Hey Professor!

Hey Professor of Scandinavian and Folklore Stephen A. Mitchell...

Since Halloween is this weekend, do you know any creepy Harvard ghost stories?  During the first snowfall, a mysterious woman appears in the Yard, looking for the body of her fiancé who died in a sleigh accident. They were both riding on the sleigh one icy, wintry night when it suddenly tipped over and the young man broke his neck and died. He was buried in a crypt, but someone discovered days later that the body was missing from the crypt.

At the same time, the police had found a homeless man wearing the black coat that the young man was supposedly buried in. They put two and two together and figured that the homeless man had sold the body to the medical school (which was at Holden Chapel at that time) and kept the coat. During all this time, the young woman had been in seclusion. But when she learned of what happened she went to Holden Chapel to look for the remains of her fiancé.

However, all traces of the body were removed by then. So she went to Bedford and remained in seclusion. But during the first snowfall people see the ghost of this young woman walking through the Yard toward Holden Chapel in a long black mourning dress. There are never any footprints left where she treads, and it is said that she disappears as suddenly as she appears without leaving a trace.