Mary Lyon Hall

An 1800s Plymouth State University dorm named after pioneering educator Mary Lyon, connected to other campus buildings through a network of underground tunnels.

Mary Lyon Hall at Plymouth State University carries the name of the pioneering educator who founded Mount Holyoke College in 1837, but the ghost stories attached to this dormitory have nothing to do with the historical Mary Lyon. Instead, they center on a student named Mary Lyon who allegedly died in the underground tunnels that once connected the campus residence halls.

When Plymouth State was still Plymouth College and had recently become coeducational, a network of underground tunnels connected Blair Hall and Mary Lyon Hall, allowing students to walk between buildings during harsh New Hampshire winters without trudging through snow in their long skirts. The tunnels were a practical solution to mountain weather, but according to campus legend, they became a secret meeting place for a young woman named Mary Lyon and her lover.

The story goes that Mary Lyon regularly met her boyfriend in the tunnels after curfew, slipping through the basement of her dormitory into the passageways below. One night, the tunnel collapsed while both were inside, killing them instantly. Their bodies were supposedly recovered, but their spirits remained trapped in the underground darkness between the two buildings. In another variant of the legend, two young women were murdered in the tunnel by an unknown assailant, and their screams can still be heard echoing through the passageways.

The tunnels have since been blocked off, but the basement of Mary Lyon Hall remains a focus of activity. Students who venture near the sealed tunnel entrance report hearing noises from behind the door, including what sounds like muffled screams and footsteps with no visible source. The basement itself carries an oppressive atmosphere that makes students feel profoundly uncomfortable, as though a hostile presence lingers there and resents intrusion.

The haunting extends beyond the basement. Students living in Mary Lyon Hall report rooms that stay inexplicably cold even when the heating system is running at full capacity. Doors open and close on their own, and residents describe waking in the night with the sensation that someone is standing at the foot of their bed. The ghost is described as malicious rather than merely mischievous, actively trying to frighten students away from the lower floors.

Blair Hall, connected to Mary Lyon by the now-sealed tunnel, has its own ghostly resident believed to be Mary's lover, forever separated from her by the collapse that killed them both. Students in Blair report hearing similar footsteps and voices, and the Plymouth State University Paranormal Research Club has conducted investigations in both buildings, documenting EVP recordings and electromagnetic anomalies. The legend has become one of the defining stories of campus life at Plymouth State, a cautionary tale about forbidden meetings that ended in tragedy and left two spirits wandering the halls of buildings that bear no memory of who they were.