Baylor University, Brooks Hall

Texas · United States · School

A cloaked figure in a top hat has been reported at the window of the sealed fifth floor of Baylor's oldest dormitory, always with violin music.

Baylor University in Waco is the oldest college in Texas, and its oldest dormitory has a floor nobody uses. The fifth is abandoned, and the story students tell belongs entirely to it.

The reports are consistent enough to have built a following. Violin music heard late at night, coming from above. A figure in a cloak and top hat looking down, lit by what witnesses describe as candlelight. Residents have been passing these accounts along for decades.

Investigation has produced very little in the way of fact. What the legend has instead is volume: a great many students describing the same figure at the same window. One night the sound of breaking glass was reported, with the account holding that the playing stopped, the figure looked down, and something struck a window in what onlookers took for anger. By morning, with calmer heads examining it, the incident was less clear than it had seemed in the dark. That gap between the night version and the daylight one is the story in miniature.

FAQ

Where is Baylor University, Brooks Hall located?

Baylor University, Brooks Hall is in Texas, United States.

Image: Michael Barera / CC BY-SA 4.0 / Wikimedia Commons