Hogwarts housed Nearly Headless Nick, the Bloody Baron and Moaning Myrtle, among many other ghosts. But do Worcester colleges have any supernatural residents?

Aside from the number of supposedly haunted buildings and graveyards in and around the city, including The Palladium, Quaker Cemetery and Worcester State Hospital, many of Central Massachusetts’ institutions of higher learning have been sources of urban legends and ghost stories throughout their long histories. There is certainly no shortage of historical buildings on Worcester’s college campuses – or the ghosts that haunt them.

College of the Holy Cross

Holy Cross’ “Exorcism Room” has been the subject of many haunted stories throughout the years. Located in the clock tower of Fenwick Hall (also known as the “Exorcism Tower”), according to a 2006 article in Holy Cross Magazine, the supposed former entrance to the tower is located on the fourth floor of Fenwick – which is situated in the oldest part of campus – where the 20-step “Stairway to Nowhere” now leads to a wall with a locked door. While there are many versions of the story that vary in specific details, most agree that two priests locked themselves in the tower for three days to perform an exorcism on a woman and, as the article explains, were found dead on the third day. The woman vanished without a trace. Other variations of the legend claim the clock tower broke as a result of the “evil spirits” released from the woman being exorcised or that a bolt of lightning struck the tower, and everyone in it disappeared.

Taylor Blackwell (’12) recalled being taken to the top of the tower by a group of upperclassmen during a program he participated in the summer before his freshman year. “The lights were off and they told us the story,” he remembered. The upperclassmen described the rumors they had heard about the tower to the incoming freshman:

“It used to be used as an old place to perform exorcisms!”

“The tower was hidden away and far from the living quarters.”

“That way the students couldn’t hear the screams.”

“It’s locked now, for good.”

While all the students found were a few empty rooms filled with dust and scattered beer cans, Blackwell did have a strange experience in the tower during his junior year. It was his birthday, and he and a couple of friends ventured to the top of the tower. Suddenly, one of his friends had a mental breakdown, “almost as if he were possessed.” The friend “sprint[ed] from the top floor, all five floors to the basement, and lock[ed] himself in a bathroom in utter depression.” He ended up being fine, but the experience was certainly a memorable one.

Worcester Polytechnic Institute

WPI’s campus has one haunted building. Higgins House, a Tudor-style mansion built in 1923, is a mysterious structure complete with hidden doors and stairwells. The building is supposedly haunted by the ghost of Mary Higgins, who was the wife of the house’s original owner, Aldus Higgins. She died in 1970. According to the school’s website, “The Alumni Relations staff and students who visit Higgins House frequently mention hearing sounds near the hidden staircase where her body was found.”

Mackenzie Alameda (’15), former Alumni Relations chairman of WPI’s Student Alumni Society, said she has heard rumors that Mary Higgins died by falling down a secret staircase that led from the house’s library to her bedroom, although she has no confirmation that this was in fact Higgins’ cause of death. Alameda added, “A senior when I was a freshman once told me he was at Higgins House late at night by himself and swore he heard a ghostly woman’s scream.”

Clark University

While there isn’t much history to be found behind hauntings on Clark’s campus, several students have had eerie experiences within the last few years. Sarah Dys (’15) lived in an eight-person suite in Dana Hall her sophomore year, and she recalled a number of strange events that happened to her and her roommates. In fact, what happened was so creepy that they came to believe there definitely was something haunting the suite.

It started when Dys’s roommate walked out of the bathroom and saw something white flash distinctly in front of her and fly out the window. Another one of her roommates woke up screaming in the middle of the night and asked Dys if there was anyone in the room. After Dys told her there wasn’t, her roommate said she had felt someone pushing down on her chest, as if sitting or lying on top of her.

“We’d have our doors shut and locked, and we’d come back as a group together and they would be ajar and unlocked,” Dys explained. “I would lock my door, and I would come back and I’d be like, ‘Val, did you open the door? I locked it when we left.’ And she’d be like, ‘No.’ It was very, very weird.”

But the scariest thing for Dys was what happened during Thanksgiving break when she was alone in the suite. All of her roommates had already gone home for the holiday. Before going to bed that night, Dys placed a stack of books on her desk. When she woke up the next morning, the books were scattered around the floor. “They were all over the room. It would be like if I whipped the books across the room,” she said. “That’s the only way the books could’ve gotten where they were. If they fell down, they would’ve just fallen down in front of the desk. I got out of there so quickly.”

Dys said the creepy occurrences became a joke amongst her and her roommates, but that there were too many coincidences by the end of the year to say that there wasn’t something going on in the suite.

The year after, Wriju Adhikary (’16) lived in the same suite, in the same room as Dys. She also noticed strange happenings. “I would notice the door swinging open and close like someone was playing with it,” she said. “The windows would be closed, so it didn’t have to do with air. Once, when [my roommate] was changing, the windows went up. The windows were heavy, and it wasn’t either of us. I would always get a strange feeling.”

Becker College

By far the most haunted of all the schools in the Worcester area, Becker has four residence halls (one on its Leicester campus and three on its Worcester campus) that are the center of numerous ghost stories. Miller Hall, in Worcester, has been considered haunted for years. Built in 1891, the house changed hands in 1937. The new owner reconstructed much of the building, including adding heating and plumbing. It was at that time that the ghost stories began.

Students living in Miller have had strange experiences ranging from moving furniture to temperature fluctuations to hearing voices coming from the walls or from empty rooms. Students have heard banging coming from locked closets and seen strange shapes in their rooms. According to Maya Algere (’15), “most of the hauntings around our Worcester campus [are] believed to be caused by black servants that used to work in the houses. There is a main staircase that was used for the wealthy families and a rundown, narrow staircase that was used for the servants.”

Algere said that Maple Hall, also on the Worcester campus and acquired by Becker in 1944, is supposedly haunted by a male student who hung himself in his room many years ago. “We call him the ‘friendly/attention ghost,’” she explained, because “he would do things to receive attention but not do anything to harm anyone.”

Merrill Hall, also in Worcester, was built in the 1800s and contains distinctive stained-glass pieces. Becker bought the building in 1955 from a well-to-do family from New York. As explained in a 2012 Pulse article, there have been various peculiar happenings in the dorm over the years, from mysterious footsteps heard in the basement to doors opening unexplainably.

Lane Hall, on the Leicester campus, built in 1813, has also been the source of paranormal stories from students who have lived there. Most rumors mention a family who supposedly haunts the place, moving furniture, bothering residents and causing a general scare.

When contacted, Becker staff responded that the school’s historian was unable to find evidence in the archives to back up the rumors. The college sent the following statement: “For years, there have been rumors that Lane Hall, Merrill Hall, Maple Hall and Miller Hall are haunted. These four residence halls – which currently house Becker College students – are beautiful, historic buildings that can serve as easy targets for urban legends. There is nothing in the college’s archives to indicate any truth to the rumors.”

Will the ghost stories ever be explained?

By Anna Spack