Ringling College of Art and Design, Keating Hall

The ghost tradition at Ringling College's Keating Hall centers on a young woman universally called 'Mary,' whose death in the building's stairwell is said to have occurred during the late 1920s or early 1930s, when the Bay Haven Hotel was being used for gambling and prostitution. Most accounts describe Mary as a young woman of about 18 or 19 who worked in the hotel and died by suicide in the third-floor stairwell, hanging herself with a drapery cord after becoming romantically fixated on a client who did not return her feelings. Some accounts suggest she was murdered.

According to Sarasota Magazine's 2021 survey of the city's most haunted locations, students who have lived in the building's upper floors since the 1930s have reported anguished sobs emanating from the stairwell and the persistent scent of stale perfume or violet perfume. Some have reported weeping or a crushing sense of sadness when passing through the stairwell. Art students have found their paintbrushes slowly spinning in water rinse cups as though someone had just set them turning and let go. Mary is also reported to have rearranged rooms and placed phantom phone calls.

A 2004 press account noted that Ringling College's spokeswoman Christine Meeker Lange and some students had searched for a documentary record of the death without success. Travel Channel coverage in 2004 included the location. The legend is also documented in Greg Jenkins's published book *Florida's Ghostly Legends and Haunted Folklore: The Gulf Coast and Pensacola* (2007).

NOTE: Mary has not been identified as a specific real person in any source reviewed. Her name may be a folk attribution. No real-person defamation concern applies, but the suicide framing should be handled with sensitivity.