Mysteries and Myths of the Supernatural at Salve

By: Emily Dauenhauer
Posted In: Entertainment

You came to Salve Regina University for its beauty, for the luxury of living in mansions surrounded by the breathtaking sights of the Atlantic Ocean.

Little did you know that living in some of Salve’s dormitories may include not only sharing your room with a roommate or two, but with the university’s ghostly history as well.

If you’ve been at Salve for more then a week or two, you may have heard the stories of ghosts walking through walls, babies crying who don’t exist, and of course the untimely deaths of some whose ghostly spirits still remain here today. I choose to focus on three mansions in particular: Carey Mansion, Watts Sherman and Wakehurst.

We’ll start with Carey Mansion. The building itself was completed in 1929, years after the golden age and glamour of Newport. It was originally owned by the Bradley family. Mrs. Bradley only had a short time to live there as she died in the house in August of 1929; her funeral was held in the Episcopal chapel that was built into the Mansion.

Mr. Edson Bradley spent five more summers at the mansion, originally called Seaview Terrace until he himself become ill and died in Europe in 1935.

After his death, his daughter, Mrs. Julia Bradley Shipman, took over the property, but neglected it and failed to pay taxes on it so in the 1940’s she turned it over to the city of Newport. It was auctioned off and eventually opened in the 1950 as Burnham-by-the-Sea a summer school for high school girls and stayed open until 1974. Then the Careys of New York took over ownership.

So what gives Carey its haunted reputation? Why are people so intrigued by its myths? Maybe it’s the mansion itself, which according to original newspaper reports, was built in French gothic style; maybe it’s the fact that ABC’s Dark Shadows filmed there, or that the house itself was meant to be mysterious, with secret rooms and passageways built right into it.

The house was built with three separate attics, all containing peep holes so during parties, spies could catch someone stealing or misbehaving at the Bradley’s parties. A large pipe organ was concealed in a secret room. The sound of the organ could be heard in the adjoining chapel, but access to the room itself was only through a second floor trap door.

According to Kristin McMimans, a resident assistant at Carey Mansion, the hauntings are more than just ghost stories; she believes there’s truth behind the rumors.

McMimans along with her friends gather in their free time to question a Quija board on the myths about Carey. The board tells the story through a spirit who supposedly haunts the mansion.

The spirit who calls herself Nina explains, around the 1940s she lived in Carey and had an affair with a man named William. Supposedly Nina and William would meet in the circle room, one day William’s wife, Amber, caught them, and set the place on fire, and Nina and William perished. As the story goes Amber was still alive, but she hung herself in the same room.

Every rumor about Carey is just, “myth and folklore,” according to Teresa Brown, associate director of residential life at Salve. She claims when the house was built that particular room was never finished and was closed off because it had raw brick and still needed plenty of work.

Besides what the Ouija board explained, an alternative rumor that floats around campus is that a nun got pregnant by a priest in the room and hung herself in the very same room. While there is no date and time to the story, one thing is clear: the rumor is slowly fading as Carey has opened the doors to the supposedly haunted circle room for residents.

However, the rumors haven’t completely stopped. Over the past Columbus Day weekend, all four boys living in the circle room went home for the weekend. When they returned, a picture was lying in the out tray of the Chuck Burkhart’s printer.

Not so weird, however, the picture had a strange figure of a ghostly women standing in the room. Also in the picture was a staircase that was part of the original house, but was taken out once the room was converted into the dorm. The men proudly keep the picture on their wall.

“That picture was there for a reason, it wants us to know something,” said Burkhart.

Moving on, the Watts Sherman house was built in 1876 by William Watts Sherman and his first wife Annie Derby Rodgers Wetmore. The couple had two daughters, Georgette and Sybil, shortly after Annie died in 1884.

William Sherman remarried just a year later to Sophia Augusta Brown and the couple had two more children Mildred and Irene, according to Ms. John Drexel who is Irene’s daughter. After William Sherman’s death in 1912, Sophia resided in the house until her death in 1947.

If you have lived in Watts, you’ve heard of Adam, a young boy who supposedly lived in Watts and fell down the stairs, after chasing a ball in the annex. Supposedly the little boy was a son of William Watts Sherman but there is no record indicating that William Watts Sherman produced any male heirs.

In fact, Ms. John Drexel confirmed that the Shermans only had four children, so Adam couldn’t have been a Watts Sherman child.

In 1949, a Baptist Church acquired the house and turned it into a nursing home. The annex was not added onto the house until 1969, so if there was a child that fell, he was not a Watts Sherman child. Also, with the house being a nursing home, it is unlikely that a young boy fell down the annex stairs and died.

However, if this incident did occur, it had to be after 1969 and there would be some record of it, or some adult would remember such a tragic story today. That doesn’t hinder the fact that at night in the basement floor of the annex, Salve residents still hear that ball bouncing and swear on their lives they saw Adam still bouncing his ball.

According to Michele Packham, the area coordinator who lives in Watts Sherman and sleeps on the third floor, nothing unusual occurred in her year and a half stay, until recently. Lately, she awakes to the sound of furniture moving above her ceiling.

However, above Packham is only an unused attic. Unusual, maybe especially if you were ever lucky enough to travel up to the attic, which few people have seen besides security guards and RAs. When I had the chance to view the “secret attic” last year one thing was clear – besides random outdated tools, boxes, and trunks, nothing else is stored up there.

There are men who repair the bathrooms in Watts and at times they may need to go up to the attic to work on the water pipes, but, “it’s not done at night,” said Teresa Brown.

Some people take these ghosts more seriously than others. The girls who lived in room 308 in Watts can tell you endless stories of occurrences that happened in their room. Christina D’Amico who lives in the quad explains, there were nights when every girl in the room would wake up at exactly 4 a.m.

At night, there would be banging on the window (they live on the third floor), and the beds would randomly shake during the night. Frightened, the girls had Rev. John Codega come in to bless the room and left holy water there. Now D’Amico insists everything is back to normal.

Wakehurst now serves as one of Salve’s academic buildings, which also has faculty offices and the basement is Salve’s student center. But what it might be best known for is the paranormal activity that seems to constantly surround it.

John Quinn, Dean of students, used to work in Wakehurst until his office was moved to Miley. One night about ten years ago, Quinn was there until after 10:00 p.m. and he heard noises from the main stairwell that sounded like a dinner party: glasses clanking and people talking.

Frightened, he called security telling them of the voices he heard. Security informed him that no one was in the building and that it had been wired shut two hours earlier so that no one would have been able to get in. He quickly packed up his stuff and ran down the back stairwell.

Many people have heard the myth that on the night of the first snow fall, you can see a young woman pushing an antique style baby carriage around the property.

The truth is, the owner of this house, Mr. James Van Alen, was married to Emily Astor and they had three children. However, Emily died young and never had the chance to raise her children. The Van Alen children were raised by nannies and tutors their entire lives as Mr. J. Van Alen never remarried. Maybe the ghost is of Emily who never got to care for her children, or maybe it’s just a tutor taking the place of the child’s deceased mother.

Another myth of Wakehurst is the story of the ghost dressed in equestrian gear who lives on the third floor. Dr. Atkins, now the chair of the business department, started his career at Salve working in an office on the second floor of Wakehurst.

During his time there the No. 1 complaint he heard from students and faculty was a story of a man walking from window to window on the top floor of Wakehurst, which at the time was not in use and was only for storage from the activities office.

When Mr. James J. Van Alen died in 1923, he left the mansion to his son James Laurens, who died four years later, leaving the mansion to his wife Margaret. She then remarried and became Mrs. Margaret Bruguiere. Mrs. Bruguiere resided in Wakehurst until her death and strongly disliked Salve students and wanted nothing to do with them.

Before Mrs. Brugiere died in 1969, she left her house to her son Mr. James H. Van Alen. Many speculate that it was under the condition that he would not sell the house to Salve Regina College. Three years after she died and the house went unsold, James H. Van Alen went through a middle man and sold the house to Salve.

We may not know who the man in equestrian gear is, but one thing is for sure: the day Salve took over Wakehurst, Ms. Brugiere has probably been turning in her grave ever since.

Maybe it was Ms. Brugiere who was responsible for the next occurrence. Quinn explains that one night in the late 1980’s, a co-worker was working late in Wakehurst. She was in the room to the immediate right once you walk up the main stairwell. She claimed that suddenly someone banged something on ceiling right over her head.

Knowing that no one worked upstairs at the time, and that no one would be upstairs that late, she frantically locked herself in the room, and called security to have them escort her out.

With all these stories, all these reports, you would think there would be mounds of information complied on the haunting on Salve’s campus.

However, finding documented proof is almost impossible. Many people refuse to acknowledge the existence of ghosts, leaving that information undocumented.

Mysteriously, of the four security officers questioned, every officer denied the fact that anything strange or unusual happens at Salve.

These stories aren’t going to disappear and there will always be mysteries. There will always be unusual sightings. We’re surrounded by buildings that are over a hundred years old, and that itself creates intrigue.

Maybe we’ll never know fact from fiction. Maybe the truth was meant to remain a secret. But next time you hear a creak, a scratch on the walls or suddenly get a chill, it might be more then just an unusual coincidence.