near her head. On this particular night, we were both woken up by a man's low laughter - as if he were SITTING AT HER DESK! I sat up and said "WHAT WAS THAT?!" and my roommate confirmed she heard it too- but there was no one there. I got up to see if one of our neighbors had guests over but everyone was sound asleep and in the morning, we didn't see any guys leave.

[October 31, 2008]

Christina Villarruel

2008-10-10T15:33:00.002-04:00

My sophomore year I was residing in Wilder on the 4th floor. Rumours abounded that the 4th floor (the one I was residing on) was haunted by a former student who had hung herself. These rumours were only fuelled further by the college's decision to close off the bedroom in question (even though we were in an overcrowded housing crunch). This closed-off room (where the girl was said to have hung herself) was next to one of the two stairwells. My room was on the opposite side of the hall by the other stairwell. No one ever had problems on my stairwell side. The other side, however, was known for feeling very cold and giving a creepy feeling. I avoided it as a general rule. One day, my friend Penny came over to visit. I warned her to not use the other stairwell but she scoffed at the idea of ghosts. So, I was coerced into showing her the closed off room while Penny taunted any ghosts in the area asking for a sign. To our surprise and fright, the door banged outward toward us several times. Each hard thump sounded like a human fist banging from the other side of the door toward us. I had lived in older homes my entire life. I am used to certain typical sounds; creeks from the wood floor, the wind whistling in the windows, the way a door may rattle due to differences in air pressure and drafts. From having the identical room on the opposite stairwell, I was also familiar with the types of sounds a corner room by the stairwell made. This was NOT one of those sounds. Obviously, we left as quick as we could and Penny didn't taunt ghosts anymore.

[October 08, 2008]

Nancy

2008-05-19T16:53:00.002-04:00

One night around 3 am i had gotten up at about 4 am to go to the bathroom which was on the 5th floor. i had just finished my buisness when i went to wash my hands then all i looked up in the mirror to see this women staring at me in the mirror. when i turned around there was no one there. and i never saw her again. some tell me that they have seen the same thing. but i know what i saw and i will never for get it.

[May 18, 2008]

Anonymous

2008-04-07T16:23:00.002-04:00

I was hanging out late one night in north Mandelle. I lived on the other side of campus and my best friend, who live in the delles, was out of town. She said I could stay in her room for the night while she was away because I was tired and didn't want to walk home. She lived in the smaller room of the suite on the second floor. That night I had this dream that was almost out of body. A woman was staring at me from the corner of the room by the window. Half awake, i sat up and said "go away" and pulled the covers over my head. Thinking is was just a weird dream and I was sleep talking, I told my friend about it's silliness. Before I could even get part way through the story, she said, "You saw the woman in the corner didn't you?" I had chills. Apparently, my friend had seen her too and the first few weeks of living there, kept waking up to her in the corner, staring. She eventually told her to "leave her alone" and didn't really have a problem after that. I hear other students also have similar stories in that room. i would be curious to know.

April 05, 2008

Tina T.

2007-08-21T10:02:00.000-04:00

There is a story that there is a ghost of an MHC student in a room on the top floor of the dorm Wilder Hall. As the story goes, this girl killed herself and everyone who lived in that room after her broke their legs. At some point the college locked up the room so no one else would live there. During the 2006-2007 school year, there was a heavy storm and it knocked over a large tree which had been in front of Wilder Hall. The tree crashed into the building, caving in the ceiling of the infamous haunted room. No one was injured, and there was no major damage to the building aside from the destroyed haunted room. Some people speculate that this event released the ghost from Wilder, others think she is still there.

[August 21, 2007]

Ellen Ball Gara

2007-08-15T10:01:00.000-04:00

When I was a sophomore at Mount Holyoke, I lived in Pearson's Hall. I lived in a double on the second floor that had a large window that looked directly out over the rear sun porch. One night, I awoke to see that my roommate's closet had opened and her closet light was on. I thought she had come into the room when I was asleep, but realized she was not there. Suddenly I became aware of a figure standing between my bed and Julie's closet. It was female, in white robes and a full head of hair. All at once her arms extended down and out from her body. My sense was that this figure did not wish me any good. I turned on the lights and screamed...even ran and told my friends, who told the head resident, who frankly thought I was nuts. Some professors from the theater department even spent some time in my room trying to see if they could pick up some trace of this ghost. She appeared in my room repeatedly over the year, eventually with a new behavior of swirling her arms in the air in front of her. Over time, I would wake up and see her face in front of me...she once tapped me on the back. I was terrified. Oddly enough, when I moved to Wilder Hall the following year, she appeared to me there as well, but never did I see her off campus. On one particularly frightening night in Wilder, I awoke to see her swirling her arms and experienced myself suffocating, as if she were drawing my breath into her and out of me. This happened a few more times over the two years I lived in Wilder. I slept with the lights on throughout the rest of me MHC days.

[April 29, 2007]

Anonymous, class of 2007

2007-08-15T09:59:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was the scariest day of my moho experience. And i want to preface this by saying I don't believe in ghosts and if anybody can offer an explanation for what happened, I would happily hear it. I had gone to bed around 1 am, a little tired, but certainly not hallucinatingly tired. At around 3:30am I woke up facing the wall that my bed is next to. I suddenly got this bizarre feeling that I was being watched. I turned around and right in front of the dresser that has my T.V on it, there was an Asian man, around 40 years old. I screamed and asked "hello?" "can i help you" (I was quite convinced this was a real person and was freaked out because i thought i was going to be attacked by a psychopath). No response. I booked it to my door and turned around to look at the man who was still standing looking at where I had been in my bed. The man then disappeared. The weird thing is I felt a sense of relief because I was certain I had a psychopath serial killer/rapist in my room. But after that slight relief I was thoroughly perplexed. I should also mention that I wasn't all that calm. A more accurate description would be that I started crying and shaking uncontrollably. I was FREAKED OUT! Anyway, I turned the T.V on and had it play all night and slept with the lights on (something I haven't done since I was 6 years old). This was on the third floor of the rockies, by the by. I have half a semester left at Mount Holyoke and quite frankly I am glad to be getting the hell out of the 5th most haunted place in America (?)! Oh, and now I think I do believe in ghosts.

[March 9, 2007]

Jennifer Lewis, Class of 2004

2007-08-15T09:33:00.001-04:00

Dude, I think the fourth floor of South Mandelle is definitely haunted. My sophomore year (2001-02) I lived in 413 S. Delle with my roommate. One night, we were both sleeping (it was about 4 in the morning) when I suddenly woke up, coughing. When I stopped coughing I looked up and hovering near my bed was this being. It was really hard to describe, as it seemed to have several shapes at the same time, but I got the distinct feeling that I was being *watched*. That that was what had woken me up. I stared back for a couple seconds before I realized that there should not, in fact, be anyone there staring at me (my roommate was still asleep). As soon as I thought the word "ghost" I pulled the covers over my head and started praying. I had my eyes closed, but for a few more seconds I could still see the image of the being superimposed on my eyelids, the same thing that happens when you stare at a bright light for a while and then look away. When I pushed the covers off again, the being had gone. I eventually went back to sleep that night, but it was only the beginning of many strange sightings in that room. Another time I woke up to see what I thought was my roommate sitting in her chair across the room, only again, my roommate was still asleep. This other being (this one was definitely a woman) seemed to throw something at me, like a fast moving ball. The ball disappeared under my bed. She and the ball disappeared after a few seconds. I also saw other things, balls of light moving around the room and other beings, but those two were the most intense experiences because of the sense I had that I was actually interacting with the beings. After moving out of that room, I never saw as many things of that nature within such a short period of time again.

[December 21, 2005]

Melaine Otto, Class of 1989

2007-08-15T09:31:00.000-04:00

A friend of mine was exploring the MHC site and forwarded this area to me, knowing I had some odd experiences there when I was a senior living in South Mandelle. I just about fell over when I read Beth Dunn's experience!!

Okay, so there we were, October 1988, and just getting into our senior year at MHC. We had all pretty much heard of the 'ghost' of S. Mandelle, and all had smiled, like "Okay, uh huh" at this. We were psyched to be there, getting things like Disorientation ready, etc. (Oops! No, we never did that "D" word, ahem!) Well...

Slightly out-of-the-norm things had been going on, but nothing that you could really believe, thinking (naturally) that you had just missed your toothbrush on your way to the bathroom even though you could have sworn you'd taken it with you. It had just been really windy and caught the air pressure in the hall at this top level kind of funny and that is why some of our windows liked to suddenly blow open. That sort of thing.

I lived at the end of the hall, left side out of the elevator, in the end room right near the kitchenette. I don't know if this is the 'tower room' some other people list or not, but it is distinctive from the outside, and a great room to get if you are still a student reading this! Anyway, one day, I walked out of my room and noticed that our end of the hall's fluorescent lights were out. I figured someone had flipped a switch for our end of the hall. There was something else odd with lights, too, but my memory is not clear on this as I had just brushed it off as an old dorm's erratic electricity. In fact, it was safe-feeling to assign it to that reason! (Though a few of my really down-to-earth and widely-traveled friends on that floor did have some peculiar experiences. When I gave an interview for the MHC News later, the Head Residents pulled me aside and said "darn! I had almost put that whole October thing out of my mind!" as they had had some strange experiences too, but you'll have to get them to tell you.)

One day, as October wore on, I stepped into the elevator with another dorm member (and I wish I could remember who it was!) and two of the underclasswomen. The freshmen (okay, first-years -- the term was just changing) were all spooked out about 'our' ghost, and the other senior and I were telling them, no, they would be fine; yes, the ghost wouldn't give the elevator any trouble (we HOPED!), etc. We got to the top floor (4th), and as we stepped out of the elevator, I glanced down the hall to my right, and one by one the fluorescent bars turned off as I watched. Feeling the hair raising on the back of my neck, I looked to the left toward my room and the sunny window at the end, and watched those light-bars do that same domino thing. O-KAY, NOW I was creeped out. We all were like "Eek!" and edged closer together. Then, as this whatever didn't seem to be in any way threatening, I decided to make nice with the ghost or whatever it was. I had taken to jokingly referring to her as "Matilda", and decided it might be better if I had a little talk -- real quick! -- with her. I assured her that we liked the dorm; we seniors had no ill intent for our plans with the first-years and would take care of them, could she perhaps just relax? We were cool with her if she wanted to hang out, but really, we were good people, she shouldn't worry.

You could find any number of seniors addressing empty air politely that month! Aside from what I thought was a small scrape-tread sound (yes, overhead) beyond my footsteps once or twice, that was the last of our experiences with her if I remember correctly. And she was okay with us I guess, because if anything, that building felt like it was aware of us and sort of felt welcoming and safe for the rest of the year. Strange but true.

So maybe Beth was right, her presence just wanted to be acknowledged. These days, if I go back to the dorm, I always say 'hi' to "Matilda", just in case. It never hurts to have manners!

[December 19, 2005]

Kristen Skerry, Class of 2008

2007-08-15T09:24:00.000-04:00

Alright, so I live on the 3rd floor of Prospect Hall and I believe that I've had a couple "haunting experiences" in the bathroom on that floor. The first time was at 2:00 in the morning one day during my first semester here and I was completely alone in the bathroom. No one was there when I went in and no one came in while I was there. I was brushing my teeth in the third sink and had my back to the rest of them , but when I turned around, the first sink's faucet wasrunning full blast. So I shut it off and turned around again, only to find it running when I faced it again! I checked the shower and the attached kitchenette and the stalls to see if someone was playing with me, but there was no one there. Then another time early in the morning, I was alone in the bathroom once again and distinctly heard a stall door slam shut and lock. A little freaked out, I went around the corner to where the stalls are and all the doors were wide open. Finally, on more than one occasion when I was showering and thought I was alone, I'd randomly feel a cold rush of air strike me and I'd get the feeling that I wasn't alone. As soon as the coldness goes away, so does the feeling. So I don't know if this is all coincedence since no one else on my floor has shared similar experiences to mine, but I'm certainly convinced that Prospect has a playful poltergiest confined to the 3rd floor bathroom.

[May 6, 2005]

Melissa Thorsnes Varvil, Class of 1995

2007-08-15T09:23:00.000-04:00

Back in the Fall of 1993, my roommate and I were living on the fourth floor of Porter Hall, in a converted triple. About 3:00 in the morning, something woke me up from a dead sleep. Nicole and I had our twin beds next to each other, with an end table in between them. Floating above my roommate I saw a ghostly woman in white. I could tell she was female, but she didn't seem menacing at all. I couldn't really make any sound and she vanished. I woke up Nicole; she was naturally pretty scared, but we managed to get back to sleep. A funny side note. I wasn't planning on telling anyone else the story, but the next day it had spread throughout our floor. The next night, we decided to stay in our friend Leila's room, since her roommate Nikki was gone for the weekend (Safety in numbers!) We had just turned out the light when Leila started screaming, "There's something above your head, Nicole!" Turns out it was a fern Leila had hanging over her futon! My friends have lots of personal stories of their own. I hope they share them!

[March 29, 2005]

Beth Dunn, Class of 1993

2007-08-15T09:20:00.001-04:00

I spent my freshman year ('89-90) living on the fourth floor of South Mandelle, in the second to last room down the hall on the left. Although I had heard many ghost stories about MHC within weeks of arriving on campus, I hadn't heard any about South Mandelle. North Mandelle was supposed to have some sort of moaning woman in the fireplace, but I didn't think much of that. One night, I was walking from the bathroom back to my room after taking a shower. The hallway had a series of flourescent lights going down the length of it -- something like 10 or twelve lights every few feet or so. As I walked, the light over my head went out, then came back on after I had passed beyond it. Then the next light that I passed under would go out, only to come back on after I had passed. I heard distinct, slow-moving footsteps above me as this was happening. I got back to my room (almost all the way down at the end of the hall, across from the kitchenette), and nothing further happened in my room. The general feeling was just that of somebody wanting me to know she was there.

[December 19, 2004]

Gretchen Burch, Class 0f 2008

2007-08-15T09:20:00.000-04:00

OK on the first week of school, there was a great rain storm, there was a wind so at first I thought it was the wind but the storm ended. And there was still this banging sound all through the halls of South Mandelle on the fourth floor. It continued for weeks it was as if there was this pounding of the fists, someone is trying to escape from the tower. The storm was the ghost coming back, she knew it was a new year.

[undated]

Summer haunting

2007-08-14T11:43:00.001-04:00

It was my first year at a summer camp located at Mount Holyoke. We had a night where we all got told ghost stories about the dorm we were staying in, Pearsons. That night everyone was very creeped out so we all either stayed in other peoples rooms or a councilors room. My roommate and I were trying to put on a brave face by staying in our room. But then I thought I saw light coming from the closet door so we moved into the councilors room. Then we read the Ghost Page and go even more freaked out. But I was tired so I went straight to the spare bed. I was fast asleep in bed but my roommate we freaked. She said that around 3:00 am she heard high heel footsteps on the third floor, right above us. But know one was staying on the third floor and all the doors were locked. She said she also heard scratching in the closet.

[July 2, 2004, anonymous]

Lynne, Class of 1989

2007-08-14T11:42:00.000-04:00

This is a report of some strange events which took place in room 410 Wilder Hall, Mount Holyoke College during the month of October 1986.

My roommate, Kathryn ’89 and I, Lynne ’89, had only completed about one month of our sophomore year when we experienced the following:
One night Kathy reported being very cold, I was not; the next night I was and she was not. Thus, began a series of events. Sudden gusts of wind hit my face one night, yet our window was closed. Lying in bed I felt like the bed was vibrating and I experienced cold shocks like electricity up my arm then down a leg, as though something was passing through my body.

Each night for about three weeks Kathy and I encountered this inexplicable feeling along with a feeling that something was trying to keep us awake. Whenever we were just about to fall asleep, we felt like we were falling into something awful. That is the only way I can describe the event, as though something was preventing us from falling asleep. Also, on different nights we each felt something jiggling our vocal chords (throat) and we felt compelled to speak. We each (on different nights) squeaked out a sound that scared the other to death. Neither one of us knows what forced the sound to come out. Every night at around 1:00 a.m. we would both be lying in bed and we would feel movement through our bodies like a breeze, and we would feel like there was another presence in the room.

The worst night was when we both of us felt like something was rubbing our faces. We felt the rubbed spot for the entire next day too, as though we had rubbed our cheek all night with a washcloth. To top it all off, our door mysteriously broke and neither one of us could open it with our keys. We had to call in a locksmith who climbed through the area transom and after examining the lock reported that a tiny piece in the lock had fallen out.

Neither one of us had ever experienced anything like this before, and we did not believe in the supernatural before these events took place. We even went to the college archives to see if there was a history of a ghost in Wilder Hall. Nothing was documented on a ghost at that time.

Kathy and I could not move out of our room because we were too busy, so we basically told ourselves that the room was ours and that whatever was bothering us had to leave. That weekend we threw an all-night party in our room, and my brother and his friends from West Point slept in the room (ten guys). Kathy and I decided to sleep on a friend’s floor to see if anything happened without us around. They reported nothing. For some reason Kathy and I never again experienced those feelings described above, and we lived in the same room for all of second semester! Whatever it was, it got the point that we had no time for it and that the room was ours. We could not help it (the ghost) and we certainly would not move out.

Wilder Hall has reportedly had strange occurrences like the ones above and others in it for many years. I decided to write ours down and give it to the archives for future students, who as Kathy and I did, go to the archives to see if there is a reason for the events or a history of the strange experiences at the college.

I hope this helps someone in the future who thinks she is going crazy because she can not figure out what is happening in her dorm room. She will then know that she is not crazy and that others have experienced similar situations in Wilder Hall at Mount Holyoke College.

[2003]

Donna Albino, class of 1983

2007-08-14T11:37:00.000-04:00

In a letter written by a student in May 1916 to her fiance. She lived in Wilder that year. She told him she was awakened by noise outside the night before, and heard men's voices, but decided not to get up to investigate. In the morning, she found out that the man who owned the general store on College Street (it was located in what later was known as Woodbridge Hall; it was on the left side of Frances Perkins House, and it burned down in the 1960s) called Alvord's committed suicide by drowning himself in Lower Lake. He had closed his store a few weeks earlier because he had been sick. I think Kate Muertes' story about seeing a man having trouble breathing who disappeared when she tried to talk to him was very interesting ... a ghost who died by drowning might indeed go to Wilder. After all, at least one person in Wilder heard him die. And what if he didn't commit suicide, but was murdered, and those were the voices she heard ... wouldn't the man who was murdered seek a live human to help him get justice?

[2002]

Meg Anne Baker, Class of 1999

2007-08-14T11:36:00.000-04:00

On the subject of the Wilder ghost room:

Take this how you will: as truth, as a nice story, as very strange, as proof that there is a ghost in Wilder, as proof that I am crazy. Nonetheless, I can vouch for the truth of this story as the facts are laid out. I can also say that it scared me quite a bit.

My sophomore year I had a friend (hi Jess!) who lived in Wilder. She met this boy from Hampshire who wanted to take infrared photos in the ghost room. So he arranged to come over. I happened to be there when he came, and, rather than leave her alone with a strange boy in the ghost room (okay, so I was curious! :) I came upstairs too.

We went upstairs, and were playing with this Ouija board. We asked a series of questions, and I just thought I would run through them … And, for the record, I was not (consciously) pushing the pointer around, and Jess says she wasn’t either. Jess, if you are reading this and can think of anything else…

What is your name? (unclear answer)

Did you live here? (unclear answer)

Did you like it here? No

Why not? Nunery. (which of course I found hysterical .. this was once a seminary, and historically very similar to nunneries … btw it was her spelling not mine :)

Did you kill yourself? Yes

When did you kill yourself? 1919 (I think)

How old were you? (I’ve forgotten what she said now)

How did you kill yourself? (unclear answer)

Why did you kill yourself? Sin.

What kind of sin? Man.

At this point we asked her to stand in front of the window for the photographer. She agreed and told us where she was going to be in the room … He started to take pictures and Jess and I stayed on the Ouija board. All of a sudden, his camera flash started turning on and off really fast … he wasn’t doing anything to it. At the same time, the pointer on the board moved very quickly from 1 to 0 and back again. For those of you who don’t know much about electronic programming, these are the typical on/off symbols used. It was very eerie. After this, the pointer wouldn’t move again in any coherent way and we finally gave up.

Take it how you will, but it’s all true.

p.s. We never heard back from the Hampshire student about his picture.

[1997]

Tricia Tomlinson, Frances Perkins Program

2007-08-14T11:34:00.001-04:00

I lived on 4th floor Buckland last year...and was constantly feeling cold spots in my room. I also woke up several times with the sensation that someone was sitting on my bed, right by my pillow. I'm not sure, but I don't think that it was an alum. I think it was Mary Lyon herself because of the maternal vibes that I got. (Her being like a ethereal protector of the college and all). Anyway, I told everybody that would listen about it...they were amused, but I'm still a little freaked out.

[undated]

Glenda Wilson, class of 1979

2007-08-14T11:32:00.000-04:00

There is supposed to be a ghost living in South Mandelle in the tower room. Apparently a young women went up there one night when she was extremely distressed and upset. She went up to the top ramparts of the building and she was, I guess she was considering suicide.

But then she decided not to, so she started to go back into the dorm and found that the door she had entered the tower room with was locked, and she couldn’t get back into the dorm. She went out onto the ramparts and tried to call for help but no one came, and she thought that no one cared about her and subsequently did commit suicide up there, and they found her the next day. So now the room is locked and no one can go into it, and you can hear her wailing away some nights.

[undated]

Collected by Deborah A. Bell and Susan R. Keith, class of 1982

2007-08-14T11:31:00.000-04:00

Before Pearsons' Annex was bought by the College, a young couple and their baby lived there. The husband was having an affair, and when the woman found out she was furious. One stormy night, when she knew her husband was with her lover, the wife, in an act of revenge, killed their baby. When the husband returned, he too became furious and without thinking killed his wife with the same knife she had used on the baby. The realization that he had lost both his wife and child through his own stupidity turned the man's wits; he was found the next morning cowering by the dead bodies. The man died thirty years later in a mental institution. To this day the innocent baby can be heard wailing for its lost life on dark and stormy nights.

[undated]

Kate “Robin” Mertes, class of 1978

2007-08-14T11:29:00.000-04:00

This is a story about Clara Porter, the wife of Deacon Porter, whom that Porter Hall is named after. Apparently in the fifties there were two pictures of here and her husband hanging in the wall of Porter living room. There’s the same thing in a lot of the dormitories – the founders have their pictures up. And they weren’t there when I was a freshman at Porter, and we later found out – I can’t remember who told me now – that the pictures were taken down in the fifties because Clara Porter began to haunt the dormitory. She would wander around a night with this crazed look in her eye and apparently was rather a corporeal kind of a ghost. Apparently one girl was just frightened into screaming fits, and they took the picture down and the haunting stopped.
The story is that Deacon Porter and Mary Lyon had an affair and Clara Porter knew about it and couldn’t really do much about it. She was apparently, at any rate, whatever happened a very unhappy woman and not too happy with Deacon Porter. She was much younger than her husband and she died at a fairly young age, I think about five or six years after she was married.

[1979]

“Karen Rosenthal”

2007-08-14T11:16:00.002-04:00

There is a girl who hanged herself by the bridge between Willits-Hallowell and Lower Lake, and on a really rainy day you can see her reflection in the water.

[1977]

Kate “Robin” Mertes, class of 1978

2007-08-14T11:16:00.001-04:00

There’s a gray bridge that crosses over the waterfall from Lower Lake down into the Stonybrook River. Supposedly some time during spring exam period, a girl who was a senior was going to fail one of her courses which meant she was not going to graduate. She was very distraught and she went onto the bridge at midnight and plunged a knife into her heart after she had perched herself up on the ledge and tied a rope around her neck and to the bridge. Of course she fell after she’d stabbed herself, and screamed as she fell – she hadn’t quite killed herself – and the scream just rang out all over the place.

People sort of looked out their windows and wondered what was going on, but figured that as usual somebody was having a good time. That night someone came across the bridge and head a voice saying, “I’m down here!” and leaned over the bridge and saw the body swaying back and forth and went and called Security. They hauled her up and said, “Well, she’s been dead for nearly an hour, you couldn’t possibly have heard any voice.” And every night during final exams in the spring, the scream rings our and anybody going over the bridge hears, “I’m here!”, and you can see here swinging down below; only she’s alive and waves up at people and does all sorts of things like that.

[1977]

Debbie Hale, class of 1978

2007-08-14T11:15:00.001-04:00

Lynn, Val and Shirl were in the kitchenette [in Wilder] that the girl killed herself in, and somehow the door closed behind them and they got locked in the room. It wasn’t that the door was locked, it was just that it was stuck, and so they finally found a knife that was in the kitchenette and pried the door open. They thought it could have been because the door had been painted over the summer and they thought maybe the doors were sticking together, but she said it was debatable and she wasn’t to say it was a ghost or what ...

[1977]

“Monica”

2007-08-14T11:14:00.000-04:00

In the late 1800’s or early 1900’s the girl who lived in [a] room [in Wilder] hanged herself. Later her roommate broke her leg. Every girl who lived in her room after that broke her leg also. Eventually the College decided to lock up the room.

[1977]

Wilder

2007-08-14T11:12:00.000-04:00

Wilder is one of the dorms that has a ghost that lives in a picture. The picture of "The Girl in White" is hung over the fireplace. It shows a young woman in a flowing white ball dress from ca. 1900. Her figure has been seen gliding through the first floor halls on several occasions, but always coinciding with Wilder's formal parties and dances. She is said to have been a Mount Holyoke graduate whose lover promised her he would attend her graduation ball but who was killed shortly before the dance. Now she searches for him during all of Wilder's formal affairs.

[Anonymous, 1977]

Another story of the Mandelles’ ghost

2007-08-14T11:09:00.001-04:00

Last semester one night the footsteps [of the ghost] followed me up three flights of stairs and down two corridors. Twice I stopped and turned around and went all the way down to where I started from to make sure there was no one there. Being barefoot, I know it wasn’t the echo of my own footsteps … And there was nothing there.

[Anonymous, 1977]

“Wendy Berant"

2007-08-14T11:07:00.002-04:00

Last year around exam time there were a number of girls holding a séance in the living room of North Mandelle. Right after the séance the portrait of Mary Mandelle [for whom the building is named] which was hanging over the mantle fell off the wall and into the fireplace. The girls had a fire burning. The girls pulled the portrait out and snuffed out the flame. The girls called up Security, and maintenance brought it over to the art building. What the girls didn’t know was that Mary Mandelle had lived at the house on top of Prospect Hill, and she burnt alive with her house when it burned to the ground.

[1977]

“Lisa Drake”

2007-08-14T11:07:00.001-04:00

Supposedly at midnight or late at night if you’re in the living room [of North Mandelle] all of a sudden you hear this “tch, tch, tch, tch” from the [portrait of Mary Mandelle], and when you turn around the picture’s shaking her head. She’s wearing a lace cap and she takes off the cap and it’s almost as if the picture becomes three-dimensional. She begins rearranging her hair and sort of shaking her head like, “tch, well that’s better,” and pats it and puts the cap back on and becomes a picture again.

[1977]

From the telling of “Nina”

2007-08-14T11:05:00.000-04:00

A girl named Jane lived the fourth floor of South Mandelle in 1975. When she went to bed one night and turned off the light in here room, she saw a shadow blocking out the light from the hall that came under the crack of the door. The shadow moved away and then came back and stayed. The next night the shadow came back but when Jane opened the door there was nothing there. The next night the shadow returned and Jane sprang to the door and opened it, but again there was nothing there.

Jane had a roommate, Louise, whom Jane did not like much, and to whom she did not tell anything about the shadow. The strange thing was that at exactly the same time as these things were happening to Jane and she was relating them to Nina, strange things were also happening to her roommate Louise, as she told Nina.

Louise started having nightmares that she was committing suicide be jumping out the fourth floor window. In her nightmare, she would be falling through the air and she would see the sidewalk coming up at her. Thus the two girls, independently and without knowledge of what was happening to the other, both apparently had a visitation from the girl who once committed suicide on the fourth floor.

[1977]

Kate “Robin” Mertes, class of 1978

2007-08-14T11:04:00.000-04:00

1837 is a big, nice, pleasant place, it’s just newly built but somebody who lived there in ’67, I think was anorexic. She wouldn’t eat and she just got skinnier and skinnier and skinnier and she didn’t have very many friends. She was supposed to go away one weekend so nobody saw her in the hall for three day, and they figured, well that’s reasonable. And they didn’t see her Monday, and you know, since nobody was really good friends with her and they didn’t know when she was going to be back, they figured, oh well, maybe she missed her bus and she stayed.

About Tuesday people were beginning to wonder just what happened to this kid. And by that Thursday they were really sort of worried because nobody had seen her and her Head Resident finally got the key and opened up the door, and she’d starved herself to death. She’d just lain down on the bed and died. And supposedly – she’d had a single – they sealed off the room for awhile. They didn’t let anybody live there for two or three years. She haunts the fifth floor of 1837.

I was told this by a friend of mine and she’d supposed to be very wraith-looking. She supposedly wanders around the halls a lot and she comes usually during exam time, and she wanders up and down the halls, and she wanders into the bathrooms sometimes and stands and looks around. And apparently keeps going back into that room. They’re using that room now, I think.

[1977]

Kate Mertes, Class of 1978

2007-08-14T11:03:00.000-04:00

I lived in Wilder Hall my sophomore year [i.e., 1975]. The dorm was built in 1897 so it’s one of the oldest dorms on campus. I was living in a first floor room in the corner. It was a very big room and it had very high ceilings and it was sort of darkish. It’s a very good setting in a lot of ways for a ghost.

During January term I was very sick, and I went to bed very early that one night because I was very tired, and my roommate and a girl across the hall went down to the library in the dormitory to study and I heard the door open, I thought. I was in bed and the light was out and I thought my rooomate had come back in to get something and the door opened and then it closed again but I didn’t hear anything. I thought, that’s sort of odd, because I thought I’d locked the door; so I turned over and there was a man standing in the middle of the room. He was wearing something dark over something light, and he had a very funny hat on. He was breathing as if he had tuberculosis, asthma, or some such lung disease and he was sort of staring, and I though there was someone in the room, so I jumped up and I said, “What are you doing here?” And he disappeared. And I stood there for a few minutes, and I went flying out of the door and down the hall and found my roommate, and my friend, who was the girl who lived across the hall, promptly fainted because just a week before she had seen the exact same thing as I had described to here only she hadn’t told me about it.

Thereafter he appeared about once every two weeks. He would just show up and wander and stare. If you made any sort of sudden movement towards him he’d disappear, but if you sort of sat there and stared at him he’d just sort of stare back … It looks as it he’s trying to get help somehow, and he’s very unhappy looking but totally harmless. A very mild look.

[1977]

Haunted Mount Holyoke

Jaime Tung

Christina Villarruel

Nancy

Anonymous

Tina T.

Ellen Ball Gara

Anonymous, class of 2007

Jennifer Lewis, Class of 2004

Melaine Otto, Class of 1989

Kristen Skerry, Class of 2008

Melissa Thorsnes Varvil, Class of 1995

Beth Dunn, Class of 1993

Gretchen Burch, Class 0f 2008

Summer haunting

Lynne, Class of 1989

Donna Albino, class of 1983

Meg Anne Baker, Class of 1999

Tricia Tomlinson, Frances Perkins Program

Glenda Wilson, class of 1979

Collected by Deborah A. Bell and Susan R. Keith, class of 1982

More Porter stories

Kate “Robin” Mertes, class of 1978

“Karen Rosenthal”

Kate “Robin” Mertes, class of 1978

Debbie Hale, class of 1978

“Monica”

Wilder

Another story of the Mandelles’ ghost

“Wendy Berant"

“Lisa Drake”

From the telling of “Nina”

Kate “Robin” Mertes, class of 1978

Kate Mertes, Class of 1978