GHOSTLY HAPPENINGS ON BSU CAMPUS
Bridgewater State University certainly has its fair share of paranormal activity, being located in the Bridgewater Triangle.
Renee Mallett recently wrote the book, “Haunted Colleges and Universities in Massachusetts,” with a section on Bridgewater State.
In the book, Mallett explains the hauntings in Woodward Hall, Shea and Durgin Hall, the Student Apartments, and in the Rondileau Campus Center (RCC) Auditorium.
“Most schools tend to either embrace or ignore their haunted histories,” Mallett said. “Bridgewater seemed to be right in the middle.”
In the Woodward Hall haunting, it includes someone running up and down the halls screaming “fire”. In 1924, the Old Woodward Dormitory burned down and legend has it that the girl screaming “fire” was the one who set the fire initially. It is said she died that night, but records on file say that nobody died.
Jennifer Kilgallon, a senior majoring in English, remembers living in Woodward Hall her freshman year and doing a ghost hunt with a psychic.
“We explored some people’s room including mine, the bathroom, and a few other things,” said Kilgallon. “When we did my room I panicked because you’re never fully sure if its just a glitch or something that just happens to happen. The radio scanner answered questions and switched languages.”
Mallett also mentions in great detail an overwhelming stench of death in the Student Apartments. Students have said they will walk into their apartment and the entire room will smell of rot and death, but no surrounding apartments will have any whiff of the scent in the air.
One of the more scary hauntings Mallet refers to in her book is located in a second floor room in Shea-Durgin Hall. It is said people can hear the sound of a woman choking. The story behind it is a man choking his girlfriend because he was convinced she was cheating.
Shea-Durgin Hall is also plagued by a bathroom ghost, who will run around the bathroom and turn showers on and off, as well as run them colder or hotter while one showers.
And on the fifth floor, Shea-Durgin has it’s own ghost that will do silly things like rearrange the chairs and stack cans.
That isn’t the only trickster ghost on campus, as there is supposedly a ghost named George who haunts the RCC Auditorium and plays pranks on the students working there.
A former student explained that George seemed to especially like playing pranks on students who would get upset from them. He would do things like steal scripts or play with the lighting, among other simple things such as moving props around.
When asked her reasoning for writing the book, Mallet said,“I’m always hearing stories about colleges. The three most haunted places are libraries, theaters, and colleges especially, since they have a library and a theater. It just seemed natural to write a book on colleges.”
With an office based out of Lowell, Massachusetts, Mallett constantly received floods of emails about stories of haunted colleges. She prefers to talk to a wide mix of both faculty and students, but she especially gets input from students.
“I’ll interview one student on campus, and it seems like they go back to their dorms and say ‘Hey this lady interviewed me about ghosts, tell her your stories’ and then I’ll receive tons of emails,” Mallett said.
Kayla Lemay is a Comment staff writer. Email her at klemay@student.bridgew.edu or follow her on Twitter @klemay123.
I live in Scott so I have nothing to worry about 😀