Inside the tunnels.
This was once a shortcut between buildings. The best-known of the JMU myths deals with the mysterious tunnels beneath the Quad and this is
one story that does at least have some basis in fact.There indeed are tunnels under the Quad and some of them are large enough to handle pedestrian traffic of students – as was the case in the institution's earlier years.
The many stories of mystery and mayhem about the tunnels, however, are pure urban legend. You can pick your own myth about the tunnels: violent murder, suicide by hanging, abandoned newborns, strange noises, footsteps or assorted other things that go bump in the night.
Many of the campus tunnels only have crawl space. All the tunnels are now restricted to access only by JMU service technicians.
For about 50 years, however, one of the tunnels was widely used by students and faculty to get from building to building. An underground tunnel once gave students access to Harrison Hall
In the early years
of the Normal School, the heating plant was located next to what is now Harrison Hall. Steam from the plant was distributed through a large tunnel to the campus buildings as their heating source.The tunnel, about 20 feet wide with 15-foot ceilings, originally connected the campus' first two buildings – then known as Dormitory No. 1 and Science Hall, today known as Jackson Hall and Maury Hall.
The size of the tunnel made it feasible for students and faculty to use it during times of inclement weather to get from one building to the other.
The tunnel was later extended to reach Ashby Hall (originally Dormitory No. 2) and Harrison Hall (originally the Students' Building).
The Students' Building was the do-everything building for the institution's early history. The dining room and post office were located there and it was the center for all student activities. The tunnel made for a quick and dry way to check your mail or have dinner.
Although the lighting was dim in the tunnel – only a bare light bulb every few feet – students from the days of the Normal School, State Teachers College and Madison College all gladly took advantage of getting out of the rain, snow or slush for a shortcut from building to building.
As more buildings were constructed on campus and student support services were spread to other buildings, it became less important for students to have easy access to Harrison Hall.
Sometime around 1960, the use of the tunnel under the Quad was prohibited to students.
And that's when the rumors began to fly.
..The most detailed legend about the tunnel deals with a student in the 1920s who is supposed to have received a note to meet her boyfriend in the tunnel.
Her friends warned her about the rendezvous because the girl had been receiving little notes and gifts from an unknown “admirer.” In addition, the campus was on edge because of reports of a Peeping Tom.
She ignored her friends, gussied up and put on her best perfume.
When she arrived in the tunnel, she discovered that her “boyfriend” was actually a crazed stalker. He attacked her, ravaged her and eventually killed her.
Her body was left in the tunnel. It was found the next day by her roommates.
The legend about the murder in the tunnel contains the post script that, even today, you can occasionally catch a whiff of the victim's perfume and hear her footsteps.
There are plenty of other myths but none so elaborate. Among the others:
* A student hanged herself in the tunnel.
* A student had a baby in the tunnel and left it abandoned there.
* The usual collection of strange and unexplained noises.
They are all wonderful stories and fun to tell. They are all, however, pure fiction.
Although the tunnel has long been closed to all but service personnel, curious students will occasionally figure out how to access the old pedestrian tunnel and many leave personalized graffiti on the walls.
The graffiti does not report how many smelled perfume.
Cupola HangingThe hanging in the Wilson Hall cupola never happened but the story has made its way around the JMU campus for more than 50 years.
The story goes that a student was indulging in some hanky-panky with a married professor. As stories of unrequited love always go, the professor dumped her.
The student is said to have made her way to the cupola of Wilson Hall and hanged herself. According to the legend, on some nights you can see the woman hanging in the window of the cupola.
The Little Bo Peep Ax Murderer
The Little Bo Peep story is an urban legend that has been making its way
around college campuses for more than a generation. The rumor revives itself every year or so around Halloween.The JMU version of the myth centers around Eagle Hall. According to the story, a deranged student dressed as Little Bo Peep celebrated Halloween by taking an ax to her suitemates on the sixth floor of the residence hall.
In some versions of the tale, the murder weapon becomes a knife. The number of victims varies. Later versions of the story have the killer wearing a “Scream” mask.
General Turner Ashby Walks
Confederate General Turner Ashby was killed in a Civil War skirmish near what-is-today James Madison University.
In a battle with
Federal troops, the cavalry general was leading his troops when his horse was shot out from under him. Ashby drew his pistol and led the cavalry charge on foot.After taking only a few steps, the 33-year-old general was hit in the chest with a mini ball and died instantly.
A monument to Ashby is located where he was killed – about a half mile from the JMU campus, near numerous off-campus student apartments.
There are those who say that Ashby's spirit walks through and near the JMU campus on occasion, as well as a phantom cavalry appearing in the moonlight.
This is no small accomplishment on Ashby's part since he is buried 70 miles away in Winchester.
The Lady in Red
In the early 1970s, a frightening rumor spread through the campuses of Madison College and Mary Baldwin College.
The story was attributed to the premier astrologer/soothsayer of the day, Jeanne Dixon, and said that a female college administrator wearing a red dress would kill a coed at a college in Virginia 's Shenandoah Valley whose name began with an “M.”
Even though their schools weren't in the Shenandoah Valley, the students at Marymount College in Arlington and Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg were caught up in the panic.
At that time, Jeanne Dixon predictions were to be feared. The noted clairvoyant was credited with predicting the assassinations of Mahatma Ghandhi, John and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King – as well as the launching of the Soviet satellite Sputnik and the airplane crash that killed United Nations Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld.
(For the record, Dixon also predicted that a comet would strike the earth in the mid-1980s, that Russia would be the first nation to put men on the moon, that World War III would begin in 1954 and that Fidel Castro would be overthrown in 1970.)
The Dixon rumor about murders and mayhem on campus apparently began in another part of the country but morphed and spread to Virginia.
In the late 1960s, a chilling rumor had gone around Michigan that at least 50 young women would be murdered on five college campuses. Dixon denied making any such predictions.
Dixon, who died in 1997, also denied forecasting scary events about female college administrators wearing red dresses and killing Virginia coeds.
Of course, that didn't totally allay the fears of students at the “M” schools.
Happily, no one was murdered or even bodily injured by an angry administrator wearing red.
But a number of female college administrators at Madison College, Mary Baldwin College and others were very careful about the color of dresses they chose for a while.
-- Fred Hilton, http://www.jmu.edu/centennialcelebration/ghosts.shtml
http://www.jmu.edu/centennialcelebration/red.shtml
http://www.jmu.edu/centennialcelebration/tunnels.shtml
2 comments:
My wife attended Madison College in 1967-8. She live in Jackson Hall and had an experience, along with her roomates, with a "ghost" named Wendy, who used to live in the same room. "Wendy" told them on a Ouija board session that she hung herself in the tunnel during a bout of depression becase she couldn't go home for the Thanksgiving Holiday. She gave them "signs", such as making a curved imprint of her finger on a mirror and glow of light moving about the room! They researched school records, and found a mention of a student named Wendy, who did commit suicide, back in the 1920's (I think). My wife has since passed away, so I', just putting down from memory what she told me. She never used a Ouija board, after that session!
Anyone intersestd can contact me at rittmeister1@verizon.net
I graduated from JMU in 1978. There were three students who took their own lives. The University quickly covers up the mess. Bad for business. I wish JMU did not allow students to have fire arms in the dorms. Not good.
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