Teacups falling off shelves? Mysterious footsteps in the hall? Ghostly apparitions? According to Judy Harvey Sahak ’64, Sally Preston Swan Librarian of Denison Library, spirits reveal themselves at Scripps College far more often than at other Claremont Colleges. And, as the first building on campus, Toll Hall holds the lion share of supernatural tales.
According to campus legend, students have seen and heard tea cups spilling off shelves, felt cold breezes on warm days, and spotted strange shadows and wisps of light roaming the corridors and corners of the first Scripps dormitory. A blue chaise lounge is said to be haunted by the spirit of a girl who was to attend Scripps; even the carpet in Toll’s browsing room is supposedly haunted by the spirit of a student who died there.
Sahak thinks there are so many supernatural sightings at Scripps College because of the sense of “place” the campus represents.
“Ghosts gravitate to places with meaning for various reasons,” says Judy. “An important event happened there, it’s the origin of something good that happened in their life, or perhaps they simply like the atmosphere.
“To my knowledge, none of the Scripps ghosts are malicious.”
Clark, Dorsey, and Frankel Halls have their fair share of hauntings; Dorsey claims the voice of a young woman who admonishes maintenance staff to “get out!” when they enter the basement during the day, a comforting spirit in one of the bedrooms, and the image of a ghostly young woman who wanders the halls.
Sahak has heard multiple reports of footsteps being heard on the staircase between the second and third floor of Frankel Hall when no one is there, and last year a student saw the spirit of a girl brushing her hair in one of the third floor bedrooms.
For more information about ghosts in Clark, click here to learn more about the Lady in White.
For more Scripps College ghost stories, students may attend the “Fireside Chat” Halloween night at 7:00pm in the Toll Hall living room. To report supernatural sightings of their own, students can visit Sahak at her office in Denison Library.