1837 Liberal Arts College with a Violent Dormitory History
2 East South St, Galesburg, IL 61401
Research updated May 2026
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Est. 1837 · Underground Railroad · Lincoln-Douglas Debates · National Historic Landmark · Campus Violence
Knox College was founded in 1837 by a group of New England Congregationalists and Presbyterians who settled the Illinois prairie with the explicit purpose of creating an institution opposed to slavery. The college became a documented station on the Underground Railroad, and its most prominent building — Old Main, constructed in 1857 — is a National Historic Landmark as the best-preserved site of the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates. Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas met at Knox on October 7 of that year for the fifth of their seven senatorial debates.
The college went coeducational in 1870, one of the earlier liberal arts institutions to do so. Seymour Hall, a residential dormitory on the south side of campus, became the site of the most disturbing event in Knox's recent history.
In March 1998, Clyde A. Best, a Knox freshman, beat Andrea Racibozynski — a 19-year-old fellow freshman and Naperville native — to death with a brick in the glass-enclosed stairwell of Seymour Hall. Best pled guilty but mentally ill and was sentenced in 1999 to 60 years in prison. In 2006, a civil jury found Knox College negligent for inadequately lighting the stairwell and training security personnel; trial testimony established that nine of twenty bulbs in the stairwell were burned out and six others had been deliberately turned off on the night of the attack. The jury awarded Racibozynski's family approximately one million dollars. An appellate court upheld the verdict, and in June 2008 the Illinois Supreme Court declined to hear Knox's further appeal.
The campus has continued operating as a competitive liberal arts institution, with Seymour Hall remaining in residential use.
Sources
The paranormal tradition at Knox College interweaves several distinct threads. The first connects directly to the 1998 murder of Andrea Racibozynski in Seymour Hall's stairwell. Regional ghost-lore accounts circulated since the late 1990s describe a recurring scent of perfume in the stairwell area, attributed to Racibozynski's continued presence. The specific detail of a student bludgeoned with a brick on the steps of her dorm matches documented court records precisely enough that the folklore appears to have grown directly from the crime, rather than being invented independently of it.
The second thread involves Harbach Theatre, named for Knox alumnus Otto Harbach, a lyricist whose Broadway credits include early twentieth-century musical productions. Accounts attributed to theatre staff and students describe unexplained activity connected by longtime Knox community members to Harbach's attachment to his alma mater. Documentation for this tradition is thinner than for the Seymour Hall reports.
A third account involves Orval Cobb, a Knox freshman who died by suicide in 1943 after reportedly taking potassium cyanide from the college's chemistry laboratory. Cobb was found in a West Street residence off campus proper, and the activity in that house is said by some to continue.
In October 2011, paranormal investigator Chris Fleming visited Knox at the invitation of Professor Tim Kasser's students, focusing his investigation on the basement of George Davis Hall and the cell block of the adjacent Old Jail. Fleming's reports described 'conscious energies' rather than identifying specific figures; the Old Jail cell block is associated locally with a man convicted of murder in the 1970s who reportedly hanged himself there. Fleming's visit was documented by the Knox College news office.
Notable Entities
Media Appearances
Walk Knox College's campus, including Old Main — the National Historic Landmark that is the best-preserved site of the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates. The glass-enclosed Seymour Hall stairwell, site of the 1998 murder of freshman Andrea Racibozynski, is on the residential side of campus; respect its dormitory function.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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