New book documents the legendary hauntings on Arcadia University’s campus

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October 31st, 2022 | By Ryan Genova

Is Arcadia’s campus haunted? Generations of students have reported scampering footsteps, creepy voices, and other unnatural noises in dorms during the wee hours of the night. Legends are told of past deaths within Arcadia’s boundaries, their spirits allegedly still haunting the grounds.

Occasionally students claim to have seen the figure of a woman dressed in 1800s-era clothing, believed to be the ghost of Abigail, a young aristocrat who supposedly jumped to her death from the castle after her parents denied her plans to elope with a stableboy named Toby.

Then there are stories from students who have woken up to find their phones full of pictures of themselves sleeping, allegedly victims of phantom prankster Max.

What’s legit, what isn’t?

A new book by ’07 graduate Josh Hitchens, Haunted History of Philadelphia, documents some of the most well-known campus hauntings, including the fire that destroyed Rosedale Hall, the exhuming of grave sites to make way for the construction of Heinz Hall, the death of the original owners’ oldest daughter, and the untimely death of owner George Harrison inside Grey Towers Castle.

A view inside Grey Towers Castle, completed in 1898

“There’s kind of everything,” student Kat Bleiweiss, former president of the Society for Castle Restoration (SCR), said in a podcast interview. “There’s little boys without faces, there’s stories of star-crossed lovers, there’s suicides. There’s also the ghosts of the Harrison children that are just staying there because that was where they grew up and that was where they were happy as children. There’s ghosts of Mr. and Mrs. Harrison. There’s quite a smorgasbord of spirits.”

The SCR gives campus ghost tours each fall which dive right into the rumors of hauntings, many of which appear in Hitchens’ book. The tours run though Saturday, November 19, and area residents can sign up here.

For more on Arcadia’s haunted history, you can check out this article, which includes the excerpted podcast created by students in 2020. For a virtual ghost tour, you can watch the YouTube video posted by the university in 2020.