The spooky basement. At the end of the hallway are the elevators.
Access: Typically not available to the public.
Directions: If you stand by the loading dock between
Thorne and Jewett halls, you will be standing just about exactly over
the basement.
GIS: 43° 54‘ 20.50“ N --- 69°
57‘ 47.39“ W
---Photos follow---
The basement of the Thorne Servery has long been a source of rumor and unease among the dining staff at Bowdoin. No one likes to go down to the cellar at night alone. For some people it might just be the area's uncanny resemblance to a dungeon or fallout shelter that puts them in a worried state; but there's no question others have had more concrete reasons to be upset during their forced sojourns below.
Lights in the hallway frequently switch themselves on and off and the elevator doors at the far end open and close all on their own accord. Everyone complains about feeling watched and unwelcome.
Several employees have reported hearing voices when down there on their own. One employee who was working alone in the meat-cutting room one night kept coming upstairs to complain of hearing voices down there. The next night after complaining about it again, he walked off his shift and never came back!
One staff person told me the general consensus is that the spirit in the basement is female. This may stem from another incident that used to occur. At one time, Dining began to use an old closet in the cellar for storing condiments. They cleared out the bric-a-brac that had been in there, which included a portrait of a woman from early Bowdoin history. Every morning for several weeks, when someone went to get condiments from that closet, they found the portrait had somehow found its way back inside.
The Coles Tower complex was built in 1964 and prior to that the area was simply an open grassy space. So what could be the source of this paranormal activity? Well, when workmen were laying the foundations, they excavated many Civil War-era (or older) trinkets such as plates and utensils from the site. Is the Thorne Servery basement dug directly into the bowels of some older residence that history has forgotten? The answer might be found at the Prjepscot Museum in Brunswick which accepted the relics and may still hold them in their collection.
