One of my favorite parts of being a William & Mary student is living through history. In just minutes I can walk from my dorm room on campus to Colonial Williamsburg and travel back several centuries. One of the popular attractions after dark in Colonial Williamsburg is the ghost tour. The ghosts, however, do not stay confined to Duke of Gloucester Street. Campus itself has several infamous ghosts, one of the lesser known ones being the Hunt Hall ghost.
Hunt Hall has a long history. It was a hospital before renovations, completed September 5, 1930, and became the David King Infirmary on June 8, 1934. The infirmary was used from 1938-1965, then the second and third floors were converted to a dormitory. In 1973 the former infirmary was renamed James Madison Hall and was completely converted to a dorm. Upon building of a new David King Infirmary, James Madison Hall was renamed Hunt Hall after professor and theater director Althea Hunt. The old building has been through a lot over the years, making it a perfect location for paranormal activity.
Two years ago, a student living in Hunt Hall saw a female ghost in a white hospital gown in his room. That particular area of the hall was the women’s wing of the original hospital, which helps place this encounter in context. In the same room, the other roommate’s closet was found to have scratch marks, much like ones that would be left by a person desperately trying to escape a locked room. The scratch marks are still present in the closet of the room in question today.
The paranormal paranoia still impacts the lives of current residents of Hunt Hall. Yash Ramesh, a current resident of Hunt Hall and my inspiration for this piece, claims to have heard a voice greet her on a dark and rainy night while she was alone. Ramesh’s roommate has witnessed a shadowy object shift in the dark when the rest of the room was still. Another current resident has had problems with a lamp continuing to fall over on its own.
These encounters on their own could easily be explained by an overactive imagination, crazed adolescents and other harmless factors, however, their collective power is far greater. Although I personally have never experienced any sort of supernatural event, I have a hard time dismissing the blatant sign that there could be more to the story of Hunt Hall than what meets the eye. After all, this is far from the only ghost people claim to have seen on campus. There are supposedly ghosts in Tucker Hall (an academic building), the Wren Building (the oldest academic building in the nation), the Sunken Gardens (a beautiful lawn on the old campus of the College), the Brafferton (a former school for Native Americans), Phi Beta Kappa Memorial Hall (a theater named after Phi Beta Kappa, the first fraternity organization in the nation) and more.
As I celebrate my first Halloween in Williamsburg, I will just be thankful that my dorm does not have any ghosts associated with it (yet).
