Ball State University students had the chance to discover the ghosts on and around campus through a haunted tour led by the anthropology club.
The tours were late Friday and Saturday, which started at the corner of McKinley and Riverside avenues and made its way down University Avenue to its final stop: Guthrie Park near Ball Memorial Hospital.
The tour guides, club members Julia Bradley and Dane Rowles, told stories about strange occurrences around campus.
Stories were about supposed ghosts in places such as Shively Hall, Knotts/Edwards Hall, Bracken Library, Elliott Hall, Virginia Ball Center, Hotel Roberts, the former Muncie Central High School, the tunnels under campus, Muncie Civic Theatre and Guthrie Park.
"Believing in ghosts and spirits have a lot to do with culture or what a society believes in," Bradley said.
There were stories such as doors mysteriously locking in Shively Hall, an elevator going up to the ninth floor randomly in Knotts/Edwards Hall and a story about the statue Beneficence, who will cry tears of blood when a pure virgin graduates from Ball State.
Muncie Central's story was about a boy who disappeared in the school and workers later found bones in the elevator shaft along with a pocketknife, the tour guides said.
The guides said one of the most famous ghost stories is about the fourth floor of Elliott Hall, where a man named William Schanberg supposedly hanged himself after his girlfriend broke up with him after he came back from World War II injured.
The guides said students who live beneath the fourth floor reported sounds of tables moving to the spot where the man hanged himself.
Other stories included the underground tunnels that were used for food transportation and stretched between Elliott and Johnson halls.
The tour guides said the tunnels were haunted by a rapist and were eventually shut down because they were not physically safe.
The tour ended at Guthrie Park as the students stood by an empty pond.
The tour guides said a young girl drowned in the pond and it was eventually emptied to prevent future drownings.
Junior Zach Reeves said he did not know any of the stories and thought the tour was interesting.
"I wish they would have taken us into the places, but now I will go there myself," Reeves said. "It would be sweet if I had an encounter with one of the ghosts they talked about."
Donations were collected at the tour that will go toward the anthropology club, Bradley said.
"We thought it would be a fun thing to do. We were going to do it around Halloween but did not have enough time," Bradley said. "We want to do it again."
Poltergeist placesThe tour guides took students to haunted places on campus and in Muncie, such as:
- Shively Hall
- Knotts/Edwards Hall
- Bracken Library
- Elliott Hall
- Virginia Ball Center
- Hotel Roberts
- The former Muncie Central High School
- Tunnels under campus
- Muncie Civic Theatre
- Guthrie Park
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