Go ask Alice
OK, so it's not the New York Times.
But thanks to the Weekly World News, some
380,000 readers know a little something about Union
College: we're haunted by a ghost.
The story's not new. Alice Van der Meer and her
father were supposedly burned at the stake after a love tryst
went bad some 250 years ago in the area of what would
become Jackson's Garden. Even today, the story goes,
her spirit makes an occasional appearance.
The tabloid, perhaps best known for accounts of
alien abductions, ran the story along with headlines
that screamed, “Slain Beauty's Ghost Haunts College
in Search of Lover,” and “Students shocked when spirit
of gal burned at stake appears.” There was even an
illustration of the unfortunate woman burning at the stake. And
next to it, the words “Scary Stuff.”
It seems that a local psychic, Ann Fisher (whom the article implies teaches
a class in psychic phenomena at the College), led a
recent séance in the garden, calling out, “Alice do you hear
me? We have come to help you.”
Not only did the group see the specter of Alice,
according to the tabloid. They also got a look at her father and
the angry mob that kindled the flames.