Grove City College’s Lily Room is the stuff of legend. Campus lore says it’s a locked-up room in a girls’ dorm in which a girl hanged herself. Rumor has it the room was locked for 15 years and when it was opened again, her lily perfume was still heavy in the air. The room was locked up again, but the girl’s apparition is seen and her crying is heard. At the Mary Anderson Pew Residence Hall, rumor has it another girl committed suicide after being possessed by demons. Her apparition is said to walk the halls and scratch at the walls. The Pew Fine Arts Center has the ghost of Gwendolyn, a student who fell from a catwalk in the 1970s. She was said to haunt the costume shop, and when the new auditorium was built, she transferred there inside a costume.
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Geographic Information
- Address:
- 100 Campus Dr
Grove City, PA 16127
United States
Get Directions » - GPS:
- 41.15657058682423, -80.07731223115115
- County:
- Mercer County, Pennsylvania
- Nearest Towns:
- Grove City, PA (0.6 mi.)
Harrisville, PA (3.8 mi.)
Barkeyville, PA (5.8 mi.)
Slippery Rock, PA (6.5 mi.)
Jackson Center, PA (8.6 mi.)
Mercer, PA (9.7 mi.)
Volant, PA (9.9 mi.)
West Liberty, PA (10.4 mi.)
Clintonville, PA (11.0 mi.)
Stoneboro, PA (12.7 mi.)
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Disclaimer: The stories posted here are user-submitted and are, in the nature of "ghost stories," largely unverifiable. HauntedPlaces.org makes no claims that any of the statements posted here are factually accurate. The vast majority of information provided on this web site is anecdotal, and as such, should be viewed in the same light as local folklore and urban legends.
I attended Grove City College in the early 2000’s. I never heard of the Lily Room but I did hear of and experience the ghost in the Arts Center and old Crawford Hall. I never heard of her being named Gwendolyn though. The story I remember reading in the student newspaper was that there was a female custodian who was very much into the arts and theater program and would make a lot of the props and costumes. She died and her ghost would be seen in Crawford Hall and then the Pew Arts Center when they opened the new building. She didn’t fall from a catwalk… her ghost was seen on the catwalk during a performance. My soph Year at GCC in 2002 I was using the restroom in the basement of Crawford during a movie night when a female voice said “housekeeping” at the door of the men’s room like she was going to come in and clean. I announced I was there and she said “take your time I’ll wait” and I came out a few seconds later as I was just finishing up washing my hands. When I exited the restroom there was nobody there … zero people in the basement. There is no way that in 10 seconds a janitor who would likely have a cleaning cart with her would be able to leave the basement without me hearing footsteps or seeing her when I came out.
I’m currently attending Grove City and the stories about Gwendolyn, our theatre ghost, are very much true. Supposedly there was an exorcism performed on the actual auditorium after someone saw her at a show up on the catwalk, and that’s why she’s ‘confined’ to the back stairwell and hallway. I feel her there everytime I go in there, and when I go up her stairwell I can hear footsteps like someone is walking up behind me. I don’t know if i believe the Lily Room one, though. I currently live in MAP and no one has seen or heard anything. Can’t speak to the Crawford ghost!
I attended Grove City 2010-2014. I lived in MAP for 3 of the 4 years I lived on campus. Everyone I knew had heard of the Lily room. It’s down in the basement of MAP, a place called the “Mole Hole” This is because there are no windows down there. Everything is dark and kind of depressing. Though I have heard that freshmen girls who live down there together grow really close and stay friends throughout college. I’ve heard about the hanging, the smell of perfume, and it being locked up. I’ve gone down to the Mole Hole with friends and if you look around you can kind of tell that there’s a longer space between dorms than there should be. Unless there’s a room that was walled over. I’d say it’s entirely possible. I’ve also heard of the catwalk ghost. Though that one’s not really as spooky. It’s the typical theater ghost story. Someone falls from the catwalk and dies. Her ghost haunts the theater. Anything that goes wrong during shows is blamed affectionately on the ghost.