Old Botany? More like Old BOOtany, am I right? No?

"OLD BOTANY: Built in 1887, the oldest campus building whose exterior has not been significantly altered. Designed in a "Richardsonian Romanesque" style, it had greenhouses attached and a formal garden in front and was long a center for botanical studies."

Most of the buildings I've talked about on this blog have some sort of hidden past which isn't at all obvious just by looking at them, which gives me plenty of material to write about. With Old Botany, though, there's really not a whole lot to say that isn't already expressed in just its name. It's a botany building. It's very old. It might be haunted.

Wait, what was that last bit?

That's right. Stories say that the Old Botany building is inhabited by a ghost, and that the spirit in question is that of none other than Frances Atherton, wife of George Atherton. She already lives on after her death in the name of Atherton Hall, but apparently that just wasn't enough for her. According to some versions of this story, Frances makes sure that the building's plants are properly taken care of, by which I mean that if the plants aren't properly taken care of, she'll start throwing things around, flickering lights, making odd creepy sounds, and generally causing trouble until the situation is rectified. (How and why plants would be neglected in a building specifically devoted to caring for them is not a question that is answered in these stories.) Others say that Frances spends her afterlife watching from a high window over her husband's grave across the street, presumably a) to make sure that nobody disturbs him, and b) to make sure that he doesn't disturb anyone else by suddenly rising up out of the ground and outlining new plans for the university.

And what about the former university president himself? Well, since I don't have anything else interesting to say about Old Botany, and because it's almost Halloween, I can talk about his ghost too. He's said to be hanging around the Schwab Auditorium, Unlike his wife, he's a fairly easygoing sort of ghost, not really doing anything spooky besides watching student performances and occasionally rustling the stage curtains. It is rather intriguing that Atherton's school would be seen in the Schwabatorium; depending on which sources you consult, that building is also believed to be inhabited by the ghosts of Charles Schwab himself, a janitor, a little girl, a Revolutionary War soldier, several alumni, many thousands of dollars, Andrew Carnegie's dignity, and the hopes and dreams of countless students.

And that's just two buildings. There's been a lot of reported sightings of creepy crawlies throughout the university, giving an entirely new meaning to the phrase "school spirit". Betsy Aardsma, the victim of a real and as-of-yet-unsolved murder when she was a student in 1969, supposedly haunts the basement of Pattee Library where she was stabbed to death. On a much lighter note, every building that has ever housed the mule Old Coaly's skeleton has been the site of reports of ghostly braying noises and hoofprints, perhaps indicating that my theory wasn't so far off after all. Or that a bunch of pranksters thought it would be funny to make people believe that Coaly was still alive and stubborn as ever. In any case, nothing was ever proven.

Really, if you pick any part of Penn State, chances are that there's ghost stories surrounding that place. Why this obsession with the supernatural? It is entirely possible that many of these stories were the result of pranks by bored and mischievous college students. However, there might be an even simpler answer: because people like them. These sorts of stories, like any myths and legends, serve to help build a sense of community in the group, and Penn State certainly seems to have some sense of community, for better or worse. Just like the ghosts themselves, the stories survive because people enjoy remembering them and telling them to other people.

Alternatively, maybe ghosts are real, and we should be very afraid.