Haunted Hamline

By mid-October everything seems to be settling in for the long winter. Squirrels vault across Old Main Mall to bury acorns. V-shaped flocks of geese fly lazily toward the southern sky. The leaves are painted like a sunset and Hamline seems as perfect as a painting. But not everything is quieting down. As Halloween draws near tales of Hamline’s ghostly residents are beginning to spread across campus. 

Manor Hall

According to students, the most haunted building at Hamline is Manor Residence Hall. “Oh yeah, it’s haunted,” said Catherine Price ’03, Administrator of Alumni Information Systems. Like all those who’ve lived in Manor she’s heard the stories of strange sounds, moving objects, and ghostly apparitions… and experienced them firsthand. “One time I heard what sounded like a gunshot followed by a thud. Everyone thought someone had been killed. The police came, but they didn’t find anything.” Manor’s third floor seems to be the epicenter of the paranormal activity; nearly every resident has reported “strange things” happening in that section of the residence hall. 

Old Main

Many stories also revolve around Old Main. The oldest standing building, it was once the only building on campus housing classrooms, offices, and the library. Today, it is used exclusively by the administration. Jen Thorson ’96, Associate Vice President for Marketing and Communications, has worked for years in Old Main and has heard of several encounters with the supernatural. “A few years back, an ABM worker saw something while cleaning. At first he thought it was a student, but realized that the person wasn’t walking, it was floating and there was a noose round its neck. He ran out and refused to come back” said Thorson. In addition to the hanging man, there have been reports of everything from goblins to portraits with moving eyes and ghostly pianists roaming the halls. While skeptical about the existence of ghosts, Thorson said that “when I’m up there late at night it can be a little scary. I haven’t seen anything, but it’s still creepy.”  

Drew Hall

The most recent apparition to appear on campus is known as the Hand of Drew Hall. Self-proclaimed expert on Hamline lore, Jon Schill ’09,  explained  that it all began in the 1960s shortly after the elevator had been installed in Drew Hall. A freshman, goofing around between classes, kept putting his hand in-between the door whenever it was about to close. Apparently, the elevator’s sensor failed to detect it and slammed shut like a guillotine, severing his hand at the wrist. “The kid lived but they never did find that hand and, as the legend goes, that hand is still crawling around Drew Hall looking for its body,” said Jon, adding that “this story was corroborated by Ka Vang, former Assistant Director for Multicultural and International Student Affairs, when she talked about girls reporting feeling icy fingers on their feet at night.” 

It should come as no surprise that Hamline is listed among the most haunted places in Minnesota. Hamline is and always has been a place steeped in history; its hallowed halls having born witness to thousands of lives. Perhaps some of them loved Hamline so much they decided to stay for eternity. Maybe, but one thing is certain, to Hamline’s students these stories are as much a part of autumn as the falling leaves and mid-term exams. 

--Article by Daniel W. Campbell ’08

Do you have a haunting experience to share? 
Please email your story to the Alumni Office.

I had some spooky experiences in the old library basement. In the 1950s, it had a closed-stack system, which meant that items had to be fetched for the library user. More often than not, it was a student worker like me who was stationed at the front desk and who did the fetching. In my worker role, I discovered the basement. It struck me as the ideal place to study when I wasn't working or in class. It was out of the way and one could count on not being interrupted. Even Miss Lagergren, the head librarian, never ventured down there, and no one ever said that I could not use the space.

Making use of this subterranean hideaway during the day did not induce any particular anxiety in me. It was at night that I eventually became leery of occupying this spot. At some point I became aware of the sensation that someone was behind me, lurking way back in the farther and very dark depths of the chamber and watching me. If I shifted to the other side of the table, the feeling did not lessen. In fact, trying to peer straight ahead into those murky depths was somehow worse. After a time I relinquished the idea of studying down there after the sun had set and remained a little nervous about being there even in the daytime.

By the time I got to my junior year, the library powers conferred on me the duty of locking up the building on Friday nights, when I was the sole employee present. At a little before 9:00, I would announce closing time. Once I was sure that every soul had left, it was my job to turn out all the lights. I did this with great efficiency and, yes, with trepidation. When darkness took over, I could not help thinking that someone or something just might ascend the stairs from the basement and reach me before I could close the heavy front door and turn the key in the lock.

One such night in midwinter no one came to the library. I spent the evening alone, reading at the main desk. I could hear the wind howling outside, and I knew it was snowing. At 9:00 I dutifully turned off the lights and hastened to lock up. When I opened the outer door, snow immediately began piling up on the threshold so quickly that the door would not close. No matter how vigorously I pushed the snow out onto the front steps, greater amounts blew in. Meanwhile, my back was turned to the library's interior. Recognizing at last that my efforts would not succeed, I had to summon up nerve to retrace my steps to the light switch and once again head for the exit in virtual darkness. That night I actually fled. I left the library door not merely unlocked, but open. Plowing through huge drifts, I located the campus engineer, snugly ensconced in a little mechanical building. He promised to see to locking up the library. I didn't bother to tell him that he might not be alone.

This story was submitted by Dawn Syren Jenkins ’94:

During my sophomore year at Hamline, I lived on the third floor in Manor Hall in one of the T shaped triples. I was the first of the three of us to move in, because I had been living on campus during the Summer. I had the whole room to myself for a week, with just the RA on the floor down the hall and hardly another soul around. It was quiet enough to hear the wind blowing stuff around.

The wind was strong enough, in fact, to rattle the wooden access panel in the wall. The one that covers the space designed to store luggage I supposed. Having nothing I was desperate to store in there, and being a little freaked out when it would rattle, I got out my tool kit and nailed it shut. I nailed a 2" nail in each of the four corners of the access panel, through the panel and into the frame behind it. The panel didn't rattle again all year.

As the year passed, we heard lots of stories from RA's and other people. The tales of suicides and horrors in the tower. Soldiers returned from World War II, being nursed by nursing students in the ballroom. That sort of thing. The story of the missing shoes, flour on the floor, foot prints. The story of the ghost light on the balustrade above the ballroom. These are all great stories of things that may or may not have happened a long time ago.

The stories that were not very amusing were the stories the girls across the hall would tell. Nightly, after they were all settled in to sleep, their touch lamp would turn on and off. It wasn't just the touch lamp either, the fan and the TV got in on the act, too.

One night after I had been studying in the library, I ran into the girls talking about their experiences in the hallway. I stood riveted while they told of the latest happenings. When they were done, I went into my room and one of my roommates was standing in front of her closet, on a chair, putting something away in the upper cabinet. The chair happened to be in front of the access panel. I started to tell my roommate about the goings on across the hall and she said, disgustedly, "Don't tell me you believe in that..." Before she could complete her thought, the access panel promptly fell and hit the floor. Shaking, I announced that I would be going back to the library. I didn't know what to believe, I just knew I needed to get out of there.