The following account was originally published at Massachusetts Paranormal Crossroads…

College dorms have long been considered ideal locations for paranormal happenings.

Whether it is young people dealing with being adults for the first time or the history behind the walls, every college seems to have at least one famous haunting that is connected with it.  Massachusetts, with more colleges per square mile than any other state, cultivates its share of college ghost stories and adult who remember the spirits they shared their rooms with.

Becker College opened as an academy in 1784 in Leicester, Massachusetts.  One hundred years later E.C.A. Becker began his college in Worcester, and in 1974 the two colleges merged to create one college with two campuses.  More than a decade before the merger the Worcester campus bought Miller Hall and inherited something more than the tradition and history inside its walls.

Miller Hall was built in 1891 as a two family house.  The property switched hands for the next fifty years.  It most famous residents were the wife and daughter of Judge Webster Thayer who lived there after a bomb destroyed their house in 1937 by communist sympathizers who were angered at Thayer’s decision in the Sacco-Vanzetti case.  Until 1937 the house remained much like it was when it was built by Daniel Bates.  In that year

Harlan Pierpont bought the house and began reconstruction, changing the outside of the house and installing modern plumbing and heating.

Whether it was these changes or the energy brought on by the new residents, the dorm has now become known to the people on campus and in the surrounding areas as one of the most haunted spots in Worcester.  It now acts as a Co-ed dorm for 23 students and at least on ghost.

Over the years students have dealt with unseasonable temperature changes in certain areas, voices coming from the walls and the locking and unlocking of doors.  Due to modifications in the layout of the rooms, some doors lead to nowhere or are always locked.  Although there is nothing behind these doors, voices and banging are often heard. At least twice, people said they had seen a figure in their room or unexplained lights.

Jennifer remembers one night in particular.   She heard banging from inside one of her locked closets.  She had often experienced chills in her room and the feeling of being watched, as well as a feeling of foreboding in her own closet, but that experience left her truly scared.  When she talked to others she found they had experienced similar occurrences.  One room had their fan begin spinning so fast it seemed it was going to come out of the wall.  They then heard something being dragged across the ceiling above them.  They talked to the people that lived above them, but the other students confirmed they had been asleep at the time.  Another night Jennifer heard moaning in the halls.  The next morning, when the students woke up, trash was thrown about the hall.

All the students claimed they had not done it and the floor was isolated by fire doors.

One of the most disturbing incidents involved another girl in Miller Hall.  She woke up to find herself paralyzed and something holding her down.  This kind of haunting is not unusual and is often explained away scientifically.  For a long time there has been the legend of the Old Hag who would hold you down at night and drain your energy.  What was unique about this experience was that the young lady also felt her eyes being held shut, a physical effect not heard often if at all.  When she was finally able to open her eyes, her whole room, darkened when she had gone to bed, was filled with a brilliant white light.

There are no specific tragedies linked to the house to give a reason for the hauntings at Miller Hall.  There seems to be different types of hauntings, from unexplained noises to visual hauntings and they seemed to not be confined to a certain area or room.  Whatever lurks in the halls of Becker Colleges dorm seems to truly be unexplained.