THE     GHOST    OF    MRS.    PORTER   This is a story about Clara Porter, the wife of Deacon Porter, whom that Porter Hall is named after. Apparently in the fifties there were two pictures of here and her husband hanging in the wall of Porter living room. There’s the same thing in a lot of the dormitories – the founders have their pictures up. And they weren’t there when I was a freshman at Porter, and we later found out – I can’t remember who told me now – that the pictures were taken down in the fifties because Clara Porter began to haunt the dormitory. She would wander around a night with this crazed look in her eye and apparently was rather a corporeal kind of a ghost. Apparently one girl was just frightened into screaming fits, and they took the picture down and the haunting stopped. The story is that Deacon Porter and Mary Lyon had an affair and Clara Porter knew about it and couldn’t really do much about it. She was apparently, at any rate, whatever happened a very unhappy woman and not too happy with Deacon Porter. She was much younger than her husband and she died at a fairly young age, I think about five or six years after she was married. Told in 1979 by Kate “Robin” Mertes, class of 1978.   In some versions of this story Clara takes to throwing things off beds and tables; in all versions she only shows up at exam time.   Another version of the story tells that during finals in December one year, a freshman who was very distraught over her exams experienced the glare of Mrs. Porter's vengeful spirit and fell into uncontrollable fits. She was later admitted to Belchertown State (Mental) Hospital where she, in turn, would only glare at those around her.   ©Mount Holyoke College. Witten (1977), p. 20-21. Webpage created and maintained by Nancy Birkrem. Last updated Oct. 10, 2001.