In the mist near Mirror Lake, a woman dressed in pink floats across the water. According to Ohio State legend, she is the distraught ghost of a woman whose husband, an OSU professor, committed suicide. At the turn of the century the professor, Dr. Clark, was distraught after a failed oil mining venture in Alaska, said Bill Wahl, director of the OSU Parents Association. A great deal of money was lost. His wife told him to meet with the president of the university to explain his situation. The president, along with the other faculty, told him that everything would be all right. Clark ended up committing suicide, Wahl said. A student found his body in the vegetable garden that grew where Pomerene Hall is now located. His wife, angry that OSU’s administration had ignored her husband’s plight, swore she would never leave the place where her husband died. She died years later in the 1920s. After her death, the ghost of Mirror Lake began to appear.”We’ve had people say they’ve seen the pink lady skating, or floating, across Mirror Lake on a cold winter’s night,” said Dorrie Wells, operations administrator in the School of Physical Activities and Educational Services which is located in Pomerene Hall.The vision of the lady is not the only eerie occurrence near Pomerene.”There has been reports of footsteps in the hallway when no one else was in the building and doors opening up that were locked,” Wells said.Pomerene is one of the many buildings on campus that is associated with ghostly tales.There have reportedly been strange occurrences in Oxley Hall. “It was the first women’s dorm on campus. We heard there was a female student who was murdered,” said Cathy Collins, formerly a fiscal officer for the Office of International Affairs.International Affairs moved into Oxley in 1992 before the building was renovated, she said. Because the rest of the staff hadn’t moved in yet, there were only four or five staff members in the building. “When we were on the third floor, we heard foot steps in the hall and windows would open and close,” Collins said.They weren’t the only ones who say they witnessed these strange events.”The firemen were checking the fire alarms in the attic, and then all of a sudden the lights (light bulbs connected to the ceiling by metal strings) started swaying back and forth. The windows weren’t open. It was like a gust of wind without any wind blowing,” Collins said. “Later some of the firemen came back to do a fire drill. They said the story is true.”Another female student’s spirit is said to haunt Hopkins Hall.In the ’60s, a girl who was working on an art project late at night got stuck in the elevator in Hopkins, Wahl said. The janitor, who didn’t realize what happened, shut off the lights and left for the night. The girl spent the night in the elevator.As a result of the traumatic incident, she had a mental breakdown. Eventually, though, she graduated from OSU. The girl died years later in a tragic automobile accident. Wahl said that it is rumored that the elevator in Hopkins gets stuck sometimes and the lights flicker off and on. Sometimes a note is found in the elevator that says “I am still mad at OSU for what they did to me.” It’s not only students that haunt OSU, but also the administration.Herbert “Hubb” Atkinson, who was a board of trustees member in the ’30s, requested in his will that his remains to be buried on the OSU campus. When he died in the ’50s, his ashes were placed in a wall of Bricker Hall on the second floor. A plaque marks the spot. Wahl said there are reports of the lights in Bricker flashing on and off for no reason. He said it has been reported that at some of the evening gatherings in the hall older faculty members reported seeing someone sipping punch who looked like Atkinson.Supposedly the first president of OSU, Edward Orton still haunts Orton Hall, Ohio State’s oldest standing building.Wahl said in the bell tower, before the bells were in place, Orton spent his time there to read. One can still see the black streaks on the wall that were left from the flames of his oil lamp. It is said he still comes back to study, and a light can be seen flickering in the window of the tower.