Megann Horstead
Content Producer
The sound of piano keys tapping, the faces photo-bombing photographs, and feelings of being watched are all stories tracing paranormal activity to North Central’s Pfeiffer Hall.
With Halloween coming up, Pfeiffer Hall’s ghost stories offer a popular topic of conversation among students, faculty and staff. But is there any truth to these stories?
“We can think about what ghosts are symbolically and maybe that’s some of their attraction,” said Matthew Krystal, anthropology professor. Ghosts are on the border zone between life and death and matters like this often fascinate people.
But of course when paranormal activity is involved, not everyone sees the thrill in haunted places.
Speech communications professor Gregory Morley commented on the truths found in Pfeiffer’s ghost stories, which can be attributed to the antiquity of the building and its aging facilities systems.
“I’m not sure if Pfeiffer is haunted, which is to say I’m not sure if ghosts exist,” professor Morley said. “But I can tell you that I have felt a presence.”
As a speech communications professor, Morley holds an office in Pfeiffer Hall. Late nights at work sometimes leave Morley with a need for a general sense of security.
Because NCC is an open campus, Morley said he makes sure that lights are on and doors are locked. Although ghosts have no need for doors, Morley recognizes the rationality for having rituals.
“We’re a society that has troubles with death and with aging in general,” Krystal said. “In making light of (Halloween), we’re dealing with our thoughts about death collectively.”
In turn, the American celebration of Halloween can be viewed as a ritual. The NCC community sustains the idea of Pfeiffer being haunted through rituals, such as ghost stories and ghost tours.
“The stories of ghosts here on campus are distinct to our culture as a community,” Krystal said. “And if you know of these stories, you know something that outsiders of North Central don’t know. It sort of marks our identity.”
Over the eight decades that followed the founding of Pfeiffer Hall in 1861, the building would possess a reputation for playing host to as many as half-a-dozen ghosts, according to mysteriousheartland.com.
In determining the reasons why Pfeiffer could be perceived as haunted, Krystal pointed out the difference between good and bad deaths.
“Bad deaths — deaths that are unexpected or otherwise don’t conform with society’s ideas of how people ought to go — tend to be those ones that generate ghosts.”
But of course viewing Pfeiffer as haunted is a subjective matter. Whether or not Pfeiffer Hall is haunted is to be determined by the individual.
