Shattuck-St. Marys School

Shattuck-St. Marys School paranormal

Location submitted by: sdonley on 05/28/2012
DBA Approved: Y

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PANICd#: 1106

1000 Shumway Ave
Faribault , MN 55021
Phone: 507-333-1500
Open to the public: Yes

Lat: 44.3054856
Lon: -93.2590932

Database Summary:

Demographic Rank: 6
History: 1
Stories: 3
Claims: 2
Evidence: 0
Resources: 1
Retrievals: 13816
Vistor Rating: 5.0
Votes: 2

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History

History information is some background and history about the location. This is meant to be a basic summary. Below the history records you will find sources in which you can click on to find out more information. There may be multiple history records per location.

On June 3, 1858, in a small rented building in Faribault, Minnesota, The Rev. Dr. James Lloyd Breck established the Episcopal mission school and seminary from which Shattuck-St. Mary's School has developed and prospered. When the school first opened, there were 45 young girls and boys and six divinity students, both Native American and white. About this time, the newly established Episcopal diocese of Minnesota selected Henry Benjamin Whipple as its first Bishop. Bishop Whipple established his home in Faribault and, in 1860, took over the reins of the school, changing Breck's ambitious plan for 'Bishop Seabury University' into something more realistic: 'an honest school.'

In 1864, when Seabury Hall was completed, the school moved to its present site on the bluffs above the Straight River. With this change, the institution became a boarding school for young men and boys. In 1865, Tommy Crump, an English divinity student recently returned from the Civil War, started the boys drilling with sticks- and so began a military program that would last here for more than a century.

By 1866, more room was needed and, through the largess of Dr. George Cheyne Shattuck of Boston, Shattuck Hall was built specifically for the boys. Soon the grammar school itself became known as 'Shattuck.' That same year, Bishop Whipple opened a school for girls, St. Mary's Hall, in his home in downtown Faribault. The girls remained there until 1872 when the Bishop moved to a new house and St. Mary's Hall was turned over to a board of trustees. Also in 1872, the Chapel of the Good Shepherd was built through the generosity of Augusta Shumway of Chicago. Though she lost all her property in the great Chicago Fire, she kept her promise to build a chapel for 'the Bishop's boys' school' by sending Whipple her insurance checks. With its rare, all-stone spire, it became the focal point of the Shattuck campus.

By 1883, St. Mary's had also outgrown its downtown facilities, and a grand, ornate building, often referred to as 'the Castle on the Rhine,' was built on the bluffs, less than a half mile south of Shattuck. That unique building burned in 1924, and the limestone structure that stands today was built less than a year later.

Both schools saw rapid growth during the next few years. Dr. James Dobbin, who had succeeded Dr. Breck in 1866 and who served as Rector of Shattuck School until 1914, was responsible for the construction of many beautiful limestone buildings, including the first Whipple Hall and the present Shumway Hall. In 1901, Dr. Dobbin founded St. James School for younger boys about a half mile north of Shattuck. In 1932, Seabury Theological Seminary merged with Western Theological Seminary and moved to Evanston, Illinois.

In 1972, the three schools, Shattuck, St. Mary's and St. James, were joined into what is known today as Shattuck-St. Mary's School. In 1974, the military program was discontinued.

In 1988, the residential and academic programs were reconfigured so that the Middle School students (grades 6-8) were at the St. Mary's campus and the Upper School students (grades 9-12) were at the Shattuck Campus.

Added by: sdonley on 05/28/2012 DB#:128
Source(s):
http://www.s-sm.org/about/ssm-history/

Stories

Stories are just that. Stories and personal accounts that have been reported about the location.

The old abandoned infirmary has been around since 1861. It was originally a ski lodge. It has housed all the sick and dying students with incurable diseases until 1912. The inhabitants have included crazy war veterans from the civil war and the victims of horrible epidemics. Due to the high levels of asbestos the building has been closed but students still claim to see sickening ghostly figures with boils rashes and raw openings appear in the upper floor windows. Two young women were possessed in 1971 and an exorcism had to be performed.

Added by: sdonley on 05/28/2012 DB#:1080
Source(s):
http://www.forgottenusa.com/haunts/MN/8144

Shattuck-St. Mary's School has had a long-standing reputation for being 'haunted.' Perhaps, that should be rephrased; the school is reputed for its fantastical stories, perhaps created to perpetuate the myth that the school is haunted. Whichever school of thought you ascribe to, scan the following fables & you decide- fact or fiction?

Bang, Bang, BANG, BANG!!!

One day during the middle of SSM's annual Fall Break, there were sudden, loud noises, which seemed to erupt from the upper school's east end. The school's 2^nd shift, security guard wondered what was going on so late at night. He thought someone possibly broke into the gym and was perhaps bouncing a ball around the basketball court, so to make sure everything was alright, he scurried up the outside stairs to check out the situation.

With ambivalent feelings of fear and curiosity, he cautiously walked up the stairs to the school's gymnasium. Just then, the sound that he previously heard got louder and louder. He quickly unlocked the gym doors. However, when he stepped in, the sound suddenly disappeared and only a mysterious ball was rolling quietly on the floor. Hurriedly, he turned on the lights and noticed something extremely odd--there wasn't anyone on the court!

"Where the heck was that coming from," he thought to himself?

The security guard checked every nook and cranny in the school gym, but there was no one to be found; nevertheless, even now, people attest to the fact they can hear what sounds like a ball bouncing inside the court after midnight.

In another instance, one evening long ago, Shattuck's Crack Squad, a group that performs traditional drills with 120-year-old rifles, practiced their 'walking drill' as usual; with an absence of any expressions on their faces, each of the members walked with firm, quick steps, creating a huge, drum-like sound.

Suddenly, when it was time for them to stop practicing their drills, the squad's captain turned around and noticed that the members were no longer there! Instead, he suddenly heard three different, sounding steps coming from somewhere outside the school's gym. After searching high and low for his fellow comrades, he finally gave up, wondering if it all was just a dream.

~Hyun Joon Lee '12

Added by: sdonley on 05/28/2012 DB#:1081
Source(s):
http://spectator.s-sm.org/archives/25-haunted-happ...

It's called the Shattuck St. Mary's Asylum, and resides in Faribault, Minnesota- the town neighboring mine. It's definitely not easy to find and you have to have someone that's already been there before in order to find it at all. One of my closest friends, Dustin, was the one to tell me about the place. His father, Stephen, was a self-proclaimed local historian, and had been to the house that served as the asylum many times to photograph and explore a bit. Going inside the building was very dangerous because it was rotting on the inside and very unstable, and a human's weight could collapse the floor easily. As a result, he'd only gone physically inside of it once, but said that you only had to come within 100 feet of the place to feel the powerful haunted energy there.

It was erected during the time when TB was a problem, way out in the woods (the hike to get to the site is a good forty five minutes: almost two hours there and back) and along the path to the house they built what we now refer to as Hell's Tunnel. It's an incredibly long, now graffiti-ridden tunnel that held products like cheese and milk inside of cells built into it's walls, and they even stored some of their patients in these cells when the house was too full. The cells have now been sealed closed because people kept having panic attacks and nervous breakdowns frequently if they would enter them or come near them.

It's another twenty or so minutes along the path after Hell's Tunnel until you reach the house. They built everything so spread apart so that things would be kept secret easier, and the sounds from the house wouldn't bother the workers that stacked products in the tunnel.

The house had one purpose: to hold the mentally retarded/physically handicapped TB patients until they died. The patients were locked in there and only checked on once in a while. In those times, they simply didn't matter: doctors didn't see why they should "waste" a perfectly good spot in the hospital on a "retard". They had to be kept away from the public in order to prevent the virus from spreading further, of course, but the families that brought said patients to the hospital were usually doing it to get rid of them. They'd drop them off and that was it: they were never heard of again.

Across from the door of the house stands a small, perfectly square building made of brick with a tall chimney atop it. This was the crematorium: two ovens resided inside for burning the remains of the plague victims. Some patients were even burned alive when they appeared to be close to death, in order to make room for new patients.

Another walk to the west of the buildings will lead to "West Cemetery", which, until very, very recently (the beginning of this year, if I recall) held plots that simply had numbers on them. Each row usually got to number 60 before the next would begin from 1 again. There were over 24 rows in all, creating a massive cemetery, decorated only by one willow tree smack in the middle. The headstones remained unkept since recently: they've been replaced with proper headstones- most of them, anyway- featuring each of the patient's names and dates and so forth.

All of this was located down the hill from the hospital, which is now the county prison. You can see the huge white-washed building looming overhead like some kind of castle on the hill.

The hills going up from either side of the path are made entirely out of the hospitals trash in those times: syringes, medicine bottles, wheel chairs, compost. Dirt was poured over all of the junk in later times to create the "hills" and reduce the risk of impaling someone with dangerous trash. Stephen, after digging a few times on the hills, has made a little collection of old medicine bottles, syringes, a stethoscope, and even a clipboard with weathered writing on it. The hills are now home to twisted trees and brush. After all, the house and tunnel and crematorium- not to mention the cemetery- were meant to be hidden by a woods. This woods is mostly man-made, as a result.

The first time I went to the house was with Dustin and our friend Megan. We'd been drinking at a friend's apartment when they mentioned it, and they soon told us the history surrounding the area. Dustin took us to his house and we talked with Stephen, who showed us his paranormal photographs and videos: he's captured several ghost children on film. He told us more about the history, and the more I learned, the more curious I became. We decided to go up there.

The path is hidden at the edge of a massive public sports field and picnic park, hidden by a cluster of trees: it's impossible to find unless you know what you're looking for. We parked our car in the park and hurried into the shadows: after 9, it's considered trespassing being there. The house and tunnel themselves are considered private property, so it's best to go late at night when no one's looking out f or trespassers.

My first experience was mostly an emotional one: the path itself echoes a sense of doom. Hell's Tunnel is always my least favorite part of the hike: while you can see the end of it clearly from the mouth of the tunnel, once you step in, you can't. The tunnel is also very wide and full of vents that blow cold air down onto you, and paired with the pitch black darkness, it can make for a pretty disorienting experience. I've never been in one of the cells, thank god, but you can always feel them, staring at you.

The moment I stepped near the house for the first time, I knew without a doubt that I was standing on bad ground. Every piece of the land pulses and throbs with emotional energy. It feels evil. I immediately became sick to my stomach, and a foreboding feeling overpowered me. I refused to get near enough to be able to touch it. My head started to pound in rhythm with my heart, and the house seemed to be alive; groaning and rocking, though entirely made of brick.

I asked to leave after only five minutes, unable to handle much more of that feeling. We left swiftly.

The second time I went to the house was at daytime: I wanted to know if the feelings were simply psychological or not. Hell's Tunnel still echoed horribly- every time I've walked through it, I've had to repeat the Hail Mary out loud to feel the least bit safe. This time it was just Dustin and I, and a silence fell over us as our hike continued, and my heart stopped as we neared the house.

Immediately, we both froze, staring at the top left window. "It looks like someone left a curtain there," I noted, pointing at a length of white fabric from within the window.

We watched in horror, though, as the fabric lowered to reveal blue feet and then a face, silently screaming at us. I screamed and took off running, Dustin paralyzed with fear for a few moments before following. We ran towards the cemetery so that we could take the train tracks instead of having to go directly through the woods and Hell's Tunnel again: it was clearer, that way, and we could see around us easier. We slowed and I began to cry, absolutely horrified. My heart was racing and I couldn't shake the waves of energy that were pulsing through me. I had the feeling that we were still being watched, and turned to see a tall, black silhouette that looked to be a man covered in black paint.

Dustin turned to see what had caught my attention, and his eyes grew wide. It was beginning to move toward us in a jagged sort of way- it's difficult to explain- and we started running again, not stopping until we'd scrambled through the cemetery and ran halfway down the train tracks. Our lungs burning for lack of air and our heads and hearts pounding, we went back to the car and didn't go back for months and months.

Then a group of my friends wanted to see the place. I was feeling okay because a few months had gone by since my last experience, and it wasn't one that felt particularly dangerous; just terrifying. There were six of us and Stephen was our tour guide. Hell's Tunnel we illuminated with flash lights, with made the experience a little less horrible, but Christopher and I- the most sensitive in the group- were still terribly uncomfortable. We rushed out of there and continued the hike.

We neared the house and Christopher, who had been holding my hand, stopped abruptly. I asked him what was wrong but he said he didn't know: he just felt like the ground was sucking the energy out of him. That night a few physical things happened to us, including the crematorium light going on (there hasn't been electricity to the buildings in thirty years) and then breaking, one of the windows shattering, a bird attacking one of my friends, and two lights following us in the cemetery. We also took a number of paranormal photographs, which are on my other computer: I'll upload them to creepgirl once I get the chance!

The most terrifying thing that happened on that particular trip was when we were leaving the house and making our way towards the cemetery. I was still clinging to Christopher's arm and we both happened to glance out at the field, and what we saw immediately paralyzed us. It was a long-limbed creature that looked to have once been human: if you've ever seen The Messengers, it looked like that, except it was crawling like a spider on long limbs, still moving in that twitchy, flickering sort of way towards us. Our friends stopped and asked us what we were seeing: they couldn't see anything themselves. When we finally got the feeling back in our legs, Christopher flung me up in his arms and we ran away as fast as we could. When we checked to see if it had followed, nothing was there.

Again, I didn't return for a long time. Then, last summer, a group of kids that had read about the place in an article (which was later taken out of the newspaper for privacy) and were friends of an acquaintance of mine, who called to ask if I'd stand as their tour guide and take them there. I was very hesitant at first, but reluctantly agreed to take them.

I knew something was wrong almost instantly. We stepped on the path and a sort of jolt of bad energy ran through me. I shrugged it off, though, keeping my sixth sense in mind. But then as we neared Hell's Tunnel, something rustled to our left. We paused, shining our flashlights. There wasn't an animal, and the trees weren't moving. We continued to walk but it got worse. The trees were beginning to move, but would freeze once we shined the light on them. Suddenly it was happening in within our radius in a circle, as though it was closing in on us. We started running and it chased us, whatever it was. We ran into Hell's Tunnel and it stopped. I begged the others to turn back, but they begged me to continue on. Hesitantly, I agreed.

When we got back to our cars, there were in pieces.

There were many other things that happened that night: things I'm not comfortable talking about right now.

After that, I never went back. Shortly after, my friend went to go check it out and found that it's been taken down. Now only the cemetery and Hell's Tunnel remains as clues that it was ever there: you can't find any information on it by Google etc. Only the Faribault library contains any information on the place, and only in paper form. Getting to see the documents is nearly impossible, though. It's become the town's dirty little secret. Only one survivor is still alive, and she wrote a book called "Milk and Crackers", which is the closest thing to an article you can find on the place.

Added by: sdonley on 05/28/2012 DB#:1082
Source(s):
http://adi-adi.livejournal.com/164142.html

Shattuck-St. Marys School

Database Summary:

History

Stories

Paranormal Claims

Paranormal Evidence

Additional Resources

Location Comments

Claim #	Added	Added By	Claim
1515	05/28/2012	sdonley	Sounds of someone playing basketball have been heard when the gym is empty.
1516	05/28/2012	sdonley	Apparitions have been seen looking out the windows of the abandoned infirmary.