Ghost, Writer

Author(s): Brian Fitzgerald

Source: The Eugene O'Neill Review, Vol. 22, No. 1/2 (Spring/Fall 1998), pp. 171-173
Published by: Penn State University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/29784625 .
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Ghost, Writer
Brian Fitzgerald
Boston

University

[The followingarticle is reprintedfrom theWinter 1999-2000 issue of

a

Bostonia,

publication

of Boston

University,

permisstionof its initialpublishers. -FCW]

with

the gracious

arguably
America's
O'Neill,
greatest playwright, has given
new meaning to the term college spirit. His ghost reportedly has taken
residence in Shelton Hall's Suite 401, where he died forty-six years
ago. The apparition hasn't exactly tormented the tenants of 401 by day and
night. BU students who have lived in the two-bedroom suite over the years
have peacefully shared their abode with O'Neill's
spirit. The specter's
an
of
room's
occasional
flicker
in
the
manifested
is
lights, a knocking
presence

Eugene

on the door and walls,

present inhabitants.

and other harmless high jinks, according to past and

[the Friendly Ghost] bothered you lately?" asks 401 resident

answers Justin Hahn (CAS'00),
his
(CAS'01).
"Nope,"
are
roommate.
familiar
O'Neill's
both
with
undaunted and unhaunted
Still,
calling card: a blink of the lights, a knock at the door. "We call them
'phantom knocks.' They're quite faint.When I open the door, no one is
there," says Pastor. "This happens a lot, often enough for us to ignore it."
Pastor doesn't believe thathis room has a poltergeist, but admits thathe has
heard his share of strange sounds. On several occasions he's heard a voice
calling his name, but no one's been at the door. "Sometimes I hear a

"Has Casper
Andrew Pastor

conversation out in the hallway, but when I open the door?nothing." Could
the culprits be students on his floor? "Definitely not. They couldn't disappear
thatquickly. But I'm a cynic. Old buildings make odd noises. I don't give the
ghost story a lot of credence, but I can see where someone could get the
idea."

Mark Mooney (COM'96), who is now a second lieutenant in theMarine

Corps in San Diego, thought the story of the ghost writer was a joke until the
night of December 23, 1994, when he and fellow resident assistant Jennifer
Singer (SMC95) were making sure Shelton Hall's windows were shut for the
intersession. "Jenniferwas about thirty feet ahead of me, and she
thought that she saw someone run toward 401," says Mooney, who was the

holiday

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172

The Eugene

O'Neill

Review

"We checked the room, found thewindow open, and closed it."
floor's R.A.
A few hours later, theywent through the floor again, and this timeMooney
thought he saw a figure scamper toward the same room. "The building was
deserted?no one should have been in there," he says. "But when we checked
the room again, thewindow, which we had locked, was open."

Nick Manove
(CAS'94) lived in Suite 401 for a year, and he remembers
the lights flickering. Now a program coordinator for the CAS mathematics
department, Manove says thathe wasn't scared. "I just thought itwas really
lived in.
interesting that I was living in the same room thatEugene O'Neill
But a couple of people on the floor were pretty spooked."
Sebastian Bach (CAS'98), who lived in the suite from 1995 to 1997, is also
skeptical of the ghost theory, attributing the flickering lights to the fact [that]
the building is seventy-six years old. "I do remember, however, the lights
going out at the exact time I pulled his play The Iceman Cometh off the
bookshelf," he says. "But thatwas during a week when therewere a lot of

power outages in the building." Bach says that the suite is colder than the
other rooms on the floor, but attributes this to the fact that "it's on the corner
of the building and it overlooks the river, where there's a strongwind." He
also recalls his window shades "rolling up of their own accord"?a
startling
event in a quiet room, but not necessarily a supernatural act.
"Born in a hotel room and, goddammit, died in a hotel room," were the
words O'Neill uttered threedays before he died, in 1953, inwhat was then the
Hotel Shelton at 91 Bay State Road. His birthplace was theBarrett House, on
Broadway in New York. His final resting place is Forest Hills Cemetery in
Boston's Jamaica Plain neighborhood. According toO'Neill, a biography by
Arthur and Barbara Gelb, therewas no funeral service and no attendees except
his wife, a psychiatrist, a nurse, and a newspaper reporterwho followed the

hearse and the lone funeral car. O'Neill's widow, Carlotta, had banned the
press from the burial. In his finalweeks, suffering from Parkinson's disease,
O'Neill
"wanted no priest or minister, or Salvation Army captain at his
man to man,"
there was a God?
deathbed: he would confront God?if
Carlotta reported.
lived in the Hotel Shelton for two years, moving there because
O'Neill
Carlotta's psychiatrist had an office on Bay State Road. Gravely ill, he never
left, except for an emergency trip to the hospital for an intestinal ailment. In

1952, he and Carlotta destroyed his unfinished manuscripts. Justhow?and

if?they were disposed of remains a mystery. Carlotta claimed they tearfully
tore them to pieces and threw them in the suite's fireplace. However, BU
journalism studentNicholas Gage (COM'63, Hon. '85), now a AfewYork Times
reporter, discovered

that there had never been fireplaces

in the building.

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Brian

Fitzgerald

173

Carlotta then amended her story, saying that they gave the shredded pages to
the janitor, who burned them in the cellar furnace.
How did the Shelton specter legend come about? Before she died, inNew
York in 1970, Carlotta suffered from hallucinations and was convinced that
O'Neill was in her room and conversed with her. Perhaps the Suite 401 ghost
rumors originated inCarlotta's rantings and the setting of the "haunting" was
eventually transplanted to Boston. Possibly O'Neill was made restless by the

manuscript burning: ghosts are often said to be troubled souls who stay in this
world because they have unresolved business here. O'Neill, who was given
to bouts of temper, depression and alcoholism, had destroyed unfinished plays
he knew he could never complete.
"The rumor was around when I lived in the building as the residence
director from 1983 to 1989," says David Zamojski, who is now assistant

director of residence life. "I remember some students tried to raise the spirit
by chanting and holding hands?they weren't allowed to burn candles."
Indeed, the story goes back to at least 1982, when Corey Dolgan (CAS'84)
was the floor's resident assistant. "I don't believe the place is being haunted
by a ghost," he says, "but I believe that the legacy of a great artist lives on."

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