Some students are wondering if construction at Aquinas and Stafford halls has conjured up spooky occurrences.
Freshman Angelica Contino said that she refuses to stay in her room in Aquinas alone, and she even feels uncomfortable being the last of her roommates awake at night. She described a recent strange encounter.
"One night all three of us woke up at exactly 3:30 a.m., shooting up from our beds like something was forcing us, and the Keurig machine was turned on when we specifically remember turning it off," Contino said.
Contino is not alone in her experiences; another freshman resident who wishes to remain anonymous shared a story. While falling asleep, the roommates heard noises. They were nothing out of the ordinary for a typical dorm -- dresser drawers opening and closing, doors creaking and nearby footsteps. However, the situation took an unexplainable turn when they heard noises from the bunk above them, which has no sheets or blankets because no one sleeps there.
"The noise gave the impression that somebody was lying in the top bed and was tossing and turning." the student said. "Normally this is a normal sound among sleeping individuals, but in this case the bed was vacant. It was very brief and only lasted a few seconds or so and at the time I tried to brush it off as simply imagination."
Rumors the residence hall is haunted have even surfaced on the Internet. A blog entry on forgottenusa.com states there is "an angry man that screams at you while you are sleeping. Feeling as if someone is in your face trying to intimidate you."
Joanne Emmons, founder and president of Paranormal Consulting and Investigations of New Jersey, has said that she has conducted investigations in similar situations where construction can stir up increased paranormal activity.
According to Emmons, there are two theories when it comes to construction and paranormal entities. She said the first is that spirits simply do not like change; to them they are always in the same place at the same time. The second theory seemed more plausible in this situation.
"If a spirit is attached to an area in a building and you're doing physical construction, you're putting mechanical energy there which would cause changes and affect other energy," she said. Because spirits themselves are entities, they can "feed off" this energy.
Aquinas hall was constructed in 1971. According to The Setonian archives, women were the first to live in Aquinas, and they also moved in while it was still partially under construction.
The origin of Stafford Hall dates back to the 1860s when Seton Hall was founded. It was a part of the original campus, according to University archivist Alan Delozier.
Mary Marshall can be reached at mary.marshall@student.shu.edu.
