Situated among rural farmland and surrounded by lush forest is the University of Connecticut Storrs campus. Founded in 1861 as the Storrs Agricultural School, UCONN hosts centuries of strange happenings, odd and ethically questionable research, and paranormal sightings. How could a centuries old campus not have some stories of paranormal happenings? Whether true sightings, urban legends, or just totally made-up stories to scare or trick underclassmen, the university has a rich history with its fair share of dark events.
Due to its location, UCONN is essentially a self-sufficient city. It has its own water, sewage, and electrical systems. It has its own police and fire departments. During the school year, it’s one of the largest cities in the area. Over thirty thousand undergraduate and post-graduate students attended the school based on recent enrollment information. Additionally, over 1500 people are employed by the university.
Why start with UCONN though? There are schools exponentially more haunted than this school nestled between farm towns. Easy. It’s my undergraduate alma mater, and it has a special place in my heart. During my time there, I personally only experienced the paranormal once – and to be honest, it could have just been faulty batteries in my toothbrush. But my possible paranormal experience started me down a path of finding out what kind of hauntings there actually were on campus. This blog is years in the making, considering I graduated from UCONN nearly a decade ago. What better way to start than by diving into hauntings in the very place I called home while I lived on campus: Alumni Quad.
Willard C. Eddy Hall, located in the Alumni Quad, is said to have one of the most haunted dorms on campus. Eddy 501 is rumored to house the spirit of a student who died of a drug overdose in the fifth-floor double room. However, the student’s cause of death is debated, and even the name of the student is debated. Some people say it’s the spirit of a student named Peter who died suddenly and unexpectedly in the room. Allegedly there was no foul play and the cause of the death was “unknown”. No physical injuries, nothing in his system. I don’t think anyone will ever really know who or what haunts Eddy 501, but the rumors keep the story going.
Students who have lived in or visited friends who lived in Eddy 501 have reported feeling hands on their shoulders, feeling unable to breathe, and have heard the door handle shaking when no one is near it. All pretty run of the mill hauntings.
I’m speculating wildly here, but I can imagine that significant deaths have historically been swept under the rug at UCONN. It’s not great PR to advertise untimely deaths for a growing university. There very well could have been an overdose in Eddy that was never publicized except to students who were there when it happened. I can say, while I lived in Alumni Quad, there weren’t any deaths that I remember. The worst thing that happened was someone setting off the fire alarm microwaving popcorn in the middle of the night, so we all had to go outside in January in or PJs and wait for the entire quadrangle to be cleared by the UCONN fire department before we could go back inside.
While I didn’t live in Eddy 501, my room in Brock seemed haunted. Even though I was technically in a triple, it was just me and one other girl. She and I didn’t really get along. Nothing crazy, just different personalities and different expectations of living on campus. She spent a lot of time away from the room, so I essentially had a single. Every night at almost the exact same time – between 11pm and midnight – my electric toothbrush would turn on. The first few times I heard it, I was convinced my room was haunted. I was also obsessed with true crime and the paranormal, so I kind of set myself up to be afraid. I would listen to true crime podcasts on my long walks back to Alumni from late night classes. That may have been why I didn’t live on campus very long and became a commuter student shortly after my first full semester there. Thinking back my haunted toothbrush was probably just wet batteries going haywire and turning itself on. There was literally no other “paranormal” activity in my dorm room. But that’s not to say that other areas of campus, and even other areas of the building weren’t haunted. Just not my room. Even though I really wanted it to be.
Eddy 501 isn’t the only dorm on campus to have reports of hauntings. Holcomb Hall, which is a female only residence hall, is said to be haunted by the ghost of student Ella Spurge who died by suicide there in the 1960s or 70s. Although I couldn’t find anything to corroborate this besides a few reddit posts, it wouldn’t be surprising to me if a student by this name did meet an untimely death, but the university swept it under the rug.
Next door to Holcomb is Whitney Hall, located in East Campus across the Great Lawn and route 195 is said to be haunted by its namesake Edwina Whitney. Edwina Whitney was UCONN’s second librarian in 1900 when it was called Connecticut Agricultural College. Even though she wasn’t the first, she was honored with a residence hall named after her built in 1938 – 4 years after her retirement from the college. She died in her sleep at 102 years old, but her spirit is said to haunt the attic of her namesake building. Even in death, she still feels most at home at UCONN.
Traveling a couple miles away from the main campus at Storrs, is UCONN’s Depot Campus. Once the location of the Mansfield Training School and Hospital, this part of campus is now home to administrative buildings, the Center for Clean Energy, and the Puppet Arts Complex, as well as an athletic field and nearly 240 acres of land. Less than half of the buildings remaining on this part of campus are used today, though, while many are falling to ruin or have already been torn down after the closing of Mansfield Training School and Hospital in 1993.
The history of the Mansfield Training School and Hospital is disturbing to say the least. Opening its doors in 1860 as the Connecticut School for Imbeciles at Lakeville, it housed people with developmental and intellectual disabilities. After 55 years, it changed its name to the Connecticut Training School for the Feebleminded at Lakeville, but continued to essentially be a dumping ground for people whose family didn’t want to or couldn’t care for them. In 1917 it merged with the Connecticut Colony for Epileptics and became the Mansfield Training School and Hospital.
While I attended my undergraduate years at UCONN, I worked as a support staff for adults with disabilities in the Mansfield area. Some of the individuals I worked with were once housed at the Mansfield Training School. I heard a story of one man I worked with, who I’ll refer to only as K, and his time at the Mansfield Training School. When I met him, well after the Mansfield Training School closed down and he was supported through a gentler program, he was a big, non-verbal man with a love of coffee and a mischievous habit of scaring new staff members with a loud, guttural yodel when he wanted something. He had scars around his wrists from being restrained while at the Mansfield Training School. While there, he was used as an “enforcer” by staff members. Staff trained him to steal food from other, smaller patients and to slam his hands on tables when someone started to get too loud or too unruly. He was an intimidating presence, and staff members took advantage of his trusting nature, rewarding him for his “enforcer” role with cups of coffee. When I worked with him, his old habits would sneak back in sometimes, but with gentle reminders and soft voices, K would return to his comfy chair with his cup of coffee and leave other individuals alone so they could enjoy their lunch. It’s been years since I worked with K, and I don’t know what his life is like now, but I’ll always have a soft spot for him and smile thinking back on the time he scared me so bad with one of his yodels while I was making a cup of coffee for another individual I was supporting that day. I spilled a whole cup of hot coffee on my hand and had to remake it. K shuffled away with a naughty smirk on his face.
The abusive history of the Mansfield Training School and Hospital, as well as the other iterations of its name, contribute to legends of it being terribly haunted. Spectral mists and glowing orbs are said to be seen by anyone willing to risk an arrest and trespass in the dilapidated buildings. But for real, don’t risk trespassing in there. Campus Police don’t mess around with warnings for people trespassing at Depot. People who have ventured in have reported hearing disembodied voices and unexplained sounds. Allegedly, if you look at the windows of the Knight Building from the outside, it’s said that you can see shadow people moving throughout the building. A few paranormal research teams have conducted investigations at Depot, and they have reported paranormal findings. Unfortunately, my favorite local investigation team, the Eastern Connecticut Paranormal Society, doesn’t have anything on their website about doing an investigation here, which was surprising to me. I trust the validity of their investigations and findings.
A SyFy show, Paranormal Witness, came to investigate a now residential home that was once part of the Mansfield Training School and Hospital. Amy, the woman who purchased the home as a fixer upper, complained of eerie occurrences in the house. Her children and housemates also reported experiencing unsettling things and feeling a sense of fear and dread in the house. They later discovered partially cremated human remains in the basement and were told of the home’s dark past. The homeowner began having horrible, vivid nightmares about children experiencing abuse at the hands of adults in the home. Paranormal Witness found evidence to corroborate the family’s encounters.
As of the writing of this post, Amy still lives in her haunted home. I was unable to find any updates on the hauntings, but she must have figured out how to coexist peacefully with whatever spirits are left over from the Mansfield Training School days.
I know I went a little off topic with this one, but UCONN’s hauntings lead down a rabbit hole of an even darker history than one would imagine for such a decorated university. UCONN isn’t all basketball and research opportunities. One day I’ll dive deeper into the other strange things UCONN’s past holds – coyote/beagle hybrids and secret societies, anyone?
Sources:
https://gis.vgsi.com/mansfieldct/
https://www.damnedct.com/mansfield-training-school-mansfield/
https://digitalcommons.lib.uconn.edu/dcamp/
https://www.hercampus.com/school/u-conn/12-uconn-mysteries-were-still-trying-figure-out/
https://www.reddit.com/r/UCONN/comments/kf1x1/urban_legends_of_uconn/?rdt=50462
https://thetab.com/us/uconn/2015/11/03/eddy-501-actually-haunted-1031
School Spirits 