Haunted Places
Indiana University Web-Site: www.indiana.edu
Indiana University is located in Bloomington,Indiana.
The Indiana Memorial Union is the University's 500,000-square-foot college union, making it one of the world's largest college unions. This campus centerpiece has been a place where students go to study, relax, eat, bowl, watch a movie, and even to shop. It has also been known as the favorite place in the past for students to kill themselves, before mental health services were available. There are a few high places to jump off from.
Story One - Several entities haunt the building as they found that all the suicides didn't help their problems.
Story Two - A dog also haunts the Career Development Center.
Maybe the building was the original health care service building. It is said that a doctor performed abortions for frightened pregnant coeds before abortion was legalized in the 1970's.
Cries of a woman can be heard in the Hallways.
Indiana University redone its resident dorms into sections known as Neighborhoods. That is used as housing for undergraduate & graduate students. This area is near the Schools of Music and Education, the Musical Arts Center, the IU Auditorium and the Neal Marshall Black Culture Center.
Reed Residence Hall is one of the three dorms . It is a coed, undergraduate that is connected to the central hub. Which is used for many things such as :Dance & Music Practice Rooms, Movies, Dining Hall and Café.
The History reports that, Reed Hall was once a dorm for the men, then a women's dorm and is now coed.
In one of the third floor rooms, late night drama between a fighting young couple went over the top when a medical student stabbed his girlfriend in the throat in a rage, causing the girl to quickly bleed to death. The student had hid her body in one of the deserted tunnels underneath the hall, but confessed later to police.
The entity of a young woman described as having long black hair, wearing a bloody yellow nightgown haunts the 3rd floor room where she was killed so quickly. The same entity also haunts the hallways and in other parts of the building as well.
Long ago, when Reed Hall was a women's dorm, an R.A. , who lived on the 6th floor, buckled under the stress of school life, committing suicide by throwing herself down the stairs.
On December 12th, one can hear an entity scream, as it falls down these stairs.
The Lilly Library is the principal of rare books, manuscripts, and special collections repository of Indiana University, serving as a resource for scholars throughout the world as well as a center of cultural enrichment. The Library is open to anyone interested in its collections.
Main Gallery- serves as a reception point for those wishing to use the Reading Room. The exhibitions in this gallery, which change every three to four months, highlight central themes in the Library's collections
The Lincoln Room - displays Joseph Benjamin Oakleaf' grand collection of Lincoln materials. Oakleaf was a great collector of Lincolniana.
The Ball Room - One finds on display Elisabeth W. Ball's collection of historical children's books, which were presented to the Lilly Library in 1983 by the George and Frances Ball Foundation.
The Ellison Room - Displays a small portion of the Robert S. Ellison's books and manuscripts documenting the westward expansion of the United States, presented to Indiana University by his widow as a memorial in 1946.
Reading Room: J. K. Lilly, Jr. gave his library to Indiana University, including a number of portraits of writers whose books he had collected.
History:
The library contains many collections held dear by people who have passed on. Many items in the displays are very old relics used by people who had lived there many years ago.
It isn't surprising that the library is visited by thoses who once lived here checking up on their prized collections.
Some items in the collage maybe haunted by their past owner.
Hannah House
Hannah House can be found in the city of Indianapolis, Indiana . It is privately owned, so the privacy of the owners must be respected. The Hannah Mansion can be found on the corner of National Avenue and Madison Avenue.
Web-Site: HistoricHannahHouse.com/tour.htm Hannah House is described as a "stately red brick mansion," perfectly suited for the Indiana State Legislator, Alexander Hannah, who built this 24 room mansion, that has five floors. The mansion was built in 1858, making it a pre-civil war era, "Italianate-style" of architecture.
Alexander Hannah had lived a peaceful life here with his wife. There were two instances of tragedy that happened in the mansion.
Story One - Before the Civil War, the mansion was part of the underground railroad that ran through Indiana. Hannah hid runaway slaves in the mansion's basement, until they could be moved to a new underground spot. One night, a lantern was accidentally knocked over, which caused a fire in the basement, killing many of the people hiding there. The dead people were buried in coffins in the basement.
Story two - From 1899 - 1962 various members of the Oehler families live in the grand mansion. In 1962, Mr. Elder took the responsibility of care-taker for the place, but didn't live on the grounds. From 1968-1978, Mr. & Mrs. O'Brien moved into the mansion, and opened an antique store in one part of the mansion, and sometimes lived in the other parts of the mansion. The second floor bedroom, where Mrs. Hannah gave birth to a still-born cild was normally locked up and used for storage. However, it seems to be a center of supernatural activity.
Occasionally, the horrid smell of rotting flesh came from this room, strong enough to gag the living, and make them run for freash air. From the same room, the strong, sweet aroma of roses would fill the air. The door to this room giving off an awful odor wuld freely swing open at will, even if the room had been securely locked.
When the door did open up, other unexplainable manifestations happened. The many folks heard strange noises, footsteps of the unseen, mumbling voices, felt cold drafts in places where there were no sources for them, and saw some of the other doors and windows open and close without the help from living people. A painter who was hired to spruce up the place had the unnerving experience of having doors swing open and pictures slid from their place as he walked by. The painter had had enough and fled after a spoon that Mrs. O'Brien had put on a tray flew across the room.
The O'Brien family were treated to the full treatment of occurring manifestations, as well as seeing an apparition several times as well. Activity increased greatly after the O'Brien family moved in.
Early one evening, while the antique shop on the first floor was still open for business, Mrs. O'Brien looked up toward the second floor, and was startled to catch a glimpse of a man in a black suit who was walking across the upstairs hallway. Thinking it might be a customer, who had wandered onto the second floor by mistake, she went up the stairs after him to help guide him back down to the shop. When she reached the top of the stairs, the man had vanished into thin air.
Mr. Elder was the first one to suspect that the place was occupied with unseen residents.
Story Three - While working about the mansion, doing various upkeep chores, Mr. Elder suddenly heard the sounds of breaking glass, like jars breaking into a million pieces, resounding from the basement. He rushed down to the basement, and found nothing was out of place. He then noticed the fruit jars that were being stored in the area where the slaves that were killed in the fire were buried so many years ago.
Because the original house painter fled, Mrs. O'Brien's son volunteered to finish the job. On his first night, he felt that he was being closely watched by an unseen presence, which was a very uncomfortable feelingfor him. On the second night he brought his wife and two little daughters with him for company, as well as help with the painting. While three of them was working in one room, the youngest little girl played on the stairs. He heard his daughter talking with someone, and came out to investigate. She showed no fear, and was talking to a grandfatherly type man, which she could only see, and her family couldn't. The rest of her family watched her carry on a conversation, mesmerized. Then, the little girl said that "Dad" was climbing back up the steps. Totally spooked, him and they all left promptly.
Mr. O'Brien also saw a transparent, apparition who was standing in the doorway on the stairs. He was wearing an old fashioned, black suit, and had mutton-chop whiskers. He faded away before Mr. O'Brien could reach him.
Despite the fact that the staircase leading to the second floor was carpeted, the sound of footsteps was loud, along with rustling clothing could be clearly heard.
Mr. O'Brien also witnessed the door to the attic open by itself, after the handle deliberately turned by itself.
Loud groans from somewhere down the second floor hallway were heard by Mr. O'Brien one night as he was watching TV in one of the upstairs bedrooms. Annoyed, Mr. O'Brien yelled down the hall, scolding the ghost to stop it's "bellyaching" and leave them in peace. By 1972, the ghostly activity had stopped completely. For the time being, they had accepted the living in their house.
From 1980-'82, Hannah House was used as the annual haunted house project of the Indianapolis Jaycees. They would take kids on a tour of the spooky old mansion, with special scary effects added for entertainment.
While taking a break from the project, one of the coordinator's and a fellow workers were sitting in the summer kitchen, which was located right next to the staircase used by the servants to go up to the second floor, many years ago. Suddenly, loud scratching sounds were heard coming from inside the staircase landing wall. Despite quickly moving to investigate, the source of the noise was never found.
One evening, while listening to the spooky sounds coming from an installed stereo unit, the coordinator and a friend, who were the only ones in the mansion, were puzzled when the sounds suddenly stopped. Investigating the trouble, they found that the on/off switch to the unit had been deliberately turned off. Awhile after restarting the unit again, the off switch was again turned off. The only explanation is that some annoyed entity took matters into their own hands and stopped the sounds.
October 1981 - A TV crew went to Hannah House to film a segment on the Jaycee's Halloween House. A cameraman stood in the dining room doorway, planning to get a shot of the room from that point. After he commented about that wouldn't it be unnerving if the room's chandelier would start to swing, the chandelier started to swing six-inches back and fourth. After investigating, the swinging chandelier had no reasonable cause to make it do so.
At the end of the filming of last shot, the cameraman stood in the dining room doorway, to film the host of this Halloween segment who was standing in front of a coffin. Suddenly, a picture hanging on the wall above the coffin fell down and broke. After seeing that the nail was still in it's upward position, and the string in back of the picture wasn't broken, it was deducted that something had to deliberately lift the picture off the wall. Some unseen entity was up their the old tricks once again, to try to scare the living, and let them know that they were still there.
The apparition of Alexander Hannah and that of an unidentified woman have both been spotted on the second floor.
Various apparitions of slaves have also been seen hiding in the basement.
Willard Library
Web-Site: Willard.lib.in.us/tour/index.html
Described as the oldest working library in Indiana, the Willard Library is an 1885, two story brick building. Mr. Willard Carpenter, who donated the land for the library, and financed its construction, had great, artistic taste! Outside, the library is trimmed in stone, showcases Italian Gothic architecture, and has a standard Victorian corner tower. Inside, the library's ceilings are high. The windows are large because there was no electricity, they used large kerosene lamps in them that hung from the top windows, to provide light for the library's patrons.
Description of the Ghost:
Has been seen by many witnesses, since the early 1930's, she is described as a lady who is dressed in gray, early 1800's style clothing: A long gray dress, high-topped shoes, a gray hat and veil, or just a shawl. You can see her hair style; parted down the middle & braided down the back, which was confirmed by a Librarian,who had many sightings of this ghost. Many have smelled the aroma of her overpowering perfume, and have experienced the turning on & off of faucets, lights, and the gentle opening & closing of doors, when no one of this world was near who possibly could have been responsible.
Reported Manifestations of the Gray Lady:
Story One - The Lady in Gray was first seen, in 1930, in the basement children's library by a janitor, who had come late at night to stoke the furnace, in order to heat the library for the next day. He soon quit, because he was afraid.
Story Two - The second janitor, hired to replace the former one, had direct contact with the Gray Lady, as he suddenly bumped into her, once again in the basement; she promptly disappeared. After many sightings of the Gray Lady in the basement, he too quit. They had nothing to fear, as the Gray Lady is shy, confused, harmless, and sometimes friendly.
Story Three - Before the remodeling, Joan, the Special Collections Librarian, was alone in the bathroom stall downstairs, in a bathroom that was locked. She heard the bathroom faucet turn on, all by itself, and which was still running when she came out of the stall.
Joan, had a second experience with the Lady in Gray, which happened after the remodeling. Joan was reading a book, while walking from the upstairs staff room, where she had just had lunch, and was on her way back down to the basement. While going by some book stacks, she instinctively felt that she was about to run into someone. When she stopped quickly and looked up from her book, she was surprised to see the Gray Lady, standing clearly in front of her, like a real person. Joan shut her eyes, and looked away for a second. When she looked up again, the Gray Lady had vanished. This incident didn't scare her, for this seen presence hadn't felt threatening.
Story four - A 3 year old, rambunctious boy at a children's party in the basement, was ignoring his mother, and wandering all around the library. Suddenly, he became very upset. With huge, frightened eyes & many tears flowing, he ran back to his mom's lap, and refused to budge, after claiming to have seen the Lady in Gray.
Story Five - The Gray Lady took a liking to two, long-time, experienced librarians of fifty years, Margaret Maier, and Helen Kam; (who are both deceased now in 2000, but were originally alive, when this story was reported in the 1980's). When they first started to see the Gray Lady, in the children's library in the basement, the apparition appeared as a "blurry gray mass". But during the major reconstruction effort in the children's library, the Gray Lady decided to go home with Margaret, as Margaret thought kindly of this Gray Lady. This unexpected guest began to appear clearly in front of Margaret & her family, after carefully testing their reactions, with some incidents, that let them know that she was there.
Margaret & her sister Ruth knew they had an unseen guest with them, when they suddenly caught the aroma of the Gray Lady's unmistakable, really strong perfume. Their second clue, which confirmed the unseen presence, was that their clothes dryer suddenly turned on by itself, while the sisters were watching TV in the other room.
The Gray Lady made a partial appearance in front of Margaret's nephew. As the young man was sitting at the dining room table, he saw a fuzzy, gray form, going up the stairs, wearing clearly seen high button shoes, that thumped up the stairs.
After the above incidents, Margaret saw her first clear sighting of the Lady in Gray, after coming into the house from her back yard. The Lady was dressed in a long flowing grey dress, and high button shoes, and was floating down the hallway where she vanished. This gentle Lady in Gray stayed for 4 months, as a guest of Margaret and Ruth, until the construction was finished in the basement of the library, when the ghost returned to haunt the library. The sisters didn't mind at all.
Even some of the other folks that has stop by to see the Libaray has reported Sightings: After the construction was finished, the Lady in Gray started to appear, and give signs of her presence, on the other floors as well.
Story Six - On the top floor of the library, the door opened and shut, all by itself, during a women's meeting being held there. After feeling uneasy about this incident, the women decided to meet somewhere else.
While women from a local church were using the microfilm resources on the third floor, they came down and were worried about the aroma of a very strong perfume, that had engulfed them, and wondered if something was leaking.
Story Eight - For a book sale, the plastics company across the street gave some space for the Library to use for this event. Several sightings of the Gray Lady, hovering around the books, were reported by employees.
Story Nine - Mr. Chandler reported that the Gray Lady turned on all the lights in the library one night, when no one was there.
Story Ten - Another head librarian, while alone in the closed library, heard the upstairs water faucets come on and then off.
Hickory Ridge Cementary
Over the years many people told stories about a cemetary marker. If you see her eyes glow red on a full moon. It is a sign of your death to come sooner then you think.
Peggy Holler
Many stories have been told about Peggy Holler between Shoals and Frenchlick area. Out on Butler Bridge Road at about five to ten miles off the highwayout.
One story goes, Peggys' husband was a very jealous of her. One day his jealousy had drove him mad thinking she was cheating on him. While he was going to work one morning. He decides to hide out in some trees beside the road watching her walk to and from town. He jumps out from a large maple tree and cuts off her head in a jealous rage. Then burying her head upon the small bluff , killing her and the unborn child she was carring. A place he knew it would never be found. On the way home he reported his wife was killed and told the towns folk how her head was missing. The town was in an uproar of Peggys' death. Arrresting all new comers that come into town.
One man had sat in the jail for a few weeks. He told them that he was going home to his family after the war. Soon as they released him. Peggy's husband was in rage of this man being released from jail and waited for him to past through on his horse about six miles from town. As the rider was leaving in a fast pace. With out knowing he was waiting for him. Peggy's husband cut his head off.
The man on the horses' family searched for him and his horse but they were never found. The towns folks even looked forhim . To this day he has never been found.
Headless Woman
Anyone walking across Trinity Spings bridge on a moonlit night may encounter an apparition resembling a headless woman dressed in white reaching out with sympathy and help.
Jacob's Ghost
Story One- One-half mile north of Cale stood the home of Jacob Cox. His ghost appeared soon after his death, which was sudden and unexpected that he did not have time to remember where he had hidden a large sum of money. The ghost appeared for the purpose of putting the money into the right person's pockets. When a citzen was riding home and had seen Jacob wascoming from the corn crib. He waved and spoke to Jacob. Before he knew it something jumped upon the back of the horse and held on to his shoulders. Scarying the the horse into a full gallop. The faster the horse ran the tighter the ghost would hold him. Soon as the horse became worn out and slowed down to a walk ,it was gone without being seen or heard.
Story Two- One night some neighborhood girls were sitting up with Jacob's daughter who was very ill. Everything was quite when something loud hit in front of the fireplace. There was nothing out of place. Before hey knew it his daughter had passed away.
Story Three - Mr. Martin was sleeping in Jacob's house with something heavy was laying on top of him. He rolled over and it hit the floor like a sack of flour. Shaking the entier home. To weak and frighten to move Mr. Matin pulled the covers over his head and waited for daylight. Soon as daylight broke, he jumps up out of bed and ran to his father's home. He falls down on the steps and collaps in fright and covered in sweat.
Orangeville
It all started in 1920. When a WWII Veteran met a Shaman Priest that practest black magic in the war. When he returned home the town found out that he practest black magic as well. Before him and his wife knew it. The towns folk stormed into their home began beat him with a logging chain. Then wrapped the chain around his neck and dragged him down the road by a horse. While they where linching him in a tree across from the graveyard. He told them that he curses them and their children. There will be a day that he will return and get his revenge on the town, and there will be a chain in the form of a cross on my headstone so you can remember this day. When it is finished he would return on the day of his death.
Ever since that day the town folks has change the headstone to keep him from returning. Still today if you drive past the graveyard you will have car trouble or quit running all together to let you know he is still there waiting for his return. If you look close you can see his wife standing and weeping for him.
