Have you had a late night Spanish class in Smith hall? Has your mind ever wandered away from the professor and into the dark halls that meant freedom? Can you almost hear your future footsteps that you eagerly await to take as soon as you hear “Class dismissed”? What if those footsteps you heard were not just in your mind?
There have been multiple accounts from former and current Chapman students that when attending a night course in either room 215 or 214 in the Smith Hall, they have heard footsteps from outside the door of the classroom. Professors have been reported to check outside the classroom when strange happenings like these occurred, as the halls of Smith are often quiet in the evening and found no students wandering the halls. Some students have even spoken about footsteps heard inside the classroom during a lecture, when all students are sitting and taking notes.
So many students had retold their experiences that the Southern California Paranormal Detectives had been informed and have visited the site on multiple occasions, including an overnight investigation. Investigations conducted by the SCPD include screenings with camera infrared digital video recorder systems, electromagnetic field meters, and digital recorders to catch any electronic voice phenomenon. A medium had visited the classrooms after these investigations in 2013, but unfortunately, there has been no clear-cut answer given to helping this lone walker, and sightings have happened in a regular pattern since it was first pointed out in 2012.
Although this spirit seems to be friendly, it is still haunting on our classrooms, so what unfinished business do they have with the university? Many recounts of stories have been told to explain the lesson they are trying to warn us with, and most include the construction of Smith Hall or the Science building for Orange Union High School before Chapman acquired it. When the building was being constructed for the high school, a student curious about the construction decided to gather a few friends and explore the new grounds. When exploring the site, which was not nearly as stable as it should have been, the student gets the idea to try to find what rooms they would have classes in the next semester and climbs to the second floor of the building. Before they were able to reach the second floor, the wall they were scaling collapsed and the student, who had been supported by the wall, fell to their death on the floor of the concrete basement. The death of the student was not well remembered, many say it’s because the school did not pay their respects to the student or their family. The high school did not arrange a funeral service, and they did not acknowledge the student’s death had anything to do with the campus, especially not the brand new science building that was being introduced the next semester. Smith Hall still has the same skeleton as the old Orange Union Science building, and the building has not been renovated or built on since the original construction in 1913. Current students walk the same halls that the Orange High School student died falling off of. Does the ghost still haunt to remind us of what schools cover up or brush under the rug to remain out of the spotlight?