Shreiner Hall
Shreiner Hall is the most well-substantiated case for Ursinus being haunted. The building has a long history of odd occurrences and ghost sightings that date back to the 1920s. Particularly, the start of a mysterious fire where several “fur coats and dresses burned in a staircase closet” in 1921 was probably what ignited the rumors about Shreiner to come [1]. But a mysterious fire is not the only piece of fodder for the legend of ghosts surrounding Shreiner. Supposedly, Shreiner, like Clamer, has its own pair of jilted lovers; as the tale goes, a young woman’s lover is killed overseas while serving in the Navy and, overcome with grief, she takes her life [2]. This ghost reportedly does nothing more than create creaking footsteps throughout the house and break mirrors; additionally, while she is said to haunt Shreiner, her lover is rumored to haunt Hobson [3]. But wait! There are even more rumors that hover about Shreiner Hall. Another ghost story finds its origin in the rumor that a girl, dumped by her lover, decided to take her life in her misery [4] . With all of this misery surrounding the ghost stories of Shreiner, surly that must mean that the reported supernatural instances must be quite remarkable. Well, students have discussed Shreiner being haunted, and one student had reported something touching “her face while she slept” [5]. Or, put into another perspective, Shreiner Hall residents eventually called on a priest to come to the house and “perform an exorcism” [6].
However, The Mercury provides a nice case study about the ghost encounters in Shreiner Hall. Evidently, Shreiner Hall is haunted by three types of ghosts: “Those that are seen but not heard; those that can’t be seen but speak; and those that are neither seen nor heard but can be detected by the mischievous – and mysterious – things that they do” [7]. However, for the girls interviewed for the paper, they were being haunted by the third type, a poltergeist who would fiddle with their clocks and alarms, shatter their mirrors, and skulk about the residency hall in a creaking manner [8]. These girls that were interviewed and the interviewing paper referenced back to the legend of the woman who committed suicide in the house after her lover died in the Navy; the girls explicitly state they believe their poltergeist is this same woman [9]. Other girls that lived in Shreiner at the time corroborate the story as well as add instances of supernatural activity that they experienced, such as one girl having a bulletin board fly across the room to land at the foot of her bed or having the windows rattle and the lamp fall over [10]. However, this story also provides the first skeptic discovered while researching the history of Ursinus’s haunted campus. A professor who worked for Ursinus at the time dismissed the girls’ claim as over-imagined nonsense, despite admitting to hearing unexplained footsteps in a different Hall building [11]. The article writer and photographer for the newspaper also claim to have caught two snapshots of ghostlike activity. The first image that appears in the article is supposedly un unidentified object caught in a red-light snapshot, and the other image is a picture of two ladies gazing in a mirror where the light in the photo comes out much blinding than it had been in reality, leading the photographer to declare it a ghost light [12].
The tales of Shreiner's ghosts reached beyond just Ursinus's community or The Mercury. Parts of Ursinus's haunted history made it into a book recounting legends of ghosts in the Montgomery area, and Shreiner's poltergeists received a shout out [13]! The section recounts a few anecdotes about creepy growling sounds or disturbances while showering - and even an instance of the growling voice clearly demanding "Get out!" [14]. Finally the part that mentions Shreiner tells of the exorcism that occurred and how students have apparently been unbothered by such unsettling ghosts again within the building [15].
[1] E. M. R., “Of Ghosts and Towers: The Histories of the Halls,” Ursinus Bulletin (Collegeville, PA), 1990, 17.
[2] Johnny Myers, “Something Wicked This Way Comes,” The Grizzly (Collegeville, PA), Oct. 26, 2017.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Harley Rubin and Sara Jacobson, “The Phantoms of Ursinus,” The Grizzly (Collegeville, PA), Sept. 19, 1990.
[5] Ibid.