Rumor has it there are ghosts in Stewart Hall, which was constructed in 1912 using mules and wagons. Word has it they appear in the evening and early morning hours, as professors and grad students are hunkered down in their work.

Ghosts, some say, were particularly active prior to the two remodels: One in the late 1990s and the latter as part of the Mizzou 2020 strategic plan, completed in 2018.

There have been stories of rumblings in the dark, a human skeleton left by biology in the attic, belongings moved, and other weird happenings.

But is it real? Or fantasy?

“I have no idea where ghost stuff comes from,” says James “Jim” Harlan, who received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in geography at old Stewart Hall, and worked on his doctorate degree (Fish and Wildlife) there as well. He also was assistant director for the Geographic Resources Center (GRC). He worked under Chair Kit Salter in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and called Salter “Jefe,” which in Spanish is an honorable term for boss. “It was not as stiff as ‘hey, yeah boss,’” he says. “It was more Jefe, like, ‘Yeah, OK, I’ll do it because I’m listening to you.’”

Harlan, a soldier, would often work in uniform as a grad student as he was in the National Guard Reserve and would travel to school from bases, such as Fort Leonard Wood near Rolla and Fort Sill in Oklahoma.

“I’d be there in the middle of the night typing. We had all sorts of people walk in. They would ask ‘Why are you doing this — being here all night?’ And I would say ‘I’ll be here every night until I get this damn thing finished.’”

“Bumps, creaks and snaps in the middle of the night — Yes, of course. Were there people walking through the hall when I was doing my thesis in middle of night?  Yes. They’d likely be night watchmen which Missouri has. They’d come through there, ask how I was doing, ask ‘you’re not done there yet?’ and I’d say, ‘No, not yet.’

“I’d be there at 3 a.m. — that’s how you do stuff. You don’t get it done at noon, always 3 to 4 in the morning. Ghosts? No. The worst thing we had at old Stewart were two electrical closets on both ends of the hallways. MU had a bad habit of testing nuclear materials back then and they’d store that stuff back there in those old halls.”

Harlan says the area was radioactive, but not to a serious degree. “But nevertheless, it was readable on a Geiger Counter,” he says. “When a guy came through, he said, ‘Yeah, it’s kinda hot back there.’”

Harlan kept his maps, printing paper, and supplies in both closets with the radioactive material. But he survived nonetheless.

There was also the problem of snakes, also from biology: “Biology had all sorts of things. Boa constrictors or pythons, I can’t remember which, coming down the steps …. They had a huge snake and he’d come right downstairs to us, toward the GRC lab. Can’t remember what that snake’s name was — Jake the snake or something. It harmed no one. Just came down and crawled around and then crawled back up. Or someone from biology would come down looking for their snake.

“I ran into him several times. Had to go up the steps to get to ground level floors. I’d just walk right past him, say ‘someone let you out again, huh?’”

There were also spiders on the walls and in the hallways, which also came from biology.

Harlan says there are all sorts of stories to tell about old Stewart — but none of the ghost variety.

“I almost got killed in [Stewart] in the late ’90s. They had the whole place torn apart, walls torn out, everything torn out. The GRC lab was still in operation, but we had to have plastic over everything because they were drilling holes in the wall. 

“There was this pump door, an old door that must have weighed about 100 pounds. Those old oil pumps would bring it back in. They were out there tearing everything apart. I came in at 7:30 in the morning and decided to get a cup of coffee next door at Memorial Union. So, I walked out the west door and pushed the door open and the pump came off the door sill and hit me on the top of the head, almost killed me. 

“I had to go to the hospital. I got 13 stiches. Salter was there then. He freaked out. The contractor who was doing the job freaked out. I was bleeding and cussing, which old soldiers are good at doing. I know they heard me all the way to Jesse Hall. They took me over to MU hospital and sewed me up. I went back home with a big headache. But everything worked out.”

And as far as the attic and bones? Harlan says he has been up there many times, and there very well could have been some bones from biology. He had a key to the door because geography and biology departments stored stuff in there. “It was just a really old attic,” he says. “There’s a really narrow stair case that went up. The elevator only went up to the next floor and you had to take this staircase up, complete with cobwebs and so forth. It was well over 100 years old.”

Another historical memory was the white limestone the building was made of. It came from a rock quarry off Rock Quarry Road and Stadium Boulevard. “That’s what Stewart was built from,” he says. “As a matter of fact, you walk out and look around you. The east side if Memorial Union is called the White Campus because it is made of white limestone. The Red Campus is over there by the quads.” 

Gail Ludwig, a department chair who retired from her position in 2007, saw nothing of the spook variety either: “After working in Stewart for well over 30 years, I never saw a ghost,” she says. “I saw faculty and grad students stumbling around looking like they were ghosts sometimes — especially during exam week.  But honestly, I didn’t have any run-ins with any weird spirits ....”

She remembers wild times at Stewart as well: running into a 17-foot python that was sitting outside the women’s restroom. “I quickly turned around and sprinted down the stairs,” she says. “I HATE snakes.”

She also recalls an opossum, which walked downstairs into the department, then located in the basement. “I heard Trent Kostbade (a professor) yelling in his office,” she says. “The darn opossum had Trent pinned into his office and he couldn’t get out.”

There was also a janitor who drank a lot. “He kept his bottle under the seat of his car,” she recalls. “We snuck out one night and dumped the alcohol and refilled the bottle with water. Never heard the outcome of that!”

But no ghosts. “I have lots of other stories,” Ludwig says. “But alas, can’t retell them because … well, you probably know … back in the late ’70s when I started things were kinda ‘wild’ at times. And being the only woman was a bit of a challenge. I roll my eyes and shake my head when I think of the weird stuff that went on in Stewart Hall. Ha ha.”