HauntBound archive · catalog record
Reported phenomena — as catalogued
An 1872 River Street mansion, now a Wilkes University hall, with a gambling-death legend and stairway hauntings
202 S River St, Wilkes-Barre, PA 18701
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Kirby Hall is an academic building on Wilkes University's campus; the exterior is freely viewable from South River Street. It appears as a stop on downtown Wilkes-Barre ghost tours, which may be separately ticketed.
Access
Limited Access
Flat downtown sidewalk along South River Street
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1872 · Wilkes-Barre River Street Mansions · Wilkes University History · Kirby Family Legacy
The site of Kirby Hall occupies the so-called number-one plot of Wilkes-Barre's original town plan, on South River Street facing the Susquehanna. In 1872 Stephen Leonard Thurlow, a coal-era businessman, bought the property and hired the architect Frederick Clarke Withers to design the residence that stands there today, a substantial 19th-century mansion in keeping with River Street's run of industrial-family homes.
The house changed ownership more than once over the following decades. At the turn of the century it was owned by Reuben Jay Flick, and it is to this period that the building's best-known legend is attached. In 1905 the property was acquired by Fred Morgan Kirby, the five-and-dime magnate whose business merged into the F.W. Woolworth Company and whose name is attached to Kirby Park and other Wilkes-Barre landmarks.
The Kirby name carried into the building's later life. The mansion became part of what is now Wilkes University, and Kirby Hall today houses the university's English department. As an academic building it is used daily by students and faculty, and its public profile centers on that role rather than on its origins as a private home. The university itself has acknowledged the building's ghost stories, treating them as part of campus lore.
Sources
Kirby Hall's central legend dates to the turn of the 20th century, when the house was owned by Reuben Jay Flick. As recounted by Wilkes University, a colorful figure remembered only by the nickname Poker Pan was killed in the house during a gambling dispute, in the room that was then used as a music room. The university presents the story as long-standing campus lore rather than a documented court record.
The reported activity in the building clusters around its staircase. People describe hearing footsteps on the stairs when no one is there, and some say they have felt a hand pressed against their back, in a few accounts just before stumbling on the steps. Other reports mention a strange mist near the windows; in one account a professor watched a patch of white mist withdraw up the staircase as he moved toward it.
Because Kirby Hall is an active university building, these stories circulate mainly among students, faculty, and downtown ghost-tour guides rather than through paranormal investigations. The university has folded the hauntings into its own Halloween storytelling, which is itself how much of the legend has been preserved and passed along.
Notable Entities
Kirby Hall is a working Wilkes University building, home to the English department, so interior access is limited to university business. The Gothic Revival exterior on South River Street can be viewed from the public sidewalk, and the building appears as a stop on downtown Wilkes-Barre ghost-tour itineraries that recount its history and the Poker Pan legend.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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