Brown's campus is home to thousands of students and faculty — and even beings of another kind: the supernatural. Don't buy it? Some have seen them in front of their very eyes.
Prospects and meetings
Providence Ghost Tour's owner Courtney Edge-Mattos said she "wholeheartedly" believes the tales she tells on her tours. "There's something to trusting your instincts and believing in things you can't explain," she said.
"When people go away, their energy doesn't," Edge-Mattos said.
Such is the case for Edgar Allen Poe, who would rendezvous with his lover at the Providence Athenaeum on Benefit Street— then known as Back Street.
Though his body resides in Maryland, "we lay claim to his spirit," she said.
And the intersection commonly known for its eponymous dating website also holds the prospect of meeting the undead. An unidentified apparition, which may be H.P. Lovecraft's, has been glimpsed outside the horror fiction writer's 65 Prospect St. former home.
Providence's East Side also boasts the spirits of George Washington's horses, whose hooves echo through the University Hall basement where they resided during the Revolutionary War.
"We've rerouted the tours a few times, but we can't tear ourselves away from Brown. It's too good," Edge-Mattos said.
A ‘natural human ability'
Professor Emeritus of Slavic Languages Robert Mathiesen, who has researched and taught courses on historical occult practices, said he has dabbled in the realm of the supernatural as well.
Mathiesen said parapsychology usually explains accounts of ghostly encounters. When people are in environments that seem out of balance — even just a building with an abnormal floor plan — they grow uncomfortable and are "primed to see spookiness," he said.
Still, one house near a cemetery on James Street seems genuinely haunted, he said. Multiple witnesses have reported seeing ghosts there, and Mathiesen once witnessed a framed picture tilt off the wall on its own accord. "There was no trick — at least no trick I knew about," he said.
The tenant never minded, he added. "That guy really liked ghosts," he said, even though "his girlfriends did not."
Mathiesen added that Brunonians with supernatural observations are far from rare. Based on discussions with students in his classes on occultism and magic, he estimated that 10 students per year have shared memories of "strong mystical experiences."
"I certainly have run into a great number of students in my more than 40 years at Brown who have seen spirits or ghosts — or demons in a few cases," he said. He added that most students with such encounters don't feel comfortable talking about them, so there may be more around than meets the eye.
"I think a lot of people have paranormal experiences, but they're afraid to talk about it," said Keith Johnson, founder of the New England Anomalies Research investigation team.
Mathiesen's students have also experimented with gazing crystals, which are used for catching a glimpse of the beyond –– by staring into these objects, one is supposed to experience visions. His students have also tested his Scientific Planchette, a Ouija-like automatic writing instrument made in the 1860s.
Mathiesen, who also occasionally casts spells for people in need, added that "there's no reason to be afraid of magic. If it exists, it's a perfectly natural human ability. If it doesn't exist, why be afraid of it?"
A ghostly gallery
Bernie Larivee, who worked as a heating, ventilation and air conditioning specialist for Facilities Management and a guide for Providence Ghost Tours several years ago, expressed similarly measured agnosticism. "I've had some experiences that have really made me wonder," he said.
While visiting the Rhode Island School of Design's Woods-Gerry House, built in the 1860s as a private residence, ghost tourists — including Larivee himself — find that their cameras lose battery and turn off when they try to take pictures, only to repower once they have left the premises, Larivee said.
On her tour, Edge-Mattos also discussed RISD security guards' sightings of Woods' ghost in the Woods-Gerry Gallery.
Larivee also had an eerie experience working in the Woods-Gerry basement.
"I heard something pounding down the basement stairs," he said, "and it sounded like someone who didn't weigh much … bouncing down the stairs like a kid." When he went to alert the child of his presence, nobody was there.
When the house was a private residence, little girls commonly played a game that involved looking in a mirror and hopping down the stairs backwards, Edge-Mattos said on a tour. This perilous practice was supposed to reveal their future husbands' identities.
Despite this piece of history's remarkable coincidence with Larivee's scare, he had never heard of the practice or connected the two. He had heard, though, about the pile of blood that regularly pools and disappears at the bottom of the home's staircase.
College Hill hauntings
RISD is rich in such ghostly lore, according to Edge-Mattos. In a dorm called Nightingale House, mysterious bony hands have pushed students down stairs. And one studio's sinks were once embalming basins.
But Brown is not without its legends. A ghost story is scrawled in the boiler room of the admissions office, Edge-Mattos said. "Demons fly out of it from time to time."
In addition, someone on a Halloween 2006 ghost tour spotted a revolutionary war soldier by the Van Wickel gates. She thought he was a student in an elaborate and strikingly accurate costume — until he vanished into thin air.
The Main Green in fact was once, and perhaps is still, home to such soldiers, Edge-Mattos said, because University Hall was an army hospital during the late 18th century.
Perhaps the most famous unearthly presence on campus resides in the Annmary Brown Memorial. In the early 20th century, Brown's husband, General Rush C. Hawkins, devastated by his wife's death, commissioned the building where both of their sarcophagi rest.
Mathiesen knew the late professor Margaret Stillwell, who frequently spoke with Hawkins. Though the widower did not believe in an afterlife, he threatened that if there turned out to be one, anyone who messed with his wife's tomb would regret it.
In the 1970s, some of the memorial's mementos were stolen, and the books were transferred to the Hay in the '90s. Mathiesen, whose former student saw Annmary Brown walking about in her own memorial, said "Hawkins would've been livid if he could come back now," Mathiesen said.
Perhaps he already has. According to Edge-Mattos, whose tours linger at the memorial for some time, employees sometimes leave early because of the overwhelming residual energy in the building. Brown and Hawkins, she hypothesized, may be "anxious to mingle."
Supernatural stakes
Johnson has a lot of experience with the otherworldly. He is a former member of the Atlantic Paranormal Society, known for its appearances on the TV show "Ghost Hunters," and leads ghost tours in Pawtucket. According to Johnson, there are two main motives for ethereal entities to haunt the living.
"Residual hauntings" occur when a person gets so absorbed in an action that he or she ends up repeating it after death, Johnson said. It is impossible to interact with such spirits because they are too caught up in their cyclic activities, he added. Edge-Mattos said these spirits often don't even know they're dead.
The other type is an intelligent haunting. Johnson said these are the ghosts that will provide messages, such as the recordings he collects. Sometimes, "something traumatic has happened that causes a spirit to be attracted to that spot." In other cases, the spirit is simply attached to its surroundi
ngs, he said. H.P. Lovecraft, for example, was "obsessed with Providence," and his shadow often lurks around Benefit Street.
Johnson also pointed out that there are many types of paranormal beings other than ghosts, including angels and demons. He added that many vampire stories revolve around Rhode Island settings.
"Providence has interesting history," local resident Eric Barney said on a ghost tour. For Barney, the tour was convincing.
Christian Talavera '12, who was on the same tour as Barney, echoed that he wouldn't be surprised if the spirits Edge-Mattos talked about exist. After all, "it's an old place," he said.
Providence's age makes it predisposed to spiritual presences, Johnson said.
Johnson said seeing ghosts is "a matter of being in the right place at the right time." He added that spirits come out on Halloween because they known people expect them. Still, he added, "I would advise people to be very cautious about contact with spirits because, just like there are deceptive people, there are deceptive spirits."
Deceptive or not, Larivee would just like to see one for himself.
Larivee has heard accounts from other Facilities Management workers, but he looks forward to his first specter sighting. "It would settle a lot of philosophical issues with me — because if you actually see a ghost, there's obviously some sort of afterlife."
