No self respecting campus should be without its resident haunts and specters, and Brockport does have its share, in our very own Hartwell Hall! Or so the stories go...Jennifer Valitis was a student here and did a very interesting project for a folklore class with Virginia Weiss in 1993. The project involved interviewing two custodial staff in Hartwell Hall concerning the stories about ghosts in the building.
The folks interviewed had a number of stories about things like hearing voices in hallways, when no one was around other than the one staff person, or seeing a shadow move behind a glass door, and on opening the door not finding anyone in the room...
One ghost is supposed to be that of someone who died in the building. No one has ever died in Hartwell Hall, but Julius Bates, the first principal of the school died in the building which preceded Hartwell Hall, in the 1840s.
Another ghost is said to be that of someone who drowned in the pool in Hartwell (years ago there was a swimming pool in the basement of Hartwell.) Again, no one ever died or drowned in Hartwell - but a workman, Edward Rowley, did drown in an accident in the 1880s when the cover of a large cistern collapsed and he fell in. (The cistern was behind the old "Normal School" building and supplied water to the building.)
3 comments: