School Hauntings: Ohio University, Athens

Since I’m writing a story about a haunted dorm/island, it seemed appropriate to look up haunted schools. This is good inspiration. I heard about some haunted schools in passing but it was never something I researched.

Ohio University’s Athens main campus is said to be one of the most haunted schools in the world. It’s most known for Wilson Hall’s room 428.

The building is allegedly located in the middle of an immense pentagram consisting of five cemeteries situated in the region. It is believed this dorm sits on a graveyard.

In the 1970s, a female occupant started behaving oddly. The student began talking in a strange tongue but before her friends could help her, the girl plummeted to her death from a window. At the time, she was reportedly practicing the occult. After her death, students reported strange phenomena surrounding this room– footsteps, unexplained voices and flying objects. Some people claim to have seen this female’s ghost. The room has been sealed shut. The university deemed it uninhabitable.

Elsewhere on campus is what’s left of The Ridges, a development that was formerly a local psychiatric hospital called Athens Lunatic Asylum. The Ridges housed nearly 2,000 patients, over three times its capacity. Patients were restrained for days at a time, crowded in rooms meant for one and beaten by the hospital staff.

University students would talk of figures standing in the empty wings of the former hospital, disembodied screams echoing through the halls or intense feelings of dread. Hidden on the top floor is a human-shaped stain where an escaped patient lay dead for over a month. In 1979, a patient, Margaret Schilling, went missing. Her body wasn’t discovered until 42 days later. She was found naked with her clothing folded next to her body. Margaret had decayed so much that an imprint of her body had seeped into the concrete. The stain couldn’t be scrubbed out no matter how hard they tried.