Myth: Busted

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Haunted Quad tunnels?

Misconceptions fuel urban legend on campus

By K. MAUSER contributing writer

Lucy Griffith, a sophomore geographic sciences major, said she’s heard the Quad tunnels are haunted.

“There’s rumors about ghosts,” JMU alum Jackie Dupuy (’17) said.

The Quad tunnels are a source of fascination for many JMU students. Dupuy said their purpose was often speculated about by students— whether they were once used for students, faculty or even landscaping. Students have tried to find and enter them many times, some being successful, such as the Quad Squad on Youtube.

Meg Mulrooney, a history professor and the chair of the Campus History Committee, said the historic Quad tunnels are a source for bizarre rumors.

“There’s a lot of mythology around the tunnels, even about how many there are [and] where they are,” Mulrooney said. “There’s some really outlandish things. I’ve heard admissions tours say things like the women students used the tunnels so they wouldn’t get their hair wet.”

None of these stories, she said, are true. The truth is much less fantastical.

Mulrooney said the Campus History Committee thinks they were built for the janitorial staff to get between buildings. However, she also said there’s no memorandum to prove this is why they were built sometime in the 1900s.

“I’ve been looking at this for a long time, trying to just understand the actual history of the buildings and how they were used,” Mulrooney said.

Griffith said there are many misconceptions around campus about the purpose of the Quad tunnels and why they were made.

She also said she’d heard previously that the tunnels go underground and connect each building on the Quad, but she recently learned this isn’t the case.

Mulrooney said there are only two Quad tunnels that connect three buildings on Main Campus, apart from the steam tunnels and pipes underground used by campus maintenance.

“It’s just a covered passageway,” Mulrooney said. “It connects between Darcus Johnson and Harrison, and Harrison and Harper Allen-Lee. That’s all there is.”

Dupuy said she visited the Quad tunnels during a senior crawl with a group of her close friends. During her senior crawl, they started on East Campus and walked through “memory lane,” visiting each of the buildings they’d come in contact with during their years at JMU. This included their freshman dorms, the buildings they had classes in and many other areas of campus, and they ended up in the Quad tunnels.

“We had no intention of setting out to get in the tunnels,” Dupuy said. “I think it was just on everyone’s bucket list.”

Dupuy also said there was a rumor spreading around the time of her graduation that a serial killer had murdered a female student in the Quad tunnels. She said she heard the ghost of the deceased woman now roams the tunnels.

“I’m sure it’s not real, but it definitely got told to us,” Dupuy said.

Mulrooney said she heard a similar rumor, but her variation included the lingering scent of the woman’s perfume throughout the tunnels long after her death. Mulrooney shared others she’s heard of as well.

There’s also a rumor about the sound of babies crying in the tunnels, Mulrooney said.

This story seems to suggest that a young woman, probably a JMU student, had a hidden pregnancy and gave birth in the tunnel, Mulrooney said. Somehow, the baby died or was left down there, she said, and the infant’s cry now haunts the tunnels for eternity.

“What these are called in folklore are cautionary tales,” Mulrooney said. “It’s kind of like saying, ‘This is what happens to bad girls. Don’t be like these women. Bad things happen to women who sneak out or who have affairs.’”

Mulrooney said many of these stories have to do with gender and sexism. She attributes this to JMU’s rapidly changing campus, the sexual revolution and the women’s movement, which all took place around the 1960s and 1970s.

Men were allowed to enroll in Madison College as residents for the first time in 1966. Mulrooney said the addition of men on campus could’ve contributed to the emergence of such dramatic stories in that era.

“If you talk to older alumni, they have heard more of these ghost stories and tunnels because I think they were created in the ’60s and ’70s,” Mulrooney said.

JMU staff weren’t the only people permitted to use the Quad tunnels back then; students were also allowed to use them to walk between the buildings they connect, Mulrooney said. She added that people would use them to get to Harrison Hall to collect their mail and eat when the third floor used to be a dining hall.

The Quad tunnels are still in use by JMU staff today, Mulrooney said, but it’s “not a big deal” — employees use them simply to work on heating and cooling systems and other maintenance.

“It’s really boring,” Mulrooney said. “Students [create] all these mythologies around them, and that’s not what they are.”

Mulrooney said she hopes to learn more about the rumors surrounding the tunnels and how they’ve changed over time.

“ I think from some of that actual history, mythologies started to grow after students were no longer allowed to use those tunnels,” Mulrooney said. “Some of these things are just part of students here wanting to have cool stories, to make it kind of a distinctive place, because it is a very distinctive college campus.”

CONTACT K. Mauser at mauserkk@dukes. jmu.edu. For more on the culture, arts and lifestyle of the JMU and Harrisonburg communities, follow the culture desk on Twitter and Instagram @Breeze_Culture.