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Reported phenomena — as catalogued
The Bertoia fountain marks the 1970 plane crash that killed all 75 aboard the Marshall football team's charter; it is shut off each anniversary.
1 John Marshall Drive, Huntington, WV 25755
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free; the fountain stands on the public Memorial Student Center plaza
Access
Wheelchair OK
Paved campus plaza outside the Memorial Student Center
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1972 · Memorial to the 1970 Southern Airways Flight 932 crash · Deadliest sports-related air disaster in U.S. history · Harry Bertoia sculpture-fountain (dedicated 1972) · Listed on the National Register of Historic Places (2024)
Southern Airways Flight 932, a chartered DC-9 carrying the Marshall University football team home from a game in North Carolina, crashed into a hillside short of the runway at Tri-State Airport near Huntington on the night of November 14, 1970. All 75 people on board were killed: 37 players, members of the coaching staff, athletic department personnel, supporters and boosters, and the five-person flight crew. It remains the deadliest sports-related air disaster in United States history, and it gutted a community in a single night.
The university commissioned sculptor Harry Bertoia to create a memorial for the plaza outside the Memorial Student Center. The bronze sculpture-fountain he produced stands roughly 13 feet tall and weighs more than 6,000 pounds; a plaque at its base lists the names of all 75 victims. The fountain was dedicated on November 12, 1972.
From the start, the fountain has carried a ritual. It runs through the warmer months, but each year on November 14 it is shut off during a campus memorial service and remains silent through the winter, restarting in the spring. The gesture has become one of the defining traditions of the school.
The crash and its aftermath were chronicled in the documentary "Marshall University: Ashes to Glory" and dramatized in the 2006 film "We Are Marshall." In 2024 the fountain was added to the National Register of Historic Places.
Sources
The Memorial Fountain is not a ghost story, and the people connected to it are careful to keep it that way. What draws visitors is the weight of what happened here. The plaza fills each November 14 for the memorial service, when the fountain is turned off and the 75 names are read, and many describe the silence after the water stops as the most affecting part of the ceremony.
Outside the anniversary, students and visitors still leave flowers at the base of the sculpture, and accounts of the site tend to dwell on its stillness rather than on apparitions. For a dark-tourism traveler the appeal is the documented history and the ongoing ritual of mourning, both of which are well recorded. The honest framing is the one the university itself uses: a place to stand quietly and remember 75 people who died together on a single November night.
Media Appearances
Walk the plaza outside the Memorial Student Center where Harry Bertoia's 13-foot bronze sculpture-fountain stands above a plaque listing all 75 people killed in the November 14, 1970 crash. The fountain runs from spring through fall; each November 14 it is shut off during a memorial ceremony and stays off until the following spring.
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