Local legends...or something more?
By Sarah Jackson

Those looking for paranormal adventures on Halloween need look no farther than our very own Columbia for a real scare! Varying accounts have shown that Columbia and the surrounding area are home to some real-life ghosts and supernatural phenomena, which have provided decades of MU students with folklore and legend.

You don’t even have to leave campus to find rumors of ghosts. The Chancellor’s Residence, located east of the Quad, is the oldest building on campus and is reported to have its very own ghost. An April 3, 1890 article in the Columbia Missouri Herald described “eerie lights and shadowy figures waltzing in the house”. An April 3, 1982 addition of The Maneater also cites a similar occurrence.

“ University president Daniel Read’s wife, Alice, passed away in the home in the 1870s, and she is still watching over her house,” Mrs. Patricia Wallace said.

Mrs. Wallace is the wife of an emeritus chancellor. Mr. Wallace has worked late nights in the residence, and has heard the clock bonging. However, the clock has been broken for many years. In 1999, a group of students went to the home and one young man ventured up the stairs. He came back with a report of seeing the ghost, a woman wearing a long flowing dress.

Another spirit who calls the MU campus home is that of Aunt Sally Conley. The 127-year-old house, which now serves as the general education headquarters, has been unoccupied since 1986. A 2003 radio report told that Aunt Sally was a disagreeable old maid whose bones were buried between the bricks in the north wall of the house. Her descendants were warned how to avoid having her ghost lurking about the house.

“You have to leave the door to the attic closed, or else she’ll come down and float around the house,” said Cindy Mustard, a great-grandniece of Aunt Sally.

The Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity house has some questionable evidence that ghosts have attended their social events. The house was built on the foundation of a former Civil War morgue. The morgue had a crematorium in the basement, which still exists today. The leader of Quantrill’s Raiders, William “Bloody Bill” Anderson, was supposedly wounded in Columbia and burned alive in the crematorium. The burn marks are still on the walls, and new pledges are invited to sleep for a night in the Andersonville Room.

“It was one of the creepiest things I’ve ever experienced,” a Sigma Alpha Epsilon alumnus said.

Mizzou is not the only college in town to boast its own ghosts. The Civil War caused both Columbia College and Stephens College to have lingering souls. Columbia College has their “grey lady”, a student who was engaged to a Confederate soldier who was killed. The girl jumped from a window of three-story Williams Hall, and now stalks about campus, sometimes even doing small favors for students.

Stephens College has a similar story. During the Civil War, a student hid her confederate soldier lover in her room. When a firing squad executed him, the distraught girl hung herself, and her ghost still searches for her lover in Senior Hall.

In 1971, theater professor Peter Beiger took a group of students to the hall on Halloween night, a Stephens Campus newspaper reported. At that time, the dormitory was empty, and the group was in a room on the third floor. A cold wind blew through the room, although the windows were closed, and blew out all the candles. The group heard a door slam, and footsteps running down the hallway, then saw a young man and woman wearing a lavender dress run down the hall and disappear into the night. At around 3 a.m. that morning, Mr. Beiger received a call from two students who had not gone with his ghost-hunting party. They had met a young woman wearing a lavender dress coming out of Senior Hall. She had spoke to the two students, telling them that the young man was not welcome there, but that his wife was.

“I’m an actor, and I know when someone is acting,” Beiger said. “I could tell they were frightened.”

Located right in the heart of Columbia, the Katy Trail also has its own tales of hauntings. Although no official reports were available, it is said that on nights where there is a full moon, a one-armed man can be seen pacing under the bridge on the trail.

Since Columbia is such an old city, pre-dating and having survived the Civil War, it’s quite possible that some of the original buildings are being guarded by spirits. The only way to know for sure is to discover some of the hauntings of this college town on your own!

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