"A Haunting At SMC"

Hello Knights,

Here is a video I found today while googling "Saint Michael's College, paranormal" (a search which yields this blog as #1).  The video is titled "A Haunting at SMC" and is a student produced film project from The Examined Life 1st year seminar.  In them clip the videographer is interviewing students and staff about whether they believe in ghosts and stories they have heard/experiences they have had.  It mentions some stories I personally had never heard before!  I am hoping to revamp the blog soon and also create a Facebook account in hopes of gathering more stories.  Keep an eye out!

It's Been A Long Time

Hello Knights,

So it has been 4 years since I last updated this blog but I decided this morning to search "Saint Michael's Ghost Stories" and my blog was 4th or 5th in the search results and it made me very happy!  I decided to give the old blog a scroll and discovered this story left in the comments section of an older post of Joyce Hall. 

Blogger, "Howdo" of the Class of 1979 wrote on 11/7/2011:

I am a 1979 grad of SMC and lived all 4 years on the 4th floor of Joyce at the far end of the hall (401 & 403, I believe). I stayed at school one weekend over a holiday when nearly everyone else had gone home. There was only one other guy on my floor in a room at the opposite end of the hall.

I was woken in the middle of the night by the loud sound of running footsteps - multiple sets of footsteps - over my head in the attic, which would stop, veer off in another direction, and then rush back. I seem to recall accompanying laughter, although I might not have heard that till later. It sounded more like kids running around than adults.

1) There weren't enough SMCer's to be running around, let alone kids.

2) I'd never heard the sound before despite at couple of years at St. Mike's with numerous all-nighters.

3)I'd once entered the attic to see if there was a rumored antenna I could tap into with a cable. There was but there were also endless knee-high beams that would have made dragging a cable to my end of the attic a chore - and which would have prevented anyone from running around.

I eventually worked up the courage to shout upwards "Cut that out" and the sound stopped instantaneously, far faster than it would have taken a group of running people to hear and react to my shout. It was more like a soundtrack being turned off. After a while, it started again, not tentatively or stealthily like people trying not to get caught again, but exactly like before. I eventually shouted again and again they instantly stopped - for a while. At this point, I left the room with a vague intent to head downward away from that sound. As soon as I looked down the hall, I saw the other guy Bob staring down the hall in my direction like he'd seen a ghost. I think we could only utter a dozen obscenities before we regained enough speech to confirm he was as scared as me.

I couldn't believe it when he said he was going to try to find out what was up there. He inched the hatch open with a broom handle and you could hear almost a laughing kind of chanting that was vaguely Latinish, which creeped us out further. It was also ice cold, since this was some mid-winter holiday weekend. Bob shouted up something like "Whoever the _______ is up there better stop or we're calling Security right now." I'm certain that we didn't get a response and I think the chanting continued but I can't remember what suddenly spooked Bob to drop the broomhandle and jump to the floor away from the hatch, with me a step ahead.
We did tell the rest of the floor when they returned and got the kind of ribbing you would expect, although a few friends told me that they instantly believed me as they saw my face as I told the story. The next daylight (what a difference daylight makes) a bunch of us went up and found what I now know to be a pentagram with surrounding candles.

I do know that neither Bob nor I had ever heard about mysterious things in the Joyce attic. Neither of us was afraid of the dark. As I first fell asleep that night, I'd forgotten that the dorm was almost empty. Neither of us made a big deal of it afterward, either. We may only have told our hallmates because it was the kind of story that just makes you look like a fearful loser to people who don't know you. That one night was the only time I experienced it in 4 years and no one else we knew ever experienced it. Nobody ever confirmed what we experienced by saying, "Hey, that happened to a couple of other guys 3 years ago.....".

Though I've told friends about it, today (at age 54) was actually the first time I ever thought to Google "Saint Michaels College paranormal" and read that others have experienced almost exactly the same thing. It provided a momentary chill but at least reassured me that Bob and I weren't paranoid wackos at the time.

That was a pretty amazing first hand account!  Please if you stumble upon this blog and have strange, unexplainable stories about Saint Michael's Collge, please share them!  I as well as fellow Knights would love to hear them! Leave them in the comments section and I will try to check back and post anything I get!

Happy Hauntings!

Great clip about Sister Sarah and Herrouet Theatre. Thanks to New England Cable News and Saint Michael's College.

Around this time of the year students share ghost stories that have circulated around campus every October.

This October, one story hits close to home for two junior photography students, Kristen Salierno and Haley Belofsky.

Last week, Salierno and Belofsky were working on a “fear” photography project in the darkroom on North Campus. They were there to remove the roll of film from its canister and place it on to the developing reel, to avoid ruining the film.

During this process, Belofsky cut the end of her film so it could fit on the developing reel. When she went to pick it up it was gone. After searching in the dark for several minutes, they decided to turn the lights on and find the film, but the film was nowhere to be found, Belofsky said.

“We had the teacher help us look all around the room,” Belofsky said. “We emptied a tiny garbage and took each item out. We searched everywhere, even in the toilet.”

Salierno and Belofsky decided to get more film to finish the project. They returned to the darkroom to restart the process a few days later and were astonished at what they saw.

Jordan Douglas,
photography professor “Haley was putting the new film in and we found her old film we had lost, spun up in her camera,” Salierno said. “We don’t even bring the cameras into the darkroom!”

Feeling frightened by the experience, Salierno and Belofsky quickly went to their professor. Photography professor Jordan Douglas explained to them that he and several of his past students experienced similar incidents in the dark room.

Douglas said he believes the darkroom could be haunted by the late St. Michael’s art professor, Cy Sloane. Sloane died in 1995 and the apartment he lived in on North Campus is now the darkroom, Douglas said.

“It seems to be somewhat understood that it is inhabited with some kind of spirit,” Douglas said. “There have been many visual sightings of something that you could call ghost-like.”

Salierno and Belofsky said that they did not see any ghostly figure, but did feel as if something or someone was in the room with them. The students said the room was pitch black, making it impossible to see anything, but both recall they saw a light glowing at one point.

“For a second I could see (Belofsky’s) outline or something, and she said the same,” Salierno said.

The experience has affirmed both Salierno and Belofky’s belief in ghosts, they said. They also said they believe the darkroom is - without question - haunted.

“The whole thing freaks me out,” Belofsky said. “When anyone talks about ghosts I start to cry.”

Special thanks to the Saint Michael's Defender which you can access at: http://journalism.smcvt.edu/defender/

Hello All,

I am awaiting new stories of the unexplained from Saint Michael's faculty, staff, and students in the very near future! I thought I would take this opportunity to share a unexplainable story I experienced first-hand while I attended Saint Michael's.

During my first year at Saint Michael's college I lived in Ryan Hall on the third floor. I had a large group of friends all of whom lived in GREAT housing on the third floor of Joyce Hall and I often spent long periods of time there. One night around one or two in the morning I left Joyce Hall and was walking across the paved area between Ryan and Joyce. As I walked between the buildings I looked up and saw a figure in the second floor Ryan stairwell window. The figure appeared to be a college age male, he was dressed head to toe in dark clothing, and he seemed to be in a deep "trance" with a glazed over look. I thought that it was a resident of the building who was under the influence of drugs and was simply stoned out of his mind and staring out the window. I spotted him as soon as I left the Joyce Hall side door and kept my eye on him the whole way across to the Ryan Hall side door. I remember thinking it was odd but I also remember chuckling to myself at the sight. The sprint across the paved area between the buildings only takes a few seconds. I expected to unlock the door and run up the stairs to see the man still glazed over in a "trance" staring out the window. Still in the second floor window, not moving a muscle as I approached and opened the door I ran up the stairs and to my shock there was no one at the window. The unsettling thing is that there was no noise in the building what so ever. Everyone was asleep, there were no sounds of foot steps or doors opening and closing in the adjacent hallways or stairwells. There were absolutely no signs of movement at all! If the man I saw in the window was as "out of it" as I observed I would at least have expected to see him walking down the hall or stumbling up the stairs but there was nothing of the sort. I froze in my steps when I did not see the man and the hair on the back of my neck stood on end. It scared the crap out of me. I remembered immediately booked it to my room on the third floor continuing not to see anyone as I ran. I got to my room closed and locked the door behind me, my heart beat in my throat. To this day I believe I saw a ghost or apparition in the early morning hours.

My partner of 3 years, who is a Resident Assistant at Saint Michaels and lives in Founder's Hall told me something intriguing this morning. He lives in one of the two RA apartments in Founders. He told me that there have been times where he is sitting in his "living room" and the toilet in his personal bathroom has flushed itself. He said he heard water running and what sounded like flushing and when he went into the bathroom the water in the toilet bowl was swirling. Kind of spooky!

Dave Breeckner mentioned in an email to me that:

"As for personal knowledge, I've heard the pentagram story was a complete fabrication, but the Hallaway (Herrouet) theatre up on North Campus IS supposed to be violently haunted."

I tend to agree with Dave in reguards to the theatre located on North Campus. Whether you are passing by it during broad daylight or in the cover of darkness the Herrouet is chilling. The first floor is completely boarded up. Windows are broken. If you look closely at the second floor and box office area's you can see hand prints on the inside of the glass. Strangely so, the lights in the building are always on despite no one having access to the building. I always thought it was because I had heard it was being renovated for community use but then my roommate who works for security at SMC told me that they are the only ones with keys to the building. Very strange. I just went past it a few days ago on my way to pick up my partner. I snapped a few pics I'll post later but what was eerie is that the lights were burning bright behind the plywood boarding up the windows.