eyes, and screamed. "When they turned on the lights, she was gone, of course, but I had seen
her," she said. "The amazing thing was, another woman in the dorm room said, `Oh, so you've
seen the ghost.' Then she went about describing the same thing I saw, to a T. And I hadn't said a
thing about how she looked."
She continued, "There have been sightings every year, and beside the woman who
described her to me, two other women who lived in the house when I did said they saw her
too." Miss Hickey lived in Holcroft as an 18-year-old freshman in 1971.
When Holcroft was transformed from a dormitory to offices in the late 1970s, the
strange happenings persisted, although not so often. The house had been extensively remodeled
and restored to be fit for new offices. The third floor was used as storage for a number of years,
but many people continued to have experiences with some sort of presence.
Marianne Conroy began working as a secretary on the second floor of Holcroft in the
early 1980s. She remembers going to the third floor for the first time and seeing garlic hung in
every window. Once, as she unlocked the huge oak door to the storage room, she heard what
sounded like two people whispering. She didn't think much of it at first, realizing that it might
be some students walking by the house. She investigated and found that no one was around.
She continued to hear the whispering, but she couldn't make sense out of what was being said.
This made her a little nervous so she left the room. Outside the doorway, she turned to close the
door and lock it, but all of a sudden the door shut by itself. When she related this adventure to
the other secretary, Jan Blanchard, she learned that Jan had had a similar experience the night
before. Apparently, Mrs. Blanchard had gone to Holcroft with her daughter to type her
daughter's term paper. Over the clatter of the typewriter she also heard whispering. Strangely
enough, her daughter could not hear it and because they were frightened, the two left soon after
the whispering was heard.
Jim Moore, formerly assistant dean of Admission, worked at Holcroft and came to the
house late one night to finish up some work. As he pulled into the parking lot, he noticed a light
on in Dean Montague's second floor office. Later, when he went upstairs to use the copy
machine, he saw that the light which he had seen from the outside could be turned on only with
a manual switch on the light itself, not from one on the wall. He remained in the building for
about 45 minutes, during which time he never heard anything nor saw anyone come in. As he
left the building, he noticed that the light he had seen earlier was now off. He knew that he
hadn't turned it off, and no one else was in the building.
A second incident also happened in Dean Montague's office. Bill Deptula, assistant
director of Financial Aid, and John Torpie, from Admission, both left their offices at Holcroft
one evening to attend a meeting. They turned off the lights and locked the doors when they left.
However, when they returned, the light was on in Dean Montague's office. They were certain
that it was off when they left.
Geoffrey Brown, associate dean of Financial Aid, also had a strange experience.
Working late one night, he heard footsteps going up and down the back staircase. He yelled up
the stairs to find out who was there, but there was no answer, so he assumed that whoever it
was didn't hear him. When he went back to work he heard what sounded like a person walking
around on the third floor, so he yelled up the stairs again. After receiving no answer, he decided
to look out the window to see if there was another car or someone else's footprints in the fresh
snow that had just fallen. He found none, so he went
