As fall is getting underway and Halloween is fast approaching, tales of ETSU’s haunted campus begin to circulate once again.
A popular spooky tale is about “marble boy” in Lucille Clement Hall. As an RA of that building, I’m required to walk it late into the night, and I can promise that it’s just as eerie as one imagines.
With hallways that seem to change and noises coming from all over the building, it seems the perfect dorm to be the most haunted dorm on campus. And it is.
Ask anyone the tale of marble boy and they’ll tell you something like this: marble boy was the son of a construction worker and would regularly come to work with him whenever he wasn’t in school, and he loved playing marbles wherever he could. They hadn’t yet finished the building, but the five floors had already been created. One day he was playing with his marbles on the fifth floor when one rolled into the elevator shaft. He didn’t know that they weren’t ready and when he got inside, he fell to his death.
Residents have been talking of hearing marbles rolling on the floors above them (including the fifth floor) ever since.
And he’s not the only ghost there, according to a resident who has been staying for a little more than the semester, there seems to be a new, or relatively uncommon, ghost on the third floor.
They were coming back around 8:00 am at the third-floor entrance, looking at their phone when they saw a man standing in the foyer. They assumed that he was another person staying there and walked past, but after a second decided to look back only to find that the man had disappeared.
According to the resident, where he was standing there was no way he could have left without being seen as he did so. On a separate occasion, they were coming back by the same route and saw the same figure and noticed that it was the same figure they had seen before, however, it was not a person, but a masculine-looking shady figure.
While we talked about various ghosts on campus, they told me about a plane crash that happened in 1985 in which the pilot was able to crash the plane nearby instead of Lucille Clement. (Source: AP News) The plane had three casualties but saved thousands by the redirection of the crash. Along with two passengers, the pilot died as well and that is whom the shadowy figure is believed to be.
I love all kinds of cryptids and monsters, but there’s a special place in my heart for ghosts and especially ghosts I have a personal connection with. Keep an eye out for more articles as we get closer and closer to Halloween.
