The Deadly Ghost of Harvard College: Killed by a Prank

I'm giving a tour of Harvard Square for a group of friends this weekend, and have been trying to find good ghost stories I can tell. Cambridge is an old city and Harvard is America's oldest college, so there must be ghost stories, right? 

No surprise, there are a lot of ghost stories about Harvard Square, including this one from a 2012 Boston.com article titled "Nine ghost stories in haunted Cambridge." The author of the article heard it on a Harvard Square ghost tour:

... an incident that happened at the Porcellian Club, one of the oldest, secretive final clubs at the school. A group of men wanted to trick a skeptical man into believing ghosts were real. 

A man dressed as a ghost and woke the other man up, who then swallowed his tongue and died. The man now allegedly haunts the hall as a warning. 

I like a good Scooby Doo story (you know, one where the ghost is fake at the end), but in this one, the fake ghost results in a real ghost. It's an added twist. If it's true I feel bad for the poor skeptic, forced to spend eternity as the very thing he didn't believe in! 

I was curious about where this story came from, since it's so good. When did it happen, and to whom? I did a little browsing in my library and found some clues. My friend Sam Baltrusis had written about it in his 2013 book Ghosts of Cambridge, and happily Sam cites the source, an 1846 book by Felix Octavius Carr Darley. 

But Sam doesn't say the dead skeptic haunts the Porcellian Club, and neither does Darley. In fact, the title of Darley's book is Ghost Stories; Collected with a Particular View to Counteract the Vulgar Belief in Ghosts and Apparitions. Yes, you read that title right. Darley's book is a collection of ghosts stories aimed at counteracting the belief in ghosts. Darley doesn't believe in ghosts, and doesn't want you to either. It's an entire book of Scooby Doo stories.

"It's not your undead mother, it's just a dog."

Every ghost Darley writes about is revealed to have a logical, non-supernatural explanation. That undead noblewoman haunting a French chateau? It's really just a dog that sneaks into the bedroom at night. That demonic figure seen in an old German town? Just a local priest in disguise scaring people away so he can have some peace and quiet. That pale wet hand a sleeper on his face feels at midnight? Just someone trying to see if his sister has rented out his bed to a lodger. 

The Harvard ghost story was told to Darley by Washington Allston, a prominent 19th century painter. He's not particularly well-known today, but he was very popular in his time. He was so popular, in fact, Boston named one of its neighborhoods after him. Allston graduated from Harvard in 1800, and claims the ghost story happened while he was a student there. It goes something like this...

Washington Allston, Self-Portrait, 1805. He's projecting "Timothee Chalamet
chaotic twink" energy. 

One night a group of Harvard students were telling each other ghost stories, but one student was skeptical ghosts existed:

The thing was too absurd in itself to gain his belief. He would never believe in ghosts till he should see one with his own eyes. As for fearing them, "he would like to see the ghost that could frighten him"(Darley, Ghost Stories, p. 13).

Upon hearing this, one of the other students decided to test the skeptic's bravery and disbelief. He didn't necessarily believe in ghosts either, but he didn't like the skeptic's attitude and wanted to play a trick on him. 

The next night, he dressed up in a white sheet and snuck into the skeptical student's bedroom. The skeptical student reached under his bed, pulled out a pistol, and fired at the 'ghost.'

Happily, the trickster knew the skeptic kept a loaded gun under his bed, and had secretly removed the bullets earlier (but not the gunpowder). The skeptic didn't know this and thought the gun had fired after the gunpowder went off. Upon seeing the ghost was unharmed after being shot, the skeptic panicked. 

Instantaneously the appalling belief came over the mind of the unhappy beholder that he was actually in the presence of a spirit from the other world. All his preconceived opinions - all his habits of thought, all his vaunted courage vanished at once. His whole being was changed; and he instantly fell into the most frightful convulsions (Darley, Ghost Stories, p. 14).

Uh-oh. The prank had gone too far. The student continued to convulse. The fake ghost and some other students tried to help him, but were unable to revive him.

Convulsion succeeded convulsion; and the unfortunate youth never recovered sufficient consciousness to be made aware of the trick that had been played upon him, until the melancholy scene was closed by his untimely death (Darley, Ghost Stories, p. 14).

The moral of this story is, obviously, don't pretend to be a ghost. Reading it reminded me of something that happened when I was a freshman in college. A friend and I were jogging around the track one night when another friend of ours, a notorious prankster, jumped out from under the bleachers wearing a hockey mask and waving some kind of weapon. My friend and I briefly panicked, thinking we were about to be attacked by a homicidal killer, but we soon realized it was just our friend and the weapon was just a hockey stick. Lucky for him we didn't go into deadly convulsions! Still, it's interesting that college student behavior hadn't changed much over 200 years.

It's also interesting to see how different the story in Boston.com is from the original version. For one thing, the Boston.com story is more specific than the original. Washington Allston doesn't say it happened at the Porcellian Club, but I suppose it could have, since he was a member. He also doesn't say the student choked on his own tongue, just that he died of convulsions. But most importantly, he doesn't say the student came back as a ghost. 

The whole point of Darley's book, including Allston's story, is that ghosts aren't real. Darley wants to convince people ghosts don't exist. If the student came back as a ghost, it would defeat the whole purpose of the book. But I suppose that wouldn't make it a good story for a ghost tour. Someone obviously read Allston's story and decided to embellish it for the tour. 

Personally, I'm a little skeptical that even Washington Allston's original story is true. Wouldn't it be better known that some Harvard students scared another student to death? Wouldn't they have been arrested? Or was there some conspiracy of silence? It sounds like the premise for a good horror movie, particularly if the dead student's brother started murdering the other students while disguised as a ghost. I Know What You Did Last Summer of 1799! And of course it would have a sequel, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer of 1799. 

Campus Ghosts at the University of Vermont

One thing I've learned from writing this blog is that you can usually find ghost stories on college campuses. Ivy League schools, state schools, old campuses or new ones - they generally have ghost stories attached to them. Is this because young people are more attuned to the spirit world, or is it just because they more likely to tell each other ghost stories?

This fall I was in Burlington, Vermont and visited the University of Vermont campus with my Vermonter friend Brian. The University of Vermont was founded in 1791 and is often referred to simply as UVM. This nickname comes from the school's Latin name Universitas Viridis Montis, or University of the Green Mountains. I feel like I'm back in school because I'm translating Latin!

UVM's campus sits high up on a hill outside of downtown Burlington and is filled with a mix of beautiful old buildings and newer more modern structures. On the chilly November day I visited it seemed like a great place to encounter a ghost.

One of the most haunted buildings on campus is Converse Hall, a large grey granite dormitory in the center of campus. When I visited Converse Hall was under construction and no students were living there. But perhaps the ghosts were still inside...

According to various online sources, Converse Hall is haunted by the ghost of a student who hanged himself in the attic in the 1920s. The stress of academia was more than he could endure, but even death has given him no escape since his spirit still lingers in the dorm. Some sources say the ghost's name is Henry.

Henry has been accused of causing various spooky phenomena in the dorm, like knocking mirrors off of walls, tearing down posters, slamming doors shut, and rearranging furniture in student's rooms. Despite dying almost 100 years ago it doesn't sound like Henry has matured much in the past century. Those all sound like typical freshman year pranks to me.

I've also read that the ghost haunting Converse Hall may instead be an engineering student who accidentally electrocuted himself in the 1980s. So which is it, Henry from the 1920s or a more recent ghost? There's no answer, and this type of ambiguity is very common in ghost stories. People encounter strange phenomena and then try to explain them by referring to events that happened in the past. Usually there are multiple explanatory stories. Sometimes not knowing is spookier than knowing.

The identity of the ghost haunting the Center for Counseling and Testing on South Williams Street is known, though. It is the spirit of a nineteenth century sea captain who once lived in the house. The building is called the Jacobs House (after the UVM professor whose widow donated it to the school in 1959), so many people assume the ghost is someone named Captain Jacobs. If the building is haunted it is more likely that the ghost is that of one Captain Nabb, a retired seaman who lived there until his death in 1877.

Staff working in the Jacobs House have reported a variety of poltergeist activity, and some claim to have even seen the captain himself. One counselor who worked there reported that one night he saw an elderly man with a large bulbous nose walking down the stairs. As he walked he shimmered "like a jellyfish" before he disappeared. That's kind of freaky. A janitor in building also reported seeing the same elderly man, and that he knocked over a bucket of water and flicked the lights before vanishing. I guess old sea captains can be kind of cranky.

Students and staff aren't the only ones who can partake in the ghostly antics. Even alumni might get a chance to see a restless spirit, since UVM's Alumni Association offices are housed in the beautiful and historic Grasse Mount building. Formally known was the Thaddeus Tuttle house, Grasse Mount dates to 1804 by and was originally named for the wealthy Burlington merchant who built it. Unfortunately Tuttle didn't remain wealthy for long and had to sell off his luxurious home. The house was later re-named to honor a French admiral.

UVM purchased the building in 1895 and used it as a women's dormitory until 1977. The women who lived there apparently loved Grasse Mount and one resident, Pearl Randall Wasson, even composed a song in its honor. Here are some topically appropriate lyrics:

Spirit of Grasse Mount, come to us we pray

Roll back the curtain from the dusty past...

I think the curtain from the dusty past has definitely been rolled back. Strange voices have been heard in empty rooms, and doors have been slammed shut by invisible hands. Is it the ghost of Thaddeus Tuttle, trying to reclaim in death what he lost in life? I haven't read any theories explaining Grasse Mount's supernatural shenanigans. But as I said, sometimes not knowing is spookier than knowing.