Lauren Ellzey ’13 was living in Grace Scripps Clark Hall last year when a pale young woman with light blond hair and white clothing came to her first floor window. “This used to be my room,” she said to her roommate. “Can I come visit tomorrow?”
According to Lauren, her roommate agreed: “Sure — come by and visit whenever you want!” Then the young woman vanished.
It wasn’t the first time strange things happened to them. The lights would flicker. Small items would move. And a man’s silhouette would dart back and forth between their bathroom and closet.
“I think the ghosts were trying to figure out if we were receptive to its presence,” says Lauren. “The fact that I noticed [what was happening], instead of assuming it was a trick of the light or something else, showed that I believe in ghosts.”
While alone one evening, Lauren asked the spirit to prove its presence by moving an object she would never move on her own. Later that night she found a refrigerator magnet had been placed in a spot it “could never have gotten to without extraordinary circumstances.”
Stories about the haunting of Clark Hall are nothing new, according to Sally Preston Swan Librarian Judy Harvey Sahak ’64. Many students over the years, she says, have told her about ghostly visitors, including one wearing a long white dress and hat walking the hallways of the residence hall that matches the description of the woman Lauren’s roommate saw.
“I speculate this woman dressed in white may be one of the hall residents who, over the years, dressed as Santa Lucia during Clark Hall’s annual holiday Medieval dinner.”
Each residence used to have its own dining halls, with Clark traditionally holding a Medieval Dinner complete with Boar’s Head and minstrels. For this dinner one student would dress as Santa Lucia, festooned with a crown of light, and attend the event in a white dress.
“Scripps ghosts are highly connected to this place,” Sahak says. “We do not accommodate wandering ghosts; they all belong here.”
Last year was the first time the ghost was reported to have moved objects rather than simply walking the halls, and students living in Lauren’s room this term have not had any supernatural experiences. “This doesn’t make me think they aren’t there,” she says. “Ghosts often only appear to those who believe in them.”
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.