By Rena Patel ’19
Editor-in-Chief
The Claremont Colleges are no strangers to the paranormal. The Inland Empire is always a strange place when the Santa Ana winds blow. Even Joan Didion found her way here because of a story. Scripps is no different.
There have been many stories about old dorm hauntings: noises that don’t make sense, whispers without owners, creaks in floorboards without the presence of footsteps. Sure, we can chalk all of that up to the nature of tired buildings slowly settling back into the earth, but in the spirit of Halloween, let’s indulge ourselves a bit.
After asking around, a few brave souls, unafraid of the repercussions that this may cause them (for it is still unknown if ghosts read newspapers– but if they did, they would read the Scripps Voice), I have compiled a few ghost stories from current students.
The old dorms are haunted. Let’s just get that out of the way. So it’s no surprise that our first story comes from former Dorsey resident, Jiaming Lin ’19.
“I lived in Dorsey my sophomore year in room 204 or something. I don’t think the room exists anymore because of renovations, but it was a forced double so there wasn’t a lot of space. We kept a lot of our stuff in our closet, which was really hard to open and close, but it would open and close on its own.”
Chalk it up to old hinges? I think not!
“One night at 3 a.m., my roommate and I both woke up because we felt weird and closed the closet door,” Lin continued. “The next morning she found a 30 minute recording of our room in the dark and you could see the light of the fan, but she slept with her phone on her shelf so there’s no way she could have recorded it.”
Watch your phones if you live in Dorsey!
It’s not just old dorms though. At the tender age of two, Schow Hall (formerly and currently New Hall for some) also seems to have acquired a supernatural being.
“I want to tell you about the asshole ghost in my suite,” Alyssa Neda ’21 said. “Specifically the bathroom in Suite 100. At first it was just the motion sensor paper towel dispenser going off when no one was even close to it or moving, but now every once in a while, the stall door will start shaking for no apparent reason. It’s super scary, but seems to be harmless.”
Harmless for now! I’d keep a close watch on that bathroom.
Perhaps the most mysterious building on campus is one that was just recently opened to student housing, the Revelle House. Now, it’s no surprise that the house is haunted. But Natasha Vhugen ’21 and her roommates were told that the ghost of Jaqua lives there.
“We’ve noticed his presence through the lights,” Vhugen said. “I have a lamp and it’ll flicker or dim whenever we say certain words! Mostly when we say things that pertain to either joy or death.”
While none of these stories sound particularly frightening, it may serve us well to tread with vigilance. Surviving one night studying with the ghost in the Toll Browsing Room is all well and done, but if these ghosts of years past do come out to play, especially as night grow longer and colder, it is best to remember that even in the early hours of day when the world sleeps and your eyes grow tired over your textbooks, you may not necessarily be alone.
Image Credit: Scripps College
