text by Brian P. Hudson, (c) 1998
Carolyn is Central Michigan University's most famous spirit--or was, before the destruction of the halls she haunted in the Summer of 1996. A silent wraith dressed in pale white, Carolyn never acted maliciously or with ill intent; she was just a presence on campus, as much a part of its history as the school itself. She is the ghost story on campus, and she has even appeared in compendiums and encyclopedias of hauntings around the U.S.A. There have been several embellishments to the story in recent years, thanks to the annual tour of campus, and I will attempt to point these out whenever possible; but the basic story has remained unchanged.
Barnard Hall
Carolyn's "home"--the place her spectre was seen the most, and where her legend begins--was a dorm named Barnard Hall, a large, ivy-covered structure that once stood stoically on the northern edge of the CMU campus. The building--attached to another structure, Tate Hall--spent most of its years as a dormitory, before being shut down for major renovation in 1991. The renovations were deemed too costly, however, and the building, along with neighboring Tate, were demolished in early 1996, to make way for a new commuter parking lot.
A Quiet Death
The legend of Carolyn is amazingly complex, full of lots of small anecdotes told over many years. Many are in sharp contrast to the details we have of her life and death, and even the newspapers of the time do not always agree. Below is, to the best of our ability, the historic truth of Carolyn Corey.
Carolyn
Corey was a freshman at CMU and a member of the Young Republicans when she died on May 6th, 1951. She was only
18 at the time, and hailed from Owosso, MI. She lived in Barnard in the days when it was an all-girl's dorm, and
legend holds that she was known, among other things, to be a silent person, and to have a
tendency to wear white.
In May, towards the end of the Spring Semester, Carolyn and two of her roommates were "out on dates until about 1 a.m." according to the local Daily Times-News; the campus paper claims she was out on a picnic, but the DT-N calls that story "completely unfounded." That night, Carolyn retired early, "not feeling well," and apparently she awoke around 5 a.m. Sunday, May 6th, complaining of labored breathing [reports she had pain in her stomach are apparently false, as the DN-T clearly states that "there was no indication, her roommates said, that she was in pain or seriously ill"]. Carolyn returned to bed, (dressed, legend says, in a white nightgown), and fell asleep . . . or so her roommates thought. The next day, when Carolyn still hadn't woken, they tried to rouse her, and found her cold to the touch. Medical aid was called, but she had died in her sleep, and was unrecoverable. An autopsy could discern no cause of death.
A Spectre Dressed in White
Not too long after her mysterious passing, Carolyn's ghost began appearing in and around Barnard Hall. Commonly, she was described as an apparition, a pale girl in a long white dress or gown, floating through the halls of Barnard on dark nights or standing in the middle of a room, unmoving. Always, she would vanish if approached. There were also reported instances of common "poltergeist" phenomena--moved and overturned furniture, posters and pictures pulled from walls--that were attributed to the otherwise quiet spirit.
And she was quiet. As in life, the ghost of Carolyn was never reported as a noisy spirit, and there were never instances of ghostly voices or unattributable noises, except for the occasional "sounds of someone moving around in the other room." According to reports, she favored her old room the most; this situation culminated one night when a resident of the room was pulled awake suddenly, only to see the form of Carolyn floating above her with a silent scream plastered on her face. No noise apparently accompanied the sight . . . except for the scream of the unfortunate girl faced with the sight.
After that incident, the Housing Office supposedly misnumbered the rooms of Barnard Hall, so no one knew whether or not they were staying in Her old bed (the renumbered room was reportedly room 143). But that didn't stop Carolyn, who appeared for years to come. She seemed especially taken with an old Ouija board, the classic Parker Brother's type, which the Residence Hall kept on hand for the students to play with. It was often reported that students playing with the board had . . . unusual luck with it. It isn't known if anyone actually tried to contact Carolyn herself, but according to reports, there was definitely something guiding the pointer as it sped across the board.
Wandering Spirit
According to the legends, Carolyn liked to wander the grounds around campus. It was said that whenever she was
out roaming the grounds, the window to her old room would be open--even in the years no one lived there. If she
was back home, wandering the halls of Barnard, the window was always shut. (Reports of her death had her standing
before that window in her final hours, struggling for breath.)
Even after Barnard Hall was closed, Carolyn would find ways to make her presence known. On Devil's Night, 1995 (the date of the first Legends tour), some friends of former CMU student Mary Hutter visited the courtyard with a Ouija board, after a listless night wandering campus with it, trying to contact various campus ghosts:
| Finally, they went to the Barnard courtyard. They were sitting in a circle and asking to talk to Carolyn. They started a conversation with someone at least claiming to be her. They asked her where she was and she spelled out B-A-L-L-O-O-N. They didn't understand until they looked over at the balloon one of the girls had brought with them. It was moving--by the wind?--over to the side of the building. She said she was in the building, second floor, second window from the end (directly above where the balloon was now sitting). Then it spelled out L-E-A-V-E. They asked her if she wanted them to leave and it spelled it again and again, so they decided to go. Just as they were walking out of the courtyard Seth and Lyndsey looked up at the window and both saw the curtain, which had been half open, close. They ran out of there very, very quickly!!! |
Carolyn Lives On?
There were never any photos or recordings made of the spirit known as Carolyn; only the sightings, too numerous
to ignore. Sightings died off in the 1990s, when Barnard and Tate were both closed for major renovations, and they
ended forever when, in 1996, the two halls were torn down, to make way for a commuter parking lot. The buildings
were demolished, their debris hauled away; most of the contents of the halls were redistributed amongst the other
dorms--including the mysterious Ouija board, though no one knows exactly which hall it ended up at.
And, it seemed, the ghost of Carolyn vanished.
Only . . . there was a story, reported in Autumn of 1996--several months after the demolition of Barnard --by a young lady I spoke to first-hand. She claimed to have been riding along across campus, on a foggy late-summer morning, when she happened past Park Pond (a small, man-made pond dug out in front of neighboring Park Library), where she saw a gentleman, sitting on a large rock at the edge of the water, playing a pair of small bongo drums. And beyond him, walking along the edge of the lake, silent, was a woman clad in white, only half-visible through the fog. The woman reported an unearthly chill, and said she rode away from the pond just a little faster than she'd approached it.
Was this merely a coincidence? Or does Carolyn live on? One thing is for certain: on the morning the tore down Barnard Hall, Carolyn's window was open. So maybe she was out wandering that day, and Carolyn, the wandering spirit of CMU, is still with us ...
Special thanks to Sarah Leach for providing us with research information, and Mary Hutter for the Ouija story and some eyewitness info.
Sources:
"Carolyn Corey, Owosso Freshman, Dies in Sleep Sunday at Barnard." Central Michigan Life
Vol. 32 No. 26, May 9th, 1951. Front Page.
Cook, Angela. "Stories of ghosts roam CMU campus." Central Michigan Life Oct. 30th, 1995, pg. 8-9.
"Freshman Student Dies in Bed." Daily News-Times
(of Mt. Pleasant, MI),
No. 134, May 7th, 1951. Front Page
