Spirits abound on campus

Sit very quietly and listen to the silence in the Career Development Center, and you'll hear the ghosts of unborn babies crying.\nOr maybe it's just the whirring of the copy machines. \nThe Career Development Center, listed on the National Registry of Haunted Houses, has long been one of Bloomington's most famous haunted spots. The legend goes back to before World War II, when the house was owned by a doctor who practiced illegal abortions. \nBut the story grows hazy with rumors that the doctor supposedly buried the fetuses in the basement walls. After he was arrested for performing the abortions and was released on bail, he allegedly hanged himself from the building's spiral banister.\nIn 1971, IU student James Gary Lecocq documented the house's legend in his Folklore 101 term paper. But Lecocq discovered that in addition to the doctor and the fetuses, the house is also supposed to be haunted by its builder, who shot himself in a corner of the basement after completing the structure.\nSince then, the building has been a sorority house, a fraternity house, a rooming house and finally the Career Development Center, and with each change, at least one person in the house, often more, have claimed to hear babies crying or feel cold hands touching their shoulders. \nBut some take a more down-to-earth view. For example, Susi Miller, a senior assistant director and recruitment coordinator who has worked in the building for more than 10 years, said she doesn't put much stock in the supposed ghost stories. \n"I've been here at 3 a.m. all by myself and I've heard or seen nothing," Miller said. She added that there are all sorts of easily explainable "mysteries" surrounding the Center. \n"Supposedly you can be able to hear the ghosts of little aborted babies crying," Miller said. "In 10 years I haven't heard them, so either the ghost has left, or I'm not very perceptive. I knew a man who lived here when it was a rooming house, and he claimed to have seen something, but then again, he was kind of weird." \nMiller went on to dispel the mystery of the center's infamous window, which can be seen from the outside of the building, but can't be found from the inside. \n"It's a closet that's been walled over," Miller explained. "The building's been remodeled over the years, and (the window) is nothing otherworldly. It's just a modeling feature."\nThe Bloomington campus is no stranger to stories of hauntings and urban legends. In 1911, a mysterious woman in black was seen roaming Third Street. Students who saw her chasing fraternity members down the street originally thought she was a man dressed as a woman because "the activity shown was much greater than the average woman possesses." \nAccording to IDS reports from the IU archives, the specter eventually made an appearance at a Women's League Halloween party and announced that she would return to haunt Third Street every Halloween night. \nIndividual residence halls have their own legends as well, the most well-known probably being the Read Ghost and the McNutt Hatchet Man. The Hatchet Man legend is about a girl who stayed in McNutt over Thanksgiving was found dead in her hallway one morning. Her throat had been slit, presumably with a hatchet, and her hands were worn to the bone from clawing at the door. \nThe story of the Read Ghost involves a coed who came to a grisly end as well. Supposedly her boyfriend became jealous and stabbed her to death, stashing the body in a tunnel underneath the residence hall. But students are skeptical.\n"I've heard he stabbed her with a scalpel, because he was supposed to be in medical school, but I just don't know," said sophomore Brent Woodall. "I don't believe something like that could have happened without there being some kind of major news story about it. It seems like someone would have wanted to write an article that you'd be able to find on it, but I haven't seen anything like that." \nWoodall said he didn't believe in ghosts, especially the Read Ghost.\n"I've heard people get a little spooked about it, but I don't see much reason to," Woodall said.\nRead Center resident assistant and masters student Matt Lewis said he agreed. \n"I think it's just a big hoax," Lewis said. "I mean, it's possible that there's a ghost, but I don't think there really is one"