By Natalia Gonzalez Blanco Serrano ’24
For an institution that’s been around since 1851, Northwestern is seemingly short on ghost stories. The groaning of old buildings could just be the centuries wearing on the foundation, and the unfortunate smell inside of Bobb Hall is probably just the ghost of keg parties past. But that doesn’t stop students, and sometimes even faculty, from speculating about the spectral.
“On the fabric of the human body,” Andreas Vesalius (1543), McCormick Library of Special Collections
Old Daily stories tell tales of wandering spirits who met unfortunate ends on campus. One, which supposedly roams Tech after dark, has been around since the 1950s. As the story goes, a group of professors rejected the dissertation of a chemistry student working toward his doctorate. Devastated, he swallowed cyanide and now roams the halls pleading with professors to change their minds.
University Archivist Kevin Leonard, who has been with Northwestern for 42 years, thinks stories like these might be “people wanting ghost stories” more than anything else.
“I want a contemporaneous record,” Leonard said. “Can I use the archives to plausibly link a person’s experience or the location of [a ghost sighting] to something that happened in the past?” While he hasn’t been able to do so yet, the archives still tell spooky stories.
Largely unknown to the Northwestern community, there are multiple bodies and remains buried on campus. Among them is Lilla Heston—a Northwestern alumna and sister of famous actor Charlton Heston—who spent her professional life working for the Interpretation Department in the School of Speech (now known as the Performance Studies Department of the School of Communication).
After spending most of her life here at Northwestern, her family thought it was only right she be interred on campus. Her cremated remains were placed near the foundation of the Theatre and Interpretation Center quietly, unmarked. When renovations began a couple years ago at what’s now known as the Wirtz Center, her urn was excavated briefly and returned to its resting place with a small plaque to commemorate Heston’s life.
Harry Wells—for whom Wells Field and the Harry L. Wells Complex are named after—is interred alongside his wife outside of the baseball stadium. A dean of the School of Music and his wife are buried beneath a pine tree close to Lutkin Hall. There are even ashes in the foundation of the Transportation Center.
“Music, a Pictorial Archive of Woodcuts & Engravings,” Jim Harter (1980), Music Library
Regardless of whether they leave behind ashes or ectoplasm, there are past lives living in the library still. Endless rows of cabinets stuffed with files house legacies and entire lives of people associated with Northwestern.
“The archives is itself a cemetery,” Leonard said. “Part of my job is to conjure their voices, so they can be heard again after death.”
In this way, Leonard cedes, Northwestern has a million ghost stories. “I think everyone should have the opportunity to see what we have and to learn from the past and hear these voices and read what people have written and appreciate the experiences that earlier generations had,” he said.
Natalia Gonzalez Blanco Serrano is a Medill School of Journalism junior