College Ghost Stories - The Great Ghost Write-Off
Oct 04 '06
The Bottom Line Strange occurrences and sightings, unknown noises and a traveling wheelchair? It happened...
I went to college in Northeastern Vermont at Lyndon State College, which was originally built in and around the old T.N. Vail mansion. This was the fellow who founded AT&T and his mansion, there in Lyndonville and that’s where the ghost stories at LSC begin.
While no one was ever able to prove it conclusively, legend has it that Vail was involved with a woman named Emma. I was never sure if it was his wife, a mistress or a servant, but whoever it was, became despondent and ended up hanging herself in the barn on the grounds of the mansion. That was apparently the trigger that started the haunting in the area.
After the mansion became Lyndon State College and as the school enlarged itself, the barn was removed and a theater was built over its location. The flagstones that were used in the floor of the barn (this was a big barn) were used for the floor of the theater’s lobby, which served as the focal point for the connection between three buildings of the college (imagine a T with the theater and its lobby on top and in the middle). The original mansion was also removed in the subsequent improvements to the campus, though the new “Vail” building, tended to follow the same architectural design as the mansion and reused materials from the mansion wherever possible. The only original building from the Vail days was the “yellow house,” which at the time I was there, was home to health services.
Since the school opened and throughout the years students, faculty and staff alike have all reported strange occurrences and sightings throughout the campus. Security staff told of doing their rounds and passing the yellow house, which would be as dark as night as they checked to make sure the doors were locked and everything was secure. On their next round, a light would be on upstairs and the doors would still be locked and they knew none of the lights were on timers. Other times people saw shadows pass by windows in the yellow house or in the Vail building at times when they knew the buildings were empty.
Passing through the campus late at night when all was quiet, especially in the lower levels of the Vail building (which shared a portion of the original basement), there were the sounds of doors opening and closing and footsteps, but whenever it was checked, nothing was there.
The strangest of all was the wheelchair that was kept in the theater’s supply area – to be used as a prop in various plays. It was stowed away in the back of the storage area, which on top of that was locked when it wasn’t being used. The wheelchair was found by security and students alike, rolling down the long hallways throughout the Vail building. No pranksters could ever be found and when the supply room was investigated, the remaining props were undisturbed and there was even still dust on the equipment that had surrounded the area of the wheelchair.
Our Experiences
My friends and I loved a good ghost story and we just ate up the stories of Emma’s haunting and the strange occurrences throughout the school (I’ll save the tales of the dorms for another story). So considering we were in school in Northern Vermont what else was there to do but go ghost hunting?
Our first forays were with some friends from security, traveling throughout the campus and the buildings late at night, experiencing first hand some of the strange things that happened. While we never saw the wheelchair in the halls, we heard voices, doors opening and closing, footsteps and saw lights on in buildings and rooms we knew we had already checked.
The one wheelchair experience we had. We walked into the theater after having been there earlier and there on the stage, where nothing had been before, was the wheelchair. The storage area was still closed up and the other equipment hadn’t been disturbed.
We wanted to know more so we got ourselves a Ouija Board. Now I have some doubts about the ability of a board game to contact the spirits, but I do believe that the board can do something – whether it’s tapping into an unconscious or latent psychic ability or it’s actually drawing in energy from the surrounding area. Well, it didn’t take long for something to happen with the board.
Within the first few minutes of sitting in the theater lobby with the board, it was spelling out stuff without us even asking questions. The eye was moving so fast at times that the people who were holding it were getting freaked out. The spirit that almost always started the contact claimed to be Emma, but was often quickly chased away by a more sinister spirit that never did give a name. That spirit would take over and seemingly scare the Emma spirit and the few others that seemed to be trying to make contact. While Emma and the others seemed polite and almost playful, this other spirit didn’t want us bothering him and didn’t want us in the “mansion.”
We tried the Ouija Board throughout the theater area with one of the most intense sessions occurring on the stage of the theater, which was built over the barn (the barn’s old stone subfloor is there, in the crawlspace beneath the theater stage). The eye was moving so strongly and the answers coming from it were so angry that one person who was with us became so upset that she gave up on the board, crying her eyes out and ran out of the theater.
The strangest thing about the board when we were using it in the theater was the changes around us – gusts of cold air that came from nowhere, oppressive feelings, and rustled curtains with no cause to name just a few.
The stories were almost always the same, sadness and loneliness from the spirit named Emma followed by anger and hatred from the other spirit. No matter where on campus we used the board, it was always the same.
One of the freakiest instances of the board was when we were using it in the lounge between our two dorm buildings (since I’d never use it in my room or in my house) and the angry spirit arrived and kept asking to be taken to a specific room, which turned out to be the number of our room. You better believe that the board and the eye never traveled together to that room again.
Another time we were using the board and we had rested a bit when we both obviously let go of the eye. Our hands were at least a few inches off of it when it started to move across the flat board. The person watching the board, saw that and grabbed the eye as it slid across the board. It hadn’t been one of us either, since we had both let go and it had been stationary for a few seconds after we had let go.
We never did get much past that in our days at the school. The strange occurrences continued and we used the board whenever we could with much the same results, no matter who was using it and no matter how much or little knowledge and experience that had with the whole issue.
Perhaps the angry spirit is TN Vail, trying to keep his despondent mistress quiet or maybe its something else, some sort of negative energy that is stuck in the area. Perhaps that’s why the boiler, located in a basement area adjacent to the theater exploded (it was such a big explosion that it was heard and felt almost clear across the campus). Maybe that explains the negative energy that seems to permeate certain portions of the campus and fill some of the dorm rooms.
Whatever it is, it was there and I believe still continues to be there, just driving up to that area of the campus, I can still feel it.
This story is part of The Great Ghost Story write-off. For more details on the write-off and how to enter, or to read other true tales of the paranormal, go here.
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