Haunted House

Governor William Stoughton was a jolly man. Presiding over the witch trials in Salem, he had only nineteen hanged, although another was pressed to death for refusing to testify. If Judge Stoughton was, perhaps, overzealous in his religion, at least his fervor overflowed into education, for he endowed Harvard with several scholarships, a pasture, and Stoughton Hall. In 1700, during Increase Mather's presidency, Stoughton "College" was built at right angles to the cast end of Harvard Hall. The second brick building in the Yard, it had three stories and an attic lighted by dormer windows.

Although the hall had only sixteen rooms, it somehow managed to house two hundred and forty men during the Revolution when a Provincial Congress commandeered Harvard dormitories. Among the Revolutionaries were Samuel and Ebenezer. Hall, who used the building as the headquarters of the "New England Chronicle and Essex Gazette." This short-lived publication, according to a contemporary, emitted "streams of intelligence and those patriotic songs and tracts which so pre-eminently animated the defenders of American liberty." All the enthusiasm aroused by rebellion must have subverted the Puritan spirit of Stoughton, for the foundations soon began to crumble, and in 1780 the building was razed.

Witch-hunting had lost much of its glamour by the end of the eighteenth century, but the University faced its perennial housing problem, so the trustees decided to build another monument to the distinguished persecutor of Salem. In a curious reversal of roles, however, the General Court seemingly upheld civil liberties by refusing funds for the enterprise. Lacking any other resource, the crafty trustees held a series of lotteries and, in 1794, hit the jackpot, winning their own ten thousand dollar prize on a redeemed ticket. After this victory of the righteous, there was enought money to build Holworthy as well as Stoughton. In 1805, new Stoughton appeared as a facsimile of Hollis, a mere shadow, robbed even of its distinctive coat of arms.

Old Governor Stoughton seemed to resent this affront. Although his spirit remained quite for some years, it had an insidious effect on the occupants of the new hall. The two historians Francis Parkman and William Hickling Prescott both later went blind, and Richard Henry Dana had to go off to sea to recover his eyesight. Even the burbling Oliver Wendell Holmes was daunted during his year of residence, managing to mutter only, "I am as cross as a wild-cat sometimes." Stoughton remained gloomy for years, inwardly boiling at the more light-hearted Hollis, where the Hasty Pudding Club, the "Med Fac," and the Harvard Washington Corps had chosen to stay.

Times changed for the better during the 1850's, when the Hasty Pudding Club finally moved over from Hollis. Stoughton's specter quickened with this great honor and in 1852 sent forth Horatio Alger to conquer the world. Soon Phillips Brooks was inspired to inscribe his initials on a fireplace. When another student painted an owl, a frog, a gull, and a turtle on the doors of room 25, the college carpenter threatened to remove the exhibit and fine the artist, but President Sparks intervened, proving himself a patron of the arts. The Stoughton renaissance culminated in a final burst of glory on the evening of December 15, 1870, when an explosion emanating from its dark interior rocked the Yard. Whether or not the judge had a ghostly hand in the destruction, it was certainly effective. Glass was blown to the middle entry of Holworthy, and a freshman literally hit the ceiling as the floors of four rooms "were more or less lifted." The explosion of 1870 must have expended all that remained of the judge's terrible energy, for Stoughton now stands, placidly accepting disrespectful freshmen, undisturbed even by the shiny mailboxes which now blaspheme its walls.