Five Buildings, Five Legends, One Very Active Elevator
401 Rosemont Ave, Frederick, MD 21701
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free to walk campus grounds; interior access restricted to students and authorized visitors
Access
Wheelchair OK
Paved campus paths with some sloped terrain; interior building access varies by structure
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1893 · Maryland Women's College Heritage · Civil War Frederick History · Reformed Church Educational History
Hood College traces its origins to 1893, when the Potomac Synod of the Reformed Church in the United States established the Woman's College of Frederick with 83 enrolled students and 8 faculty members, housed in Winchester Hall on East Church Street. Dr. Joseph Henry Apple, then 28 years old, served as the college's first president.
In 1897, Margaret Scholl Hood donated a 28-acre tract for a permanent campus. In 1913, the board of trustees renamed the institution Hood College in her honor, and in 1915 began its transition to the current Rosemont Avenue campus.
Frederick itself was a significant Civil War transit point. After the September 1862 Battle of Antietam — the war's bloodiest single day, fought 12 miles west of the city — many of Frederick's buildings were converted into hospitals to receive the thousands of wounded soldiers. The Frederick Female Seminary, which later became the Woman's College of Frederick before evolving into Hood College, operated in the same East Church Street district where some of these emergency medical facilities were established. Students in subsequent decades reported sounds and presences in Winchester Hall that local tradition attributed to the Civil War hospital use.
Brodbeck Hall, built in 1868, is the oldest structure on the current campus. It predates Hood College by 25 years and served as a German biergarten — a beer garden with social hall functions — before being incorporated into the college campus. Its thick walls and pre-electric construction create the acoustic conditions that contribute to its reputation.
Sources
The Hood College ghost tradition is unusually specific — each building carries its own named or characterized presence, and the legends have been stable enough across student generations that the college itself has documented them as cultural heritage.
Brodbeck Hall, the 1868 biergarten building, generates the most varied reports: laughter and music from rooms where no one is present, footsteps on floors confirmed empty, doors that lock and unlock without human contact, and floating orbs documented in several photographic accounts. The building's age and pre-modern construction give it acoustic properties that newer structures lack.
Memorial Hall's ghost is named Sheila. The story holds that a student was killed near the first-floor elevator by a rejected suitor, and that Sheila's presence now expresses itself through elevator behavior — the doors opening and closing without call, the car traveling to random floors on its own timing. Elevator anomalies at Hood are treated as Sheila's communication with the living.
Meylan Hall carries the most visceral legend: a student allegedly stabbed in the basement laundry area, and a bloodstain in that location that reappears despite carpet replacement. The college has not confirmed any such event in its records.
Shriner Hall hosts two accounts. The kitchen on one floor is associated with the ghost of a female student described as murdered there, whose screams can be heard on certain nights when windows are open. A fourth-floor presence is attributed to a male student, identified in the legend as John, who died after throwing himself from the window following a romantic betrayal. His purported activity involves moving residents' belongings.
Smith Hall's legend is the quietest of the five: infant cries heard near the front stairs, attributed in campus tradition to a student said to have buried a child beneath them. The college treats all five legends as the product of imaginative students passing stories to incoming freshmen — a position consistent with the absence of any verified events in institutional records, and also consistent with how campus ghost legends tend to work.
Notable Entities
Hood College's 28-acre campus includes Brodbeck Hall, built in 1868 and the oldest structure on the grounds — formerly a German biergarten, now an academic building where footsteps, laughter, and orbs have been reported in unoccupied rooms. Campus grounds are open; interior building access is for students and authorized guests.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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