HauntBound archive · catalog record
Reported phenomena — as catalogued
1902 Performance Hall on Penn State's University Park Campus
Schwab Auditorium, Pollock Road, University Park, State College, PA 16802
Research updated May 2026
Age
All Ages (varies by performance)
Cost
Free
Free to walk Penn State's University Park campus. Schwab Auditorium tickets vary by event. Atherton's grave site is publicly accessible adjacent to the building.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Paved campus walkways. Schwab Auditorium has accessible entrances; some upper-level seating reached by stairs only.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1903 · Charles M. Schwab Donation · George W. Atherton Grave Site · Penn State Historic Campus Core
Schwab Auditorium was constructed in 1902-1903 with a $150,000 contribution from Penn State trustee Charles M. Schwab, then the president of Bethlehem Steel. The 1,000-seat auditorium became and remains one of the central performance spaces on Penn State's University Park campus.
The building sits within the original historic core of campus, immediately adjacent to Old Main and to the grave site of George Washington Atherton, the university's seventh president. Atherton served from 1882 until his death in office in 1906; the university's transformation from the Farmers' High School of Pennsylvania into a true land-grant university occurred largely under his administration.
Atherton's grave is a publicly accessible plot directly behind Schwab Auditorium, marked by a memorial stone and a bench reputed to be the spot where his widow, Frances Washburn Atherton, sat in mourning after his death. Frances Atherton is the namesake of nearby Atherton Hall, originally a women's dormitory and now home to the Schreyer Honors College.
The auditorium continues to host concerts, lectures, theater productions, and university convocations, and is managed today by Penn State's Center for the Performing Arts.
Sources
Penn State's University Communications has carried the Schwab Auditorium and Atherton Hall ghost lore as part of its public campus history programming, and the student paper, The Daily Collegian, has run extensive features on it. The reports center on the auditorium itself, with secondary clusters at Atherton Hall and Old Botany Building.
Inside Schwab, performers and stage crews describe stage curtains moving when no one is near them, seats pushed down by invisible weight during performances and rising again when shows end, and footsteps in empty aisles. Reports identify two possible figures: Charles Schwab himself, sometimes nicknamed "Schwaboo" by students, and a soldier figure occasionally described as a Revolutionary War-era veteran. President Atherton, whose grave sits directly behind the auditorium, is also identified in some accounts as the protective presence backstage.
Atherton Hall, named after Frances Washburn Atherton, is reported in regional sources to host her own apparition. Students describe seeing a figure walking the upper corridors and looking out the top-floor windows in the direction of her husband's grave; the building was originally a women's dormitory and is now part of the Schreyer Honors College.
Reports from the Old Botany Building, on the same historic campus quadrangle, describe footsteps and door movement when the building is unoccupied. Hauntbound treats these as student-tradition folklore amplified by university communications; they are well-documented in published university and student-newspaper sources but lack the kind of investigative paranormal evidence found at sites with active investigation programs.
Notable Entities
Walk the historic core of Penn State's University Park campus, view the 1902 Schwab Auditorium, and visit President George W. Atherton's grave and memorial bench directly behind the building. Old Main, the adjacent Allen Street gates, and the Pattee/Paterno Library are within a short walk.
Catch a Center for the Performing Arts or School of Music event in Schwab Auditorium. Many ghost reports from performers and stagehands describe seats pushed down by unseen weight and curtain movement on otherwise still nights.
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