The McNicholas Milestone

In light of the Halloween season, The Milestone Online thought it’d be appropriate to tell some haunted stories surrounding our campus.

For example, it has been rumored that the convent caught fire at one time. It was in the middle of the night when the shrieks of “Fire!” rang out and one of the Sisters of St. Joseph ran out the front doors of the convent to the place where the Memorial monument is. She died right there on the star.

This story is obviously fictitious: the sisters left the convent in the mid 1990’s  and the military memorial was built in 2008. However, the feeling you get when you walk by that star is ominous.

The facts in “The Star” don’t add up, but what about these others.  You decide…

The Vanishing Witch as told by Sr. Judi Keehnen

It was the late 1950’s, and there was a girl who kept to herself. No one remembers her name, but they do remember what she did in the cafeteria one fall afternoon. She never talked a lot, so the children thought she was weird. They bullied her every day, calling her a witch, making noises, and chanting at her. One day she had had enough and the girl got up to leave the cafeteria. When she reached the main doors at the back of the cafeteria she turned around. The lights began to flicker on and off and then went black, even though she nowhere near the light switch. She then disappeared without saying a word.

The Key in the Heritage House as told by Sr. Judi Keehnen

It was a stormy winter night. The Sisters of St. Joseph lived in the Heritage House at the time and the locks were big brass handles that required a skeleton key to open them. One of the nuns got up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and passed through the hallway near the front door. She noticed the handlestarting to move. She thought nothing of it really, probably just the wind, but then she heard someone put a key in the door. She ran to the door and threw it open, but no one was there. Only untouched snow lay on the Heritage House’s front step.

The White Figure as told by Sr. Judi Keehnen

Sr. Judi was getting ready for bed one night at the Heritage House. She wasn’t very tired, but it was getting late. She realized she had left her closet door open, but she figured it wasn’t going to hurt anyone. She closed her eyes to try to fall asleep, and when she opened them there was a white figure walking in and out of her closet. Sr. Judi rubbed her eyes and the walls of her room started to glisten. “My eyes are just playing tricks on me,” she thought. She turned over and fell asleep but was suddenly woken up a few hours later by the touch of cold hands on her back. She turned around and the figure was there, but then it vanished.

The Convent Nuns

Nuns have died in the convent; that is a fact. It has been rumored, however, that they still haunt the place.  According to Student Moderator Mr. Gerard Kissel, the convent elevator runs up and down the floors with no one inside it, windows mysteriously open on the third floor, even though a key is required to enter, and late one night, there were sound of moans and creaking floors from the attic, even though no one had been up there. French students have even heard chairs scraping across the floor in the room above them, even though that area is closed off.  “I was a little superstitious about it. Everyone else didn’t think it was that big of a deal, but I got goose bumps,” senior Claire Redington said.