An emailer who wished to stay anonymous sent me this:
There are a couple of places on St. Michael's campus that seem to have ghostly visitors. 1) The theater supposedly is haunted by a nun who assists actors. There have also been incidents reported during performances of props disappearing with no explanation. 2) The men's' first year dormitory (supposedly Joyce Hall) also has an evil presence. In the 60s or 70s, young men were holding some sort of occult meetings. One of the men insisted that he needed to close the "portal" before they left, but by that time security was there and they tossed them off campus. The door to the attic is padlocked shut. However, lights go on in the attic and footsteps are heard in the middle of the night by the residents on the top floor. The image of the pentagram still exists on the floor despite attempts to replace the wood.
This can be found on https://smcmail.smcvt.edu/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://theshadowlands.net/places/vermont.htm , along with other haunted campus buildings in VT.
Separately from this, I've heard others tell me that some boys in Joyce Hall from years ago were pestered by lively spirits, that white boards would sometimes fly off of bedroom doors, and some were abruptly woken out of deep sleep.
posted by Michael @ 1:02 PM
1 Comments:
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.
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