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kenyon.haunting
kenyon.haunting
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Newsgroups: alt.folklore.ghost-stories
Subject: frat boy ghost in ohio
Message-ID: <1994Oct29.182454.6765@kcvax1>
From: parsonss@kenyon.edu (WHAT COULD BE MORE FESTIVE THAN A BEHEADING?)
Date: 29 Oct 94 18:24:54 EST
Organization: Kenyon College
Lines: 65
i don't know if this story has been posted here before (it's not one that i
experienced myself), but i thought any who haven't heard it before might enjoy
it.
i go to a college (kenyon) that has tons of ghost stories, a good many of them
related to specific verifiable events in our campus history. one wouldn't
think that a place so small as this one (we only have 1500 students, and in the
past, it was a lot smaller) should have so many ghost stories, but one way or
another, the place is so spooky (or the students so imaginitive) that one of
our professors, Dr. Tim Shutt, is going to be to be featured on NPR ("Fresh Air,
if i'm not mistaken) for their halloween special on monday night. anyway, on
oct. 28, 1905 (89 years ago yesterday), Stuart Pierson, a pledge for the DKE
fraternity was led down to a nearby railroad trestle and left alone as part of
the initiation ceremony. now it is unclear (and it subsequently became the
object of a nationwide debate), whether he fell to sleep or was tied to the
tracks, but either way, it shouldn't have mattered: no night trains were
scheduled to come along that particular line at that time of year. of course,
you've probably caught on by this point that one, in fact, *did* come along, at
9:41pm (or thereabouts--the watch he was wearing had stopped at that exact
time), a random, but grisley coincidence. when his pledgemaster came along to
retrieve him, the sign that had been left pinned to the unfortunate pledge's
shirt took on hideous irony: it said, "when next we pass, it will be worse."
now as it turns out, the young man's father, a former kenyon DKE himself, had
come in from cincinnati for the initiation ceremony. he immediately left
campus with the body of his son and took it to cincinnati to be buried
without any autopsy and only minimal investigation into the circumstances of
his son's death. later, when asked for comment, the father said "boys will be
boys" or something to that effect and declared the case closed. as america's
first fraternity hazing-related death, the event shocked the entire country and
nearly ruined the school. chances are, if you check the big city newspapers
from around that time, you'll find stories and editorials, even some artists'
depictions of the event. but all that's just the story of an unfortunate
death. here's the ghostly part. some have claimed that Stuart Pierson's face
can be seen looking out the window of his former room toward the trestle where
he died, while others who live in that dorm (which has its share of hauntings)
claim that he knocks or opens the doors of DKE fraternity members, or can be
heard wandering about the halls near where he lived. others have said that
they saw his ghost on the old railroad trestle at night (now a bridge for a
bike path), and one story goes that the DKE's have his body in their posession
and now use it to frighten pledges in their current initiation ceremonies.
since i've been here, there hasn't been that much specific stuart pierson
haunting reported, but two years ago, our security officers responded to a
frantic medical call in the DKE housing wing (we have no fraternity houses, so
parts of dorms are reserved for greeks). a guy who lived in the room
previously occupied by peirson woke up to go to the bathroom, and on his way
out his door was pushed back and "branded" (with a small triangle, or "delta")
by what he described as an unseen force. now it could have been a hoax
perpetrated to keep the legend alive, but if so, it was awfully convincing,
since the college doctor was of the opinion that whatever happened, the guy
wasn't making up a story, and the office of security and safety actually
looked into the possibility of getting an exorcist. anyway, i found the story
to be interesting enough that i went down to the railroad trestle last night
to commemmorate the event. now nothing particularly supernatural happened
while i was there, but it was entertaining to watch members of the DKE's
chanting and waving torches around in an unsuccessful attempt to conjure up
old stuart pierson's spirit. they were even dressed in faux-druidic garb and
more than likely doing all this to entertain the curious--like me. i'm not
sure if there's a more detailed account in a book called "Haunted Ohio," but
there's a decent (thought hardly exhaustive) section on kenyon's ghosts that
you might find entertaining if your interest has been piqued. i haven't run
into any ghosts here myself, but i do know a disproportionate (compared to my
past experience) number of people who claim to have had contact with ghosts
here. after three and a half years here, it doesn't surprise me that there are
actually satanists who believe our campus has a gate to hell...
-spencer parsons
w
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