HauntBound archive · catalog record
Reported phenomena, as catalogued
Cold spots and a swinging lamp in Bowdoin's 1882 Civil War memorial theater
12 Campus Road South, Brunswick, ME 04011
Research updated September 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
$$
Ticket prices vary by performance; some campus events are free. Check the Bowdoin events calendar.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Historic granite building with stairs; contact the college for seating-level accessibility.
Equipment
No Photos
Est. 1882 · Civil War Memorial · Bowdoin College Theater · Gothic Granite Architecture
Memorial Hall at Bowdoin College was completed in 1882 as a memorial to the college's students and alumni who served in the Civil War. Built of granite in a Gothic style with stained glass, it stands near the center of the Brunswick campus and was designed to honor Bowdoin's war dead.
In 1955 a gift from Frederick William Pickard funded the conversion of the hall's interior into a working theater. The result, Pickard Theater, seats roughly 600 and has a proscenium stage with a full fly system. It remains the principal performance space for Bowdoin's department of theater and dance and hosts productions throughout the academic year, with tickets sold through PortTIX.
The building is one of several campus structures featured on Bowdoin's own informal "Haunted Bowdoin" walking guide, which collects the ghost stories that circulate among students. Pickard Theater and its costume-storage basement appear among the stops, alongside other long-standing campus tales documented in local press coverage of the college's haunted reputation.
Sources
The best-known account at Pickard Theater comes from a technician who reported seeing a lamp swing back and forth in a room that had no ventilation or air movement, while feeling intensely cold at the same time. The story is one of several attached to the building in the lore that circulates around the Bowdoin campus.
Bowdoin's own "Haunted Bowdoin" walking guide adds a second account set in the theater's basement, which served as costume storage and held a small study room. According to the guide, a student who went down one night to retrieve a costume saw a dark, hunched shape near the wall; rather than resolving as her eyes adjusted to the dark, the shape reportedly seemed to grow less solid before it was gone.
These are campus-tradition stories rather than investigated cases, and they sit within a broader set of Bowdoin ghost tales that local press has covered around Halloween. No specific named person is identified with the theater's reported activity.
Media Appearances
Pickard Theater is Bowdoin College's main 600-seat performance space inside Memorial Hall, hosting theater, dance, and music productions through the academic year. Tickets are sold through PortTIX. The building is the public-facing way to see the interior where the cold-spot accounts are set.
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