The legends claim the girl’s ghost haunts Warriner Hall and in one of the windows, lights can be seen flickering and her silhouette can be seen.

Is this just an urban legend?

According to a June 2, 1937, edition of Central State Life (the predecessor of Central Michigan Life), Theresa Elizabeth Schumacher, a 19-year-old cafeteria worker from Nottawa Township, was killed May 29 after her head was trapped within a small window in a door leading to an elevator shaft. She died from strangulation.

It remains unclear as to why her head was in the door. There were no witnesses to the incident.

Cindy Smith worked as a custodian in Warriner Hall throughout the ’90s and said she has encountered the ghost many times.

She said the elevator would open and close by itself.

“There was one time, I was in the elevator and the door flew open,” she said. “The ghost came on and went down to the basement with me.”

Smith said she saw the ghost flash across the stage in Plachta Auditorium and her vacuum would occasionally turn on and off by itself.

Smith eventually got used to the ghost and would even be friendly with her.

“I would ask if she wanted to help me clean and would give it a rag to help,” she said.

Is it real?

Keith Voeks, assistant director of University Events, had a similar experience while with director Bob Ebner.

One night in 1982, they were taking down a show set on the stage of Warriner Hall’s Plachta Auditorium.

It was late at night and they were by themselves. The doors had already been locked. Then, out of nowhere, a shadow-like apparition ran across the stage.

“We saw a shadow move across the stage and we were out of there in no less than 30 seconds,” Voeks said.

He said in the 1980s, the stage had a fire curtain, which worked as a wall that would come down over the stage and protect the audience from a fire if one broke out.

Voeks said the fire curtain would malfunction by falling and crushing things.

“We would constantly find broken chairs and music stands,” he said.

One night, Voeks said he saw the fire curtain right on top of the piano.

But the piano remained unharmed with only a layer of dust on the surface from the speed of the fire curtain.

“Theresa was playing with us,” Voeks said. “At the very least the piano lid would have been broken.”

Keeping an eye out

Voeks said he has received many reports of seeing lights from the sixth set of windows on Warriner Hall.

But that cannot be possible, he said. The sixth set of lights is an empty space of only about five feet between the fifth floor and the roof.

No lights were ever installed.

He said it is not beyond the realm of possibility that Theresa’s spirit could revisit the place of her death.

“I do believe Theresa is a spirit that keeps an eye on Warriner,” Voeks said.

The 119-year-old facility at 1400 W. Pickard St., was the last facility in the state for people with developmental disabilities to be offered
institutionalized treatment plans.

When the institution closed Sept. 10, the state employed heavy security to watch over the building, including cameras and security guards,
said Dave Sabuda, public information officer for the Mount Pleasant Police Department.

The building has “No Trespassing” signs about every 50 feet and all entries and exits are chained off with signs warning people to stay away.

When trespassers are caught, the police are called are they are subject to arrest or citation, Sabuda said.

“They’ve taken a very zero-tolerance approach,” he said.

Sabuda said many people have already been caught trespassing and more patrols are expected for Halloween.

“We’ve been writing quite a lot of citations,” he said. “There must have been at least six this weekend.”

The site claims that blood stains are on the floor, the sounds of moaning can be heard and even in the daytime a spiritual presence can be
felt.

It claims one of the hospital’s attendants was raped and killed by an escaped patient.

Sabuda said a homicide never happened. He said less than a dozen patients escaped over the years and the facility shut down due to budget issues.

“Some people left the grounds, but they were returned,” he said. “Some of them walked off the property and went into residences, but they didn’t hurt anybody.”

Sabuda said security is needed because some of the buildings that may be of interest are unsafe.

He said there are parts of the building that haven’t been maintained in years including spots in the floor where people could fall through.

Some rooms also have old equipment that people could cut themselves on in the dark, he said.

Sabuda said some of the building’s legends may have come from the creepy appearance.

“When you look at the older parts of the building it looks like something out of any scary b-movie,” he said.

She is convinced that Millpond Park, 607 S. Adams St., is haunted.

November 2006, during her freshman year at CMU, Harris and two friends investigated Mill Pond to determine whether or not it was haunted.

She said as they walked through the dark park late at night she started having thoughts and visions of a paranormal presence trying to
scratch them with claws.

“I’ve never had this happen before but it was like a movie in my mind’s eye; some could describe that as a premonition but it wasn’t that vivid; more like daydreaming,” she said. “I saw something making the gesture of clawing at me, towards my face.”

She didn’t mention it to here friends until they were leaving.

Later that night, she got a call from one of her friends who was with her during the investigation and said he found claw marks, which did
not belong to thorns or a tree, on the side of his body, while he was getting ready to go to sleep.

Harris said she gets an odd feeling in the park.

“There is the feeling of someone or something, watching you. Your every move. You’re not wanted or welcome there and I do feel that something resides there,” she said.

Pavloff, who lives in Cobb 406, said during the first week of school, she was sleeping in her room, when she opened her eyes and saw someone leaning over her laundry basket.

She said she looked again and saw the figure sitting in a chair.

In addition to that, Pavloff said the door handles in the room rattle by themselves when everyone is sleeping and the sink whistles.

“It literally sounds like someone’s whistling,” she said.

Sterling Heights freshman Rebecca Derderian, who lives with Pavloff, said they were all sitting on the futon when they first witnessed the door knobs abruptly rattling.

Rochester Hills freshman Ashley Gribler said the shower in Cobb 406 will occasionally turn on and off when somebody is using it.

Often skeptical during their investigations, the group initially wasn’t expecting much.

But what they saw is something they will never forget.

Grosse Ile sophomore Kara Taylor said the group arrived at the cemetery at about 11:30 p.m.

She said they saw what appeared to be a man crouching over one of the gravestones, leaning against it.

Taylor said the man then took a few steps toward them and then start running the other direction.

The man’s color started changing, Taylor said.

“He was black then he turned white,” she said. “We could see right through him.”

Taylor said she was shocked to have seen what may have been a real ghost.

“I remember thinking, ‘this can’t be real,’” Taylor said.

She said she felt a sad and distressed presence in the man and it felt like they were invading his privacy.

“I could feel my heart beating in my arms,” said Grosse Ile sophomore Lisa Semetko, president of the Central Michigan Paranormal Society.

Walrath works as a senior specialist clerk for annual giving and works with Phone-a-thon to raise money.

She came in one Saturday by herself about three years ago to work on a project.

During off-hours, the alarm is set and will go off within 30 seconds of a person entering.

Therefore, whoever enters the building must shut the alarm off manually within 30 seconds of coming in.

Walrath had just entered the building and was preparing to shut off the alarm when she heard a faint conversation between and man and a
woman.

“The exact second I shut off the alarm, the conversation immediately stopped,” she said. “The alarm wouldn’t have been set if someone was
here.”

Walrath said she checked all over the building and nobody was there. She said the conversation may have ended because the ghosts knew someone was in the building.

Walrath said about eight years ago two Phone-A-Thon supervisors saw a “floating white thing” drift through the air in the back of the building during off-hours.

“They got out of there as quick as they could,” she said.

Two other supervisors said they were getting ready to leave a night shift and were turning on the alarm when they heard a man’s voice chuckling right next to them, Walrath said.

Walrath also remembers a Saturday morning years ago when she came in to work on a project by herself and heard a toilet flush loudly from the basement.

She ran up the stairs, looked around, made several phone calls and can only conclude that she was alone. She asked maintenance workers if the toilet could flush by itself and they said it was unlikely.

Walrath said she believes paranormal activity can exist and that it would be interesting to bring a psychic to the Carlin Alumni House and see what they have to say about it.

“I think the toilet is the only possible thing that could be debunked,” she said.