Royal Purple

Issue date: 10/28/09 Section: News

Among the first tales heard by new UW-Whitewater students are of ghosts, witches and a book so horrible it had to be locked up in the basement of Andersen Library.

Karen Weston, the university archivist for 15 years, has had her fair share of hearing the haunted tales. She remains skeptical.

"It's only here on campus that this seems to be an issue," Weston said. "Nobody in town talks about haunted Whitewater."

One rumor Weston has dealt with countless times is that of the locked book in Andersen Library. It is said that those who read its horrid contents commit suicide, while others believe those who read it get cursed.

Many students have gone to the library to ask about the book, but lack the standard information to find it. There is no known title, author or publisher. The only locked-up book in the library is a large Catholic hymn book with closures.

Weston said rumors about the book might have started before the library's renovation in 1989. There was a large room containing archives, government documents and special collections. Since there were valuable books in the collections, they were locked in a cage for security.

A tale that seemingly supports the idea that witches once inhabited Whitewater involves the alignment of the three cemeteries in town forming an equilateral triangle. While Oak Grove, Hillside and Calvary Cemeteries do line up that way, Weston doesn't think the Catholic groups behind them would've gotten together to make a heathen triangle.

One undeniable incident occurred on Halloween in 1970, when a child's coffin was found on the mall of the University Center. It was dug up and left on the grounds without evidence of who did it, disturbing the community.

The Morris Pratt Institute, established in 1888 as a school for spiritualism, also sparks rumors of the strange.

Morris Pratt was an early settler in the Whitewater area who built the school downtown.

Classes were held until the 1930s. The building was later used as a boarding house, until it was torn down in the 1960s. While the institute has been gone for years, there have been reports of unusual occurrences in the area where the building once stood.

Most of the stories linked with the spiritualist school have been witch-related, giving Whitewater its nickname of "the second Salem."

Junior Brian Bialobrzeski said he believes the rumors.

"I especially believe in the three witches who did séances around the water tower in Starin Park," Bialobrzeski said. "We took pictures and learned that white orbs are good and red orbs are bad. When we took a picture of the tower, there were three red orbs near the top for the witches."

Continued...

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