KATE MERTES' STORY

I lived in Wilder Hall my sophomore year [i.e., 1975]. The dorm was built in 1897 so it’s one of the oldest dorms on campus. I was living in a first floor room in the corner. It was a very big room and it had very high ceilings and it was sort of darkish. It’s a very good setting in a lot of ways for a ghost.
During January term I was very sick, and I went to bed very early that one night because I was very tired, and my roommate and a girl across the hall went down to the library in the dormitory to study and I heard the door open, I thought. I was in bed and the light was out and I thought my rooomate had come back in to get something and the door opened and then it closed again but I didn’t hear anything. I thought, that’s sort of odd, because I thought I’d locked the door; so I turned over and there was a man standing in the middle of the room. He was wearing something dark over something light, and he had a very funny hat on. He was breathing as if he had tuberculosis, asthma, or some such lung disease and he was sort of staring, and I though there was someone in the room, so I jumped up and I said, “What are you doing here?” And he disappeared. And I stood there for a few minutes, and I went flying out of the door and down the hall and found my roommate, and my friend, who was the girl who lived across the hall, promptly fainted because just a week before she had seen the exact same thing as I had described to here only she hadn’t told me about it.
Thereafter he appeared about once every two weeks. He would just show up and wander and stare. If you made any sort of sudden movement towards him he’d disappear, but if you sort of sat there and stared at him he’d just sort of stare back … It looks as it he’s trying to get help somehow, and he’s very unhappy looking but totally harmless. A very mild look.