Are Hunter dorms haunted?
In light of Halloween
As Halloween approaches, we’re overloaded with all things ghoulish, paranormal and spooky. Stores are filled with candies, masks and spider decorations. Not to mention all the corn fields, hay rides, and haunted houses we’ll all be doing for the month of October.
But what if I told you that something haunted, but something also very familiar to Hunter students, is within reach? Yes, I’m talking about the 25th Street dorms.
A good friend of mine, Linda 24 and a recent graduate of Hunter’s Math department said: “Before I moved into Brookdale I visited the dorms once. A friend of mine from high school, who was a year older than me, lived at the dorms and invited me. She gave me a tour of Brookdale and said that there was a morgue in the basement used by the nursing and physical therapy students. She also pointed out that Bellevue Hospital was across the street, and that the dorms had once housed the hospital’s psychiatric ward.”
Linda added: “Once in her room, my friend showed me a button next to her light switch which clearly had no functional purpose, and she said it had served as a nurse call/panic button for those mentally disturbed individuals once housed there. These defunct buttons exist in every dorm room, but their purpose is unconfirmed.”
But if the building’s history doesn’t scare you off, maybe a description will.
“The east building, home to the rotunda is perhaps the eeriest. The rotunda is often off limits to students and residents except for special events. There is also a (quite old) piano in the rotunda. The rotunda offers panoramic views of the east river and the FDR drive. It is at once perhaps the creepiest but also the loveliest place to play an old piano. Doors all around open up to a balcony, and the rotunda itself is a place drafty, echoey, and isolated.”
This all scared me just a bit, as I’ve only seen the outside of the Brookdale Residence. But the thing that caught my attention most was “in the west wing of the dorms, there is a certain floor where the elevator opens up to just a locked door. On every other floor, a long hallway of classrooms lies beyond the elevator. So what exactly exists on this locked floor? I have wondered for years”.
And now I wonder too.
Brookdale resident Shannon Ho