What is up with the old Omaha Women's Club?

I work on a campus with a variety of different buildings and people. And wherever there are fanciful humans, you're going to have someone who swears religiously that they've got a ghost. Most of the time, the haunts are easily rationalized; it isn't a feisty spirit that makes the elevator act funny, it's the elevator. And there are no goblins waiting for you in your dark parking lot, just hoodlums.

Sure, I believe in an afterlife. I like to think there's more to a person than a crude biological machine. But disembodied personalities floating around, harassing the living..?.. that's just a bit hard to swallow. Ghost stories coming from people I know, love, and/or trust still don't settle right with me.

But who am I to say that a trauma strong enough to wreck a heart doesn't somehow linger in the atmosphere? Can a murdered person buried in the cellar feel so pitiful that it drags its chains around at night and leaves clues for the living? I dunno. Do people die and not know it? Hrm. Well, there are certainly scatterbrained people amongst the living; who's to say they don't die and accidentally miss that tunnel of light? And then there they are—in your living room generations later, scaring your cat.

Yet personally, no, I don't believe many of the people who tell me the buildings where I work are haunted.

'Cept for one building. That one really might be bedeviled.

Let's look at the campus: The oldest building is called Wittson Hall now, but it was originally just known as "the college of medicine." The land it's on was purchased in 1909 and the building was completed in 1913, just in time for the Easter Sunday Tornado to run it over:

(Wittson is that rectangular building there on the horizon.)
The building proved stronger than the F4 winds, though, and it withstood the storm, unlike a lot of the classy houses nearby it. After that monster came through, the wealthy folks of West Farnam were untying their grand pianoes from their Packards and trying to figure out which way their porches originally faced. And to add a touch of the macabre to the event, some unlucky people pinned under their smashed houses may have burned to death. Fires sprung up all around the city, and according to witnesses, there were agonized screams coming from some of them.

One of those fires was right on the corner of 42nd & Farnam, an area that's been gobbled up by the campus since then. Surely, if anybody amongst the dead had the right to stick around and horrify the living, it would be the former resident of a swanky neighborhood who died from a combination of being struck by a wild bathtub and burning to death underneath said bathtub. I, personally, would need a long time to get over that kind of demise and if scaring old ladies and nursing students made me feel better, I might just do it.

But there are no reports of bodiless screams in the area. No visions of phantom fires. No sounds of trotting horse-drawn firetrucks. No unexplainable patches of intense heat. Bummer. Cuz that would be an awesome ghost story.

Wittson Hall, being the oldest building, doesn't even appear to be haunted. Right across the street from Wittson, where two new colleges stand, was the Child Saving Institute, a big ol' brick orphanage. During the tornado in 1913, two babies were sucked out the window of their nursery on the second floor, and only one was found, right nearby Wittson. The other was never found.


Wittson isn't haunted and neither are the two buildings that are now standing where the Child Saving Institute was. The tragic deaths of two forsaken infants and hellish pyres burning amidst the rubble following the tornado isn't enough to create a haunting??

To be fair, though, there don't seem to be many natural disaster-based ghost stories. Perhaps the downhome, Celtic-based cultures of Ireland and Scotland were right when they asserted in their folklore that "devils" and "spouts" (not quite F4s, though) were fairies or dead ancestors that steal your souls. Cuz there certainly don't appear to be any wandering spirits from the 1913 tornado.

So deep, terrifying history on this campus hasn't produced a single specter to my knowledge. Notable history seems to precede a good haunt; how much more notable can you get?

Also, take into account that thousands upon thousands of people have died on this campus. Souls that weren't ready to go, souls that were bad, souls of children all departed here. So where is our ghostly mischief? Every other person you meet who swears they have a haunting will tell you they're haunted by a child. A little boy or a little girl who bounces a ball, giggles, messes with the light switches and water faucets, etc. Where are those souls here on campus?

Actually, there's a semi-believable haunting in one building that involves children. I'm not sure whether I believe it, but I'll shed some light on it for anyone interested.

There's an H-shaped structure on campus called Swanson Hall that used to be Children's Hospital. The new Children's Hospital is a dandy-fine circular building at 84th & Dodge now and the old one here just houses a bunch of offices. Security officers who walk through the halls late at night say they've seen people-ish-looking figures at the ends of the hallways. Upon approaching them, they disappear. There are no real descriptions of these ghosts; just dark, shadowy figures.

If you're a graveyard shift security officer, your eyes are going to be tired. Lots of nighttime employees end up awake far more than they should be during the day, and they no doubt feel sleepy at night when they're working. A pair of drowsy eyes under yellow hallway lights can show you all kinds of ghosts!

However, there's one more fact to throw into the supposed Swanson Hall haunting: the nuns. I spoke with someone who had an office in Swanson and devlishly told her that the building is rumored to be haunted. She replied, "I wonder if it's the nuns," and went on to explain that the old elevator in Swanson wasn't designed to go to the fifth floor. Until they got a new elevator system, the inhabitants of this building had to use the stairs if they were going to the top floor. Apparently this was because the nuns originally lived up there on five.

I don't know if nuns really lived in that building or not, but if they were the typical black-habited sisters you see singing in the choir at a cathedral, their ghosts really would look like shadowy, indistinct people-shapes from the end of a long hallway.

And what's creepier than a ghost nun? Yup. Whether that building is really haunted or not, it sure makes a good story but not a really believeable one.

But now!, after pages of disappointment, I have to admit that there's one building on campus that just might be truly haunted. It's a Tudor-ish-looking mansion that was added to the campus in 1963; it's the old Omaha Women's Club:


Of all the structures on this campus, I really wouldn't have picked this one to be haunted. A "women's club?" It's history is full of tea parties and Christmas galas? What about the ghost nuns and the tornado-smashed babies? Yet, if you're to ask maintenance, catering, or security which part of the campus is haunted, they will name the old OWC without a moment of hesitance.

Forgive me for a moment of generalization: I was once trying to remember the year of the Norman Invasion (1066 AD) and asked a local Nebraskan. I received the following rebuttal: "Not important. I don't remember stuff like that."

In a grander scheme of things, the Norman Invasion is important but to 21st century Nebraska, it's not. There are a lot of people here who are not very interested in the wonderment or richness of the world. They're interested in the wonderment of their families and keeping a job, and if your little facts (like the pivotal year of the Norman Invasion) doesn't feed their kids or give them a better salary, a lot of Nebraskans consider it useless information.

These people are practical. Anally practical.

So most of the time when you ask for local legends or ghost stories, the best you're going to get from some folks is a half-remembered tale someone told someone in high school. And then a raised eyebrow and a cold shoulder. Thus, I thought it was remarkable that so many natives were quick to declare that there is something wrong with that mansion.

Another curiosity: the security personnel are leery about the old OWC. I can understand a hoodoo housekeeper or semi-schizo handyman getting the heebie-jeebies from an old mansion, but the security officers are a different ballgame.

Sometimes, I worry about our security officers. Who's the first person to arrive at a chemical spill? A security officer. And if you don't warn him ahead of time, he will run directly into a poison gas cloud and probably make it pretty far in there before his lungs turn inside-out (or whatever happens to you in a poison gas cloud.) Sure, some of the officers aren't going to hurry unless you light their shirttails on fire, but quite a few of them will charge right into danger. Staggering drunk with brass knuckles? Psych patient on all fours darting up the walls? Scientist who's lost his death ray gun and his opposable-thumbed rhesus monkey? A security officer who isn't paid nearly enough is gonna be the first person on the scene.

So, of all the abuse that the men and women of security take, it seems strange that most of the officers are afraid of the old OWC. When they tell me about what they've experienced in the mansion, I don't brush it off.

Common complaints are cold spots—classic ghost stuff! You'll be walking through the house, checking doors and windows, and all of the sudden it's frigid. Twenty degrees colder for no reason. Another typical lament is the "feeling of being watched." Some officers seem to feel it before they even get in the house as they're walking up the sidewalks. Others drift through the interior and get goosebumps, just "knowing" that there's something following them.

Like I said, these are people who tackle fully-grown, drunk, vomiting men, but they're shaken by the "feeling" of being watched?

Another officer recounted a strange sound he heard there. He and another officer were approaching the front door of the mansion and just before he reached his hand out to touch the doorknob, there was a sound. He described it as a clawed tree branch scratching across a window, admitting that it also sounded like a shriek. A weird shriek. He went outside and checked the windows but couldn't find any branch or limb that would have come in contact with the window. It's rumored, though, that he isn't the first person to hear shrieks or screams in the house.

Only one officers has seen a definite figure, but I don't know how much of a description he got of it. The other officers report "almost" seeing something, like at the very edge of peripheral vision.

It sure sounds convincing. But. It also sounds like mass hysteria.

Mass hysteria could explain some of the embarrassingly bizarre stories from American cryptozoology, like the Mothman or the Jersey Devil. Seriously, have you seen pictures of the Jersey Devil? It looks like Joe Camel and a stork got trapped in that teleportation machine from The Fly with Jeff Goldblum. Reasonable, sane people in New Jersey said they saw that thing flying around their neighborhoods. They reported it to the police and the newspapers ran stories on it.

The chances of some mutant buzzing about the skies of the East Coast is pretty slim. So why did rational people report it? Because the story took off in such a way that it caused an entire population to freak out. Instead of seeing a hawk or a dragonfly, everybody's fear-soaked brains were seeing the Jersey Devil.

Therefore, if you're a new officer who has to walk through the haunted mansion, wouldn't every bump and chill seem like the Bell-friggin'-Witch coming to gobble up your bones?

On the other hand, if you're a new officer with that macho, I-ain't-got-time-for-shenanigans Nebraska attitude, wouldn't you wanna strut through that haunted mansion like Mick Jagger? Just so you could exit and puff up your chest in front of the vets and imply in more or less words that they're a buncha cry babies for believing in ghosts? Where are the asshole officers who pride themselves in bursting bubbles?

And then, on the other other hand... ghosts are great devices for people. It was the ghost who left the bathroom light on, made that foul smell, and drank the rest of the bourbon. If everyone's afraid of the ghost in the old OWC, then it's okay if someone in catering doesn't do the dishes right away, because they're afraid to be in the kitchen by themselves. And it's okay if someone in maintenance doesn't change a light bulb right away. A ghost is a great excuse!

I am perplexed.

I want to know if the old OWC is really haunted. Therefore, with the blessing of a higher authority (not God, someone with keys and a security code,) I'm going into the haunted mansion tonight with a camera and a digital voice recorder!

I hope to return enlightened! Or petrified...