Past History of the Lady in White by Rebecca Cadle

Built in 1962 could South Puget Sound Community College really be home to its own ghost?  Deemed the Lady in White by those who have witnessed her, she is said to appear in the halls of building 22 and on the outskirts of the campus pond.  According to the legend she started appearing in the late sixties early seventies after the building was renovated.

She has appeared as a young Native American woman dressed in a white dress and as an orb.  Some say she is transparent and others say you do not even know she is a ghost until she walks through a wall.

She has been known to giggle and grin throughout the years.  

Witnesses from the nighttime staff of SPSCC were to freaked out by her to even give an interview.

South Puget Sound Community College was built in 1962.  It was originally named OTCC, Olympia Technical Community College.  Before it was built there was only forest and a railroad that ran through the grounds.  Some say that the Lady in White was a victim from a tragic railroad accident.While another legend claims she was thrown into the swamp that existed before building 22.  Apparently, if your body is thrown into a swamp… your soul has trouble passing on to the other side.Thirdly people claim she started showing up when the burial remains of an Indian Tribe were disturbed during the renovation.  In an interview with skeptic Dale Croes, a professor at SPSCC, he claims to have proven the nonexistence of the lady in white.Croes is locally known for his excavation of  a local archeological dig in 1999 that found tribal artifacts from a buried Indian Village in Olympia (accompanying him on the dig were local students and members from the Squaxin Tribe). (I don’t know how to cite properly, but this is the website I got this from Connection.ebscohost.com/content article) 

Croes in the interview explained that before any dig takes place they must have a member from the tribe bless the site and make sure the spirits are not going to be disturbed.  If at any time there is an issue the dig is called off.

Upon hearing of the Lady in White Croes had a member of the Squaxin Tribe come to the college and have them walk the halls of building 22.  According to Croes if she existed the tribal member would have either seen her or felt her.  The member failed to do so.In the past when Croes has worked with members from the tribes the members have asked him if he could see someone sitting on the far side of the bay at one dig site.  He could not.  This person was apparently a spirit who was watching the dig take place.When conducting student interviews we found that even though no current students who were interviewed have seen the ghost, some of them have said they experienced a creepy sensation in building 22.  When asked if they felt that the sensation could be due to a ghost they were for the most part in agreement.

Ghostly Encounters by Darion Conwell Video by Rebecca Cadle and Annelise Tuttle

     We at the Oly Ghostbusters asked members of the SPSCC community about their experiences with ghosts and the paranormal. Surprisingly, most of the interviewees claimed to believe in ghosts and even to have had a paranormal experience. The Lady in White was unknown to many of the students that we interviewed, however she is well known by the faculty and staff. One staff member in particular, Mary (an SPSCC janitor of 27 years) explains her thoughts on The Lady in White:

 "I think this ghost just wants to be left in peace. I think that in the spirit world, this ghost just wants to carry on with her business and doesn't want to harm anyone".

       Security officers Sgt Craig and Mike McCloskey shared the rumors and myths that they knew about the Lady in White. "I have heard some weird things about building 22. There used to be a game room in there, people would hear voices when the room was empty." said McCloskey.

The two security officers even offered a possible reason for the Lady in White to haunt the campus. Apparently there was a boom of sightings in the 90s after parking lot D was built. During the construction of the lot, several Native American Artifacts were recovered. Perhaps that is when this spirit's resting place was disturbed. 

Anthropologist Professor Dale Croes Disputes Haunting by Rebecca Cadle and Annelise Tuttle

Dr. Dale Croes is currently a professor at South Puget Sound Community College. He works in the Anthropology department. Croes confesses his skepticism of the Lady in White, a ghost claimed to be sited on the SPSCC campus.
Actively involved in Archaeology diggings Croes receives blessings on artifacts by the leaders from the Indian Shaker Church.  The same leaders that bless the artifacts have attempted to search out the Lady in White but have found nothing.
According to Croes, if there is any supernatural activety on campus then the leaders would be the first to know.
Cassie Johnson, an active Anthropology club member since Fall 2009, said, "I've asked Croes about the Lady in White before and he started chuckling. He said if it really is some sort of presence here, its not an "Indian woman" who originated in the several local groups now referred to as "Squaxin". Dale has hosted elders coming to the school repeatedly, and they haven't reported seeing or sensing an ancestor in the vicinity of Building 22."

The rumor that Building 22 was built on an Indian burial ground let alone any type of burial ground is false according to Croes. Building 22 was built upon swamp lands.
According to Johnson, it is odd that most people claim to have seen the Lady in White in Building 22, the previous location where the artifacts were held.
"Our dry lab, wet lab, and main classroom have all been in that building previous to this year," said Johnson.
“They (leaders from the Indian Shaker Church) see people watching us at our dig at mud bay that I can’t see, but they are definitely the ancestors of the people that we are working on and they are checking out to make sure that it is okay with them that were doing this work with the Squaxin Island tribe,” said Croes.
“They come over to bless the site and make sure that we are safe and we have got involved with things that have stopped because there was something going on,” said Croes.
Because these spiritual leaders can see spirits who are on the other side, Croes must have them come to his lab regularly to make sure the artifacts he and his students dig up are blessed.

Croes said, “On the other side of the that the Indian Shaker Church leaders come in and check our artifacts and make sure that there is nothing going on like that that could be harmful to anybody including students. So if there was something unsettling about our artifacts they would have seen something. They have been blessed. I mean they wouldn’t leave our lab or our exhibit and be on exhibit for the public unless they had been blessed by these Indians who are looking for problems like that.”
Because they have to come and bless all of the artifacts, Croes said, “They have been here enough so they would have seen it (The Lady in White)”.
The point being Croes denies any connection of The Lady in White and the digs around campus. He disputed the rumor of the ghost showing up when an ancient burial ground was disturbed on campus by explaining that , “we never see any Indian sites like that on campus.”
They have been digging up an 1880’s railroad that used to run through the campus property. He wonders why people do not start rumors that it was a victim of a train accident. To him this would make more sense.
Or why can it not be a someone whose body was thrown in the swamp that was where building 22 is. He explained that back in the day peoples spirits would have a difficult time passing to the other side if they were thrown in swamp. These spirits are called bog people. To trap the spirit on this side was seen as a punishment.
According to www.anthropolgy.spscc.edu/node/26 Croes has both his MA and PhD in Anthropology emphasizing on Archeology. He graduated from Washington State University in Pullman. He also got his B.A. for Anthropology in Seattle at the U of W.
He mainly focuses on wet sites, which are places that have been waterlogged.
Croes has many impressive achievements such as his dig in Portland, Oregon. Where he worked with the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians, The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, and the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Indians. He was among one of the first people to dig at the National Historic Landmark wet site of the Sunken Village.
He also helped with the Hoko River wet site, which, is over 3,000 years old. He is collaborating still with a colleagues on creating a detailed account of the dig.
During Croes interview he explained that he has been working on a dig called the QWU for roughly thirteen years. This is a local dig. He collaborates with the Squaxin Tribe. He and the spiritual leaders are constantly visiting his that he keeps his archeological tools and things in, his lab has been there for eleven years.

Photos from the History of SPSCC

 

A look back through the history of South Puget Sound Community College. This video shows some of the oldest photos of SPSCC on record, perhaps these images can shed some light on the Lady in White (Photos courtesy of the SPSCC library).

Question & Answer with Steve Willis

Q1)  How did you hear of the lady in white?

A1) I had some evening shifts in the Library and heard about her from custodial and security personnel. I thought it was interesting few people in the day staff, even old veterans, had never heard of her.

Q2)  How did you hear about the Indian burial grounds?  Because one of our sources disputed this idea… do you have resources for evidence?

A2) There is no evidence. It is part of the lore. A rumor. A tale handed down.

Q3)  Can you recount any of the stories you have heard?  Do you have any contacts we need to know about?

A3) Sometimes she appeared as a 3-dimensional Native American woman wearing white, other times as a blob of light. She apparently made the elevators work in Bldg. 22 after the power was cut, and took a ride on an elevator. She has been seen walking through walls. She likes to giggle.

Q4)  Do you know when the earliest sighting was (or approximately)?

A4) Probably the 1970s or early 1980s. I worked at SPSCC from 1991 to 2000 and she was already a well entrenched part of the school mythology.

Q5)  Why do you think the lady in white is still haunting SPSCC?

A5) Is she?

Q6)  Have you personally seen her?

A6) No.

Q7)  Where has she been sighted at the most on campus?  And any other locations that are not as often?

A7) Building 22 and the lecture halls to the south of 22, even before the lecture hall was built she supposedly was seen at the swamp there. I heard she was usually seen at night after a rain. Those are the only locations I’ve heard. 

Building 22: The Legend of The Lady in White.

The legend of "The Lady in White" is explained. Turn out the lights and turn up the volume for this chilling tale. 

Steve Willis storyteller of South Puget Sound Community College's Lady in White

Bezango: Ghosts and Love

Posted by the folks at OP&L on March 24th, 2010

by StevenL (Steve Willis) Article provided by Olympia Power & Light, 3/24/10

I propose Olympia’s weirdest moment in matchmaking, weirder than any couple on OP&L’s dating page.

It seems most people don’t believe in ghosts until they encounter one. And in this age where romance has been killed by industry, there are many people who don’t believe in love until they fall into it.

Spirits of the departed still among us and the realm of romantic attraction: two spheres of thought that are growing increasingly unpopular in this age of cynicism and technology.

But I believe in them both—ghosts and love. And here’s a local story where the two topics should mix.

First, let’s talk about the ghosts.

I’m a librarian by trade, and have collected a few Washington State Academy and library ghost stories over the years.

When I worked in Seattle Public Library’s downtown branch in 1980, my job was situated in one of the two basements. These lower depths were located, so it was said, near a place where a horrible train accident took place in the Victorian era. Some library employees who stayed after hours claimed they occasionally saw people in 1890s garb walking through the walls.

SPL’s sub-basement was far creepier than that other library storage floor made famous in the opening scene of the movie Ghostbusters. However, the film’s portrayal of the catalog shelflist suddenly spewing cards all over the place sent a true chill of horror through all of us cataloguers.

Over in Pullman, WSU’s Holland Library in the early 1980s hosted a very singular phantom. “The Holland Ghost”, as he was known, was said to be a pharmacy student who used the four-story building as his residence for part of an academic year. He wasn’t really a ghost. In fact, he was very much alive.

The Holland Ghost was a playful fellow. One evening right after the library was closed, WSU security was startled to see all the lights on an upper floor suddenly illuminate. Then the lone figure of the Holland Ghost appeared at the window and gave the Wazoo workers the raspberry.

A posse was hastily assembled. They fanned throughout the structure to bust the ghost. One member of the search party (stage whisper: who is today a bigwig at the Library of Congress) told me they could hear the ghost scuttling around—probably through the giant vents—but they never caught their prey.

After the search was over, the lights were turned off and the building locked. And then one of the upper floors again suddenly illuminated and the lone figure of the Holland Ghost was once again giving the raspberry.

Now, on to love.

We start at SPSCC with a campus figure known as “The Lady in White”. Little known by the day staff, she’s a familiar topic of discussion with evening security and custodial folks. Or at least she was in the 1990s when I worked there.

The Lady in White is a young, attractive Native American woman who appears at night after it rains. She is usually seen in the lecture halls or the big central building. Needless to say, she wears a white dress. I hasten to add that even though I logged plenty of evening hours at that school, she never honored me with a visit.

She is said to sometimes look like a normal human being until she does something wild like walk through a wall. Other times she is transparent. Some accounts describe her simply as a shimmering ball of light.

Apparently she’s something of a joker and has been know to smile when startling people. I heard more than one account where she whistles to attract attention.

She also plays with electricity. One tale has her reactivating and riding the elevators even though the power was out.

There were dark rumors—repeat: rumors—that the Lady in White originally appeared on SPSCC-OTCC-OVTI’s turf when building contractors disturbed a sacred spot at some point while in the act of excavating to enlarge the campus back in the 1970s-1980s. Of course, I would be shocked, shocked to even begin to consider this bit of gossip to be true. This information is provided merely as part of the folklore surrounding the Lady in White. 

Meanwhile, up on Cooper Point: I believe the following event took place in spring quarter 1988, if my memory serves right. I was working in the library at The Evergreen State College. It was morning and the library workers were preparing for the day. The doors had not yet opened to the public.

The bibliographic employees were jolted out of their a.m. reveries by a scream. A student worker ran down the stairs from the periodicals section to the reference area. She said she had seen a ghost.

This student was known to us as a serious, level-headed young woman, a responsible person. Not the type you would expect to see confabulating some yarn about a spectre. When things cooled down I asked her to return to the scene of the incident and recount what had happened.

She said a young, clean-cut man, completely shaded gray, came out of an invisible door and strode very purposely about 50 feet in a direct and straight line into another invisible door. He marched from north to south alongside the periodicals area.

Something about all this seemed familiar. Then I remembered one of the families who lost their property in order to make way for TESC told the daily Olympian in 1968 the school would inherit their ghost. That is to say, the ghost of a young man.

The article, “How about a course in parapsychology? Evergreen’s set to host a ghost” by Joyce Nelson appeared, appropriately enough, in the October 31, 1968 issue. The apparition described in the news piece was an exact match for the gray man seen almost 20 years later by the student. So far as I know, no mention of that ghost had been made on the TESC campus between 1968-1988.

I shared this information with my fellow librarian Ernestine, and then left Evergroove for another job.

Ernestine developed an interest in this story over the years. I saw her a few years ago shortly before she herself left our world. I asked her in a jolly way if the ghost was still tromping around TESC. She gave me a very serious, steady, this-is-no-joke look and evenly said, “Oh yes.” Something in her manner told me to leave it alone. In hindsight I wish I had pressed her for more info.

So it would seem SPSCC’s Lady in White and Evergroove’s Gray Man are young, single, and still at large. What else could it be but broken hearts that keep these two from moving on to the next step? We have to get this couple together.

“O, tell her, brief is life but love is long.” -Alfred, Lord Tennyson.