For the past few days, there has been a strange noise in my hall. It sounds squeaky, but when I poke my head out of my room, the hallway is empty. Since it’s only been happening for a short while, I deduce that it must be due to Halloween. Perhaps, Rockefeller dorm is haunted. There are two options, it could be a haunting of Bryn Mawr, or it could be a Rockefeller-related ghost. Bryn Mawr legend (i.e. what a tour guide told me when I visited Bryn Mawr) has it that Rockefeller built this dorm for his niece so that she would go to Bryn Mawr. He even had all the doorknobs made a custom height, because she was very short, under 5 feet, and he wanted her to be comfortable here. Unfortunately, she did not end up attending Bryn Mawr, but fortunately, Bryn Mawr got a beautiful dorm out of the deal. The whole story has the feeling of possible bad blood, so there could be a ghost there. A cursory Google search doesn’t reveal any satisfactory ghost stories, so I am going to make up my own.
Once upon a time there was a young woman who attended Bryn Mawr College. In the spring of her sophomore year, she met a handsome man at a Princeton social. He was studying to be a lawyer, and she knew instantly that she had never met a more good-hearted man in her entire life. The love that blossomed between the two was as fierce as it was lasting. They sent love letters back and forth between their two campuses and visited each other as much as possible. They exchanged tokens of their love and spent much time together reading, walking along Rhoads pond, and even a few fabulous evenings at the symphony in the city. The young woman loved to look into the eyes of her beloved and hear her name on his lips. Whenever he visited, they always bid each other goodbye underneath Rockefeller arch, because legend had it that lovers who kissed under that arch would be together forever. When the two finally graduated, they quickly got engaged and set a date to be married. On the day of the wedding, the groom was travelling to the wedding by train, as he had been attending an interview at a prestigious law firm the day before. The time of the wedding came, and passed, but the groom did not show up. The bride was very worried, but she stayed strong because she had faith in her beloved; she knew that he would never desert her. They would be together forever.
Finally, a police officer showed up at the door of the chapel and asked for the parents of the groom. The train had been taken over by a gang of bandits who had robbed, beaten and shot many of the passengers on the train, including the groom. A bloodstained handkerchief, monogrammed with the initials of the bride, was the token that the officer had brought to the bereaved family. Hearing this, the bride fled from the room before anyone could stop her. Blinded by grief, she didn’t know where she was running, but she knew what the last words on her lips would be: “Together forever”.
To this day, the ghost of the brokenhearted young woman still haunts the place where she and her beloved made their promise, and her cries sound distinctly like the squeaky wheel of a hand truck.
Happy Halloween!