Mount St. Mary's College
Eerie legends permeate college
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Tales of mysterious flute music and a Civil War soldier who walks the campus are among the ghostly legends that flourish at a college in western Maryland, according to a priest on the school's faculty Despite the eerie nature of the stories, students and faculty at Mount Saint Mary's College in Emmitsburg take them in stride, said the Rev. Daniel Nusbaum.
"This place is just full of so many wonderful legends that nobody ever gets upset about it," said Nusbaum "There seems to be an attitude that 'you have come to a very, very old school...and you have to get used to this sort of thing.'"
Nusbaum, chairman of the 177- year-old school's Department of Visual and Performing Arts, has been researching and narrating the legends for 16 years, earning himself the unofficial title of resident ghost storyteller.
It was while doing research for a history of Mount Saint Mary's that he first began hearing the ghost stories. "Lots of the stories just seemed to have embroidered themselves into the college history," he said.
One story revolves around Henry Dielman, a professor at the college in the 1830s, said Nusbaum. Both Dielman and his son were accomplished musicians, but they had a falling out and the son refused to accompany his father on the flute. As the story goes, "after the son's death, every Christmas he would play the flute for his father," said Nusbaum, who noted that during the 1930s, hundreds of people claimed they heard mysterious flute music in the area each Christmas Eve.
"In later years, it has become something of a game for somebody to hide on the mountainside to play the flute," he said. Nusbaum said his favorite story is that of a Civil War soldier who told his fiancee that he would be able to communicate with her as long as he could see the stars in the sky The soldier is said to have died in the battle at nearby Gettysburg, Pa , and his body placed in a well with those of a number of other soldiers As legend has it, "the young man was buried face down and he therefore cannot see the stars, and at night he will prowl the campus," entreating those he encounters to turn him over, said Nusbaum. Still other stories involve the nocturnal wanderings around the campus of a long-dead priest and nun.
"I have never seen these, but other people claim to have, people who are quite serious," said Nusbaum, who proffered a possible reason for the sighting claims "Part of it you have to say, well, maybe it's the ambience, the feeling of the place," he said. "And people like those stories and maybe they just sort of continue the legend without seriously damaging the truth "
There's also a dormitory room at the college "that is rather famous for alarm clocks flying across the room, the furniture moving and all kinds of really strange things," said Nusbaum.
Theory has it that tne room may count among its occupants a poltergeist, he said "Nobody is really afraid of it," said Nusbaum of the poltergeist, which "seems to give a feeling of 'well, everything is OK, let's have fun.'"
The stories of the flute and the soldier are based on facts that have been embellished upon, said Nusbaum, while others are traditional stories with a local application. "Some I make up because they are fun," said Nusbaum "I won't tell people which ones I make up." Each year at Halloween, Nusbaum tells tales of things that go bump in the night to a packed house consisting of some of the school's approximately 1,400 students and area residents.
Reference: Annapolis | Capital, The | 1985-10-31
