Courtesy of Nicole Sanfilippo ’27
Anyone who’s ever spent their late, late evenings on the third floor of Blaustein, ever had to do laundry in the Knowlton basement, or ever had the misfortune of using the Plex tunnels can generally agree that Connecticut College is creepy. Saying it’s haunted is a different allegation altogether– but, just maybe, not a lie… this season, let us spin you some terrifying tales that’ll be the talk of the town every night of Halloweekend.
For those camels that do believe in ghosts, don’t die of fright! The most established ghoulish presence on campus is named Ruth, sometimes Claire or Grace, and appears as an old woman sitting in the Palmer balcony. Some of the jewelry in the prop collection is rumored to be hers, and some stories allege she was a long-time patron of the theatre and possibly an alumna, though few sightings of her have been reported in recent years. Either she loved the new Palmer renovations so much it helped her move on to the light, or else, sorry, Ruth!
Most famously, the tale of a tragic suicide in the Knowlton basement has spun into out of control, mismatched fables over the years. What we suspect, though, is that a Conn girl, supposedly in the 1930s or 40s, hung herself in the basement after being rejected by a Coast Guard Academy boy– though some insist there were two girls. Since then, students and staff alike have reported doors slamming and strange noises and voices, not helped by the dark and tunnel-like nature of the room, not to mention the quadruple-locked iron doors.
Most horrifically, though, is the phenomenon referred to as the “Arbo scream.” Over the years, multiple Campus Safety officers, students, and community members have reported hearing human screams coming from the gated Arboretum, sometimes in broad daylight, but often long after the gates have been shut. This has, allegedly, led to officers and students having to do searches to find the sources of the shrieks, which often sound eerily like a woman’s voice.
The haunting allegations in the Arboretum are, fairly obviously, not unfounded. Gallows Lane is named so for actual, real-life gallows built at the spot to hang a woman named Sarah Bramble in 1753. She had been a servant girl that had bore an illegitimate child, and out of fear or helplessness, either strangled or burned the newborn, and was sentenced to a hanging. According to 19th-century New London historian Frances Manwaring Caulkins, the event was a spectacle that drew around ten thousand people from the New London area, and, true to the nature of New London at the time, probably sparked an afterparty. Though people report creepy feelings while walking on Gallows lane and through the extended Arbo, whether daytime or night, including feeling like they’re being watched even while alone. Of course, the most scary thing of them all is more likely any students hiding in the bushes while trying to get locked inside the gates– you’d be surprised.
Whether or not the ghostly figure is that of Sarah Bramble or another young woman, all around campus the figure of a child or teenager has been seen, particularly around the Plex. Though the Harris ghost– previously seen hiding behind the ice cream– might be confined just to the Social House, students in the Plex have reported scratching on their doors and banging on their (third-floor) windows. Dark, shadowy figures have been spotted all around campus, with some Campus Safety officers reporting strangely shaped spirits hunkered down in buildings across campus late at night, with some even lunging at or allegedly attacking the officers.
There’s plenty of room to do some investigating of your own, if you’re looking for something even more terrifying than a haunted house or a laundry night in Knowlton: close by in Waterford, the Seaside sanatorium still looms silently right next to the beach, abandoned now for over thirty years, but once home to children with tuberculosis. In New London and Groton, loads of historic sites and cemeteries date back to the 18th and 17th centuries, and are home to, in turn, centuries-old ghost tales. The New London Ledge Lighthouse is particularly infamous, with dozens of stories surrounding a man named Ernie who allegedly died while keeper of the lighthouse in the 1920s, and according to legend, tormented light keepers for years by ripping blankets off beds, slamming doors, turning on and off TVs and lights, and even untying boats from where they were docked.
