Ghosts Stories

Like any self-respecting 150-year-old college, St. Lawrence has its share of supposedly haunted buildings and resident ghosts.  

Perhaps the most well-known ghost stories emanate from 1 Lincoln Street, the current home of Phi Kappa Sigma fraternity.   It was acquired by John Stebbins Lee, an early president of the University, in 1860, for the grand sum of $300.   He and his wife had five children, one of whom, Florence, is said to have died tragically in "Lee House" as a child. Her spirit, it is claimed, remains there to this day, a mischievous, teasing wraith who has definite tastes but causes no real harm.

Who's that ghost? Canton's One Lincoln Street, the current home of Phi Kappa Sigma fraternity, is apparently haunted, but no one is sure by whom.

The ghost, the stories go, seems to be female and is sometimes spotted dashing around corners in a long, flowing white garment and red petticoat. The red petticoat is apparently a haughty rejoinder to an early dean of women, who outlawed the colorful apparel on the grounds that it excited the male students.

Human residents of 1 Lincoln have also reported that the ghost doesn't like doors left open and lets her preferences in music be known, unplugging sound equipment if it is blaring rock-and-roll.

Unfortunately, the late University historian Edward J. Blankman told a Syracuse Herald-American reporter in 1978, Florence Lee "is not good ghost material."   She didn't meet a melodramatic youthful fate in that house at all; she grew up to graduate from St. Lawrence, marry and move to Cambridge, Mass., where she became well known in civic affairs and was later a St. Lawrence trustee, one of few women to hold such a post in those times.   Whitman Hall on today's campus is named in honor of her and her husband.

So who is the ghost?   Florence's sister, Gertrude, has been nominated, on the grounds that she was a lonely woman who also died in the house. But the facts don't support her characterization either.   It is likely that the true identity of the ghost in the red petticoat will never be known.

Other campus buildings that are reportedly haunted include Griffiths Arts Center, where a construction worker died in a fall from the roof; Atwood Hall, once the home of the Theological School; the Kappa Delta Sigma sorority house; and the Beta Temple.