Ghostbusting Palmer Hall 👻
Boo(m), you're done 👏
Uncovering the Myth: Palmer Experiments 🧫
Palmer Hall is not a new building on the Colorado College campus. Constructed in 1904, Palmer serves as an academic building for the history, economics, business (BESOC), geology, and political science departments. The psychology department was previously located on the 4th floor (AKA the attic), until it wasn’t. The myth in question: did the psychology department move because of experiments gone-wrong?
Before we answer, let’s hear how students see Palmer today.
Political science major Elizabeth Girian ‘24 said this about the building:
This summer I was like bruh it’s haunted. I would be one of the only ones in the Palmer basement and sometimes my office door would randomly creak open. Or I’d hear footsteps and shuffling about outside and then randomly nobody was there. So spooky 😈
When asked if she would take $1 million to sleep in the Palmer Attic for one night, she said via text: “Prolly, because the money would be nice, but also the emotional scarring might not be worth any monetary value.”
Could the hauntings be related to the experiments that took place? Check out this photo below for insight. (Yes, it is real).
Yikes . . . 😧
Moving on, students and alumni who had visited the attic said this:
Hart Hancock ‘23: It is eerie. It has the vibe that people left in a hurry or something. If you are in there, it feels like you shouldn’t be.
Oliver Kendall ‘24: I haven’t heard anything, I just know people have sex up there. That is all I know.
Aidan Santos ‘24: I mean, it’s pretty creepy. It kind of feels like somebody died up there, or there is a ghost haunting the walls. There were probably doing something with pain in those labs.
I went up there earlier this week and can confirm these spooky descriptions.
Jessy Randall, archivist and curator of CC’s special collections, has her own impression of the attic. “It looks like an old-school point and click game,” said Randall. “There are some weird nooks and crannies where you think, ‘if I walk through here will I go into a portal or another dimension?’”
According to history professor Carol Neel, a bat tried to find this other dimension and wound up dead in her third-floor office. RIP attic-bat 🪦
So . . . what about the experiments 🧪 ?
“Based on the look of Palmer attic, you would think they were super-creepy torture experiments,” said Randall. “I don’t think they were.”
Let’s ask psychology professor John Horner, who used to have his lab in the Palmer attic (and still teaches at CC).
“All kinds of things happened up there,” said Horner. “Over the years, it was mostly occupied on the East Side. I had a learning lab up there, and the guy before me, Carl Roberts, had a learning lab.” According to Horner, past professors had a neuroanatomy lab, sensation-perception lab, and faraday cage.
What stopped the experiments 🔬 ?
“It was a fire hazard,” said Horner. “If a fire caught in Palmer, we would lose a lot of students.” According to Horner, no experiments or dangers that he is aware of occurred before, during, or after his time in the Palmer attic. The psychology department moved to Tutt Science in 2003.
In present news, the Palmer attic remains a mysterious (and eventful) place for CC students.
When asked about the rumors of students drinking and fornicating, Horner said, “I know them to be true. They aren’t rumors. There was evidence of such action.” And with that being said, I'm going to leave it at that.
We still don’t know exactly why the Palmer Building is so creepy, but we do know there are more questions than answers. Please reach out to me if you know more about the history of Palmer and its mysterious attic.
Here are some photos of the Palmer Attic currently (taken by Nick Bishop, November 2023):
Did you read between the lie 📄 ?
If you missed last week’s edition, please see here.
The true stories: A Winterfest Hijack and Homecoming feat. Pink Eye were both true stories. I have never been to Winterfest, but there is a reason CC gives less money to the festival than before 2013. 63% incorrectly guessed the lie.
The false story: As much as I wanted this one to be real, The Milker did not in fact exist. I hope to meet them in another life. 36% correctly guessed the lie.
Reading between the lie 🤐
Before Reading: One story is false, two are real. Please vote in the poll for which story is the lie. Good luck.
Beers in the Black Forest 🍺 : An old tradition called “Senior Sneak Day” went wrong after a faculty member died in a car crash driving back from Wilkerson Pass. The tradition, which entailed students “abducting members of the faculty and [taking] them for a riotous day of drinking in the Black Forest,” ended after the car crash. The faculty member who died was a sculptor in the art department. From what I know, the tradition essentially took staff to the Wilkerson Pass area to get wasted. (I doubt abductions were actually occurring.) What a great idea!
A Rastall Commencement 🍲 : After the annual champagne showers in 2015, completed, seniors stormed into Rastall’s and started a food fight. If that isn’t enough chaos, a senior guy stood up on a table, grabbed the ceiling and started hanging from it. And then . . . the ceiling fell through. Oh, and he was the commencement speaker for his graduating class (until that moment). I picture food scraps, broken drywall, and dust everywhere. Please do not get any ideas.
Greasing the pole🚏: Another tradition went awry in the early 1920s after a guy climbing a greased pole fell and died on campus. Grease pole climbing was a popular tradition on other college campuses at the time (and even now). The goal was to be the first one on top of a long pole that was covered in grease (self-explanatory, I guess). There were typically tons of students around the base of the pole, but the climber got unlucky and fell and cracked his head open. Tragically, he died (but there were no other details recorded) according to CC’s Special Collections. Another great tradition lost! 😑
Note: These are anonymous submissions about real-life situations. If you have something you would like to share, please submit it here.
Dear campus 📝 ,
When I was in 3rd grade we did this thing at my school called Apple Valley Days where you dressed up and learned about like pioneer era life. One day my mom woke me up and told me that it was the beginning of Apple Valley Days and so I got dressed in my outfit, I had a long dress on with an apron and a bonnet like I was doing the most. Anyways my brother went to a different elementary school so I was always dropped off for school super early and I went to my teacher to show her my outfit and she was like "you look great but Apple Valley Days doesn't start for another two weeks." I literally almost died I like ran to the office to call my mom and I was on the phone with her sobbing that I needed her to bring me a change of clothes and it was literally so terrible like Lisa set me tf up. Also later at lunch this kid asked me why I had been in a weird dress earlier and one of my friends was highkey a bully and they were like "what is he talking about" and I lied and said I had no idea and then we all started being mean to him. I'm sorry Will that was my fault.
Oh lord those photos are scary 😳