It was August of 2006 when resident assistant Suzy Chhim was placing name tags on her residents’ doors in Hinman College’s Smith Hall. Although the dormitory was uninhabited before students moved in for the semester, Chhim heard loud, violent noises come from suite 310. She sought the help of a fellow RA who helped her search the building, but they found no one.
‘It sounded as though someone, or something, was inside banging around or slamming furniture within the suite,’ said former Hinman RA Brent Gotsch, who wrote a paper entitled, ‘Haunted Hinman and other tales of the supernatural,’ on this and several other incidents.
During the semester, students claimed they heard creaking and smelled an odor of an unfamiliar perfume in the building.
Every year around this time, tales of unexplained and mysterious events begin to surface as popular dining hall conversation. Folklore and ghost stories are very easy to find at Binghamton University, and according to the tales, many dorms and offices on campus are haunted.
Libby Tucker, an English professor, was intrigued by BU’s ghost stories and folklore from colleges around the country. She spent over seven years compiling and analyzing the stories, and has recently published a book, ‘Haunted Halls: Ghostlore of American College Campuses.’
According to Tucker, the tales of ghost sightings at BU demonstrate that students are very proud of their time here ‘ albeit at times scared.
‘Having spirits haunting your hall is a sign of school spirit, either specifically for the residence hall or universities,’ she said.
A HAUNTING IN NEWING
Gary Truce has taught at BU since 1968 and currently teaches classes in health and physical education. In the ’70s and ’80s, however, Truce taught parapsychology, a popular course which ‘deal[t] with unusual and sometimes unexplained phenomena,’ he said.
Truce said he has had in-depth experience investigating the paranormal and supernatural and has been requested by Binghamton citizens on several occasions to observe spirits in buildings they believe to be haunted.
‘The big thing I have been working on for several years now has been the spirit phenomena,’ Truce said.
While Truce was a faculty master of Newing College in 2003, he remembers a case that took place in Broome Hall.
‘One girl would come back from class and her chemistry textbook would always be open to a certain page, and it wasn’t her roommate doing it,’ he said.
According to Truce, the events began to escalate as the student’s locked door would mysteriously open in the middle of the night. He also recalls the girl explaining that when she napped she would awake to find a male figure standing over her.
Moments later, the figure would suddenly vanish.
The spirit even tried to communicate through the computer, as the cursor on the screen would move around while no one was touching the computer.
Truce said the girl came to believe that the boy haunting her room had been a chemistry major.
‘She thinks something terrible had happened to him, she was kind of drawn down to the area back behind the Newman House,’ he said. ‘She just felt that this was a boy that maybe killed himself. It’s not verified. There is no way to know for sure.’
What appears to be a different variation of the same Newing ghost story was told by Tucker.
In her version, the ghost is named Brian and also communicates with students through computers.
According to Tucker, Brian was studying for a thermodynamics exam and took too many caffeine pills. He ran outside and tripped and fell into a stream behind Newing and drowned.
In 2003, Brian’s spirit communicated with a female student that was living in his former room. He wrote ‘Help me’ backwards across the girl’s computer screen.
Tucker said that while there are no records of this incident at BU, the story still remains relevant.
‘Ghost stories can almost never can be traced back. The stories have a life of their own,’ she said. ‘I don’t think they need historical documentation, they teach us something, they give us a kind of history lesson.’
‘I SAW BOOKS FLY THROUGH THE AIR’
Truce also claims to have had first-hand communication with a spirit that haunted a house just outside of Binghamton from 1986 through 1999.
Truce, who is in the process of writing a book about this experience, said he was invited to observe a home where a couple and their children were being haunted by the spirit of their daughter Becky’s unborn twin sister.
‘I saw books fly through the air,’ he said. ‘The first night I was there an [paper] airplane flew into the room from an area where there was nobody.’
Truce said he witnessed notes materialize and float to the floor, many of which he kept.
Truce recalled receiving one note that read, ‘Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer is coming on television and I want to see him.’
Later that night, the television upstairs turned on by itself.
According to Truce, Becky was sent upstairs to turn off the television, which was turned back on after she returned.
‘A note appeared that said, ‘I thought you wanted to watch Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer too,’ Truce said.
Truce agrees that many aspects of his accounts seem unbelievable, but said he does not try to convince those who are skeptical and instead finds comfort in his experiences.
‘I probably wouldn’t have believed any of this myself,’ he said. ‘I’m not so afraid of what may be beyond death now.’