Dal Student Life hosts not-so-haunted campus tour

I stepped into the Welcome Centre at LeMarchant Place, full of anticipation to face the unknown of Dalhousie University’s campus, as promised on Dal Student Life’s Instagram. Inside, someone in red devil horns greeted me. They offered free Halloween candy and warned there would be jump scares throughout the campus tour. 

As our 15-person group set off into the dark, cold evening on Oct.27, we were led by Grace Adams, a student at Dal. She told us the tour would only have rumoured stories, because she did not want bad luck, and all haunted stories would be specific to buildings. 

The full moon shone brightly as we arrived at our first destination: the closed University Club building. Adams explained that in 1949 the Dalhousie Gazette took photos in front of the building, and the photos had an unexplained smudge of a white figure. Suddenly, as she was telling the story, the light outside the building flickered.

Still in front of the Club building, Adams introduced the alleged Shirreff Hall legend, Penelope, a maid who lived in the building’s annex.. While there, she had an affair with a professor, became pregnant and ended her life after the professor broke her heart. 

We walked across the Studley Quad into the Chemistry building, as she told us multiple versions of Penelope’s death. The first was that she hanged herself from the clock tower of the Henry Hicks Academic Building, the second that she jumped from the top of Shirreff Hall and, finally, that she died in the tunnels under Shirreff Hall. 

Penelope is said to haunt the hall’s residents and tunnel travellers ever since. Adams said many Shirreff Hall residents reportedly hear footsteps in the halls at odd hours in the night, elevators shake, and some have even used Ouija boards to communicate with the famed ghost. 

As a previous resident of Shirreff Hall, I can attest to creepy footsteps at odd hours.

As Adams told this story, a person dressed in white — their outfit stained with fake blood and adorned with ghostly makeup — scared tour-goers by staring as they walked by.

We continued through the Chemistry building until we reached a dead end and exited through the Macdonald Building into the dark night.

Immediately after exiting, another actor with ghostly makeup jumped out, this time yelling “bah!” from behind the stairway heading back to the quad.

The tour’s final stop was the University of King’s College Library. Adam told a story about an allegedly pregnant student who ended her life on the library’s staircase. Adams said many King’s and Dalhousie students report hearing odd sounds in the library’s basement late at night, attributing the sounds to the ghost of the woman.

The haunted tour was not as haunted as promised and shorter than expected, capping at 20 minutes. The lack of jump scares was disappointing, and the tour was frankly unfrightening. Instead, it offered a unique history of campus buildings and thoughts of what could have occurred in the buildings’ past.