Newswise — Ask most University of Maryland students what they fear the most, and they will most likely say grades, crime, or even gaining the "freshman 15" pounds. But if more students knew about how many superstitions, legends and ghosts the University of Maryland campus hosts, there might just be a lot more dorm rooms with their lights on at night.
University archivists have compiled all the eerie happenings and artifacts from the 19th and 20th centuries, and put them on display in the Hornbake Library's Maryland Room Gallery just in time for the Halloween season. The exhibit, aptly named Mysterious Maryland, features newspaper clippings, photos, memorabilia, and even an empty wooden coffin - or is it?
Curator for Historical Manuscripts Jennie Levine and Assistant University Archivist Elizabeth McAllister developed the exhibit with the help of graduate student Jenny Kinniff. McAllister says it is "a collection of quirky ghost stories collected over the years from Prince George's County and on or near campus."
The tales, images and tokens of horror, and superstition are organized into categories: the on-campus tales are grouped by building or building type, and there are also displays for the areas surrounding campus into Prince George's County and beyond.
As you walk into the exhibit, the first thing that catches your eye are artist renderings of "creepy creatures" that roam College Park and the surrounding counties. Here you can see life-size images of - and newspaper clippings about - the Dwayyo, a coyote/hyena-like legend from Frederick County; the Bunnyman, a hatchet-wielding man who dresses in a pink bunny suit and torments people in the DC/Metro area; and the infamous Goat Man, a half man, half goat creature who has been spotted around PG County since the 1950s, and who some believe may actually be the devil himself.
Continue walking through the exhibit, and you'll read about various on-campus haunts. In the Rossborough Inn display, about the oldest building on campus, you'll read about Miss Betty, the ghost who wears a yellow dress and leaves vases of flowers in guests' rooms. You'll also read about the dualist who fought outside the inn and died in one of the rooms. His blood is said to reappear mysteriously on the floors.
In the "Dorms of Doom" display, you'll read about the tragic stories of Len Bias, whose ghost is still rumored to bounce basketballs in his former residence, Washington Hall, and about the freshman who committed suicide jumping out an Easton Hall window in the 1990s, and still haunts the eighth floor.
You can see the empty (we hope!) coffin of Katherine Anne Porter, the famous Maryland author who wrote Ship of Fools. There are photos of the McNamee cemetery, located by Byrd Stadium, newspaper clippings about a number of ghosts of former Greek students who continue to haunt their old fraternity and sorority houses, and photos and information about dozens of other hauntings on campus. Download a map of all the haunted places on the University of Maryland campus.
And then there are the authentic pistols that were at the scene of the famous Decatur-Barron duel at Bladensburg in 1820, information about the haunted Riverside mansion, the Mt. Rainier exorcism house - which spurred the writing of the book and movie "The Exorcist" - and various other local mysterious murder cases. Jenny Kinniff, a graduate student in the College of Information Studies/Department of History, conducted a large portion of the research for the exhibit as part of a practicum during the spring 2007 semester.
McAllister says interest in last year's Ghost Tour offered during Family Weekend helped spur development of the Mysterious Maryland exhibit. And how does she feel about how mysterious Maryland really is? "I don't know if I believe any of it because I haven't seen anything - but maybe I would if I had."
The Mysterious Maryland exhibit is located in the Maryland Room Gallery on the first floor of Hornbake Library. It is open through December 21.
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