Cottey College - Paranormal Activity

Paranormal Activity

Tales of ghostly happenings at Cottey have been told for decades. The most propagated story is of hearing a piano being played in Main Hall or Rosemary Hall at night, when no one else is there. The music is usually attributed to the ghost of Vera Neitzert, a high school student who attended Cottey in 1920. In May of that year she was cooking candy in a chafing dish in Main Hall when her nightclothes caught fire. She incurred serious burns all over her body and died a few days later in the Amerman Sanitorium, which stood where the Blanche Skiff Ross Memorial Library is today. While she didn’t die on Cottey’s campus, her ghost is said to roam Main Hall and Rosemary Hall (before it was razed due to a failing foundation) and will wander all over the campus. Others believe that the piano is being played by Madame Blitz, head of Cottey’s music department at the turn of the 20th century. As well, in 1904, a Mme. Blitz drank carbolic acid and died in her home across the street from Cottey, and her spirit is still said to walk the campus.