Many
adjectives come to mind when one thinks of Rutgers University, but
mysterious and creepy probably are not at the top of the list.
Yet
those are the exact words Rutgers graduate students Jessica Teal, 28,
of Piscataway, and Ray Brennan, 27, of Middletown, use when speaking
about odd things that have occurred at the university.
Things
like figures lurking in the shadows and faucets turning on by
themselves inside Douglass College's Little Theater. An odd-sized door
that's been walled up in Alexander Library. An aggressive bat that
swoops down upon visitors at the Graduate School of Education. Tunnels
that lead from university buildings to underground passageways beneath
New Brunswick. Coyote sightings on the Livingston campus in Piscataway.
So,
in an effort to discover what makes Rutgers unique, and to feed their
intense curiosity about its lore and legends, the pair created a Web
site, www.rutgersrarities.com.
Although the site only has been in existence a few months, Brennan and
Teal have documented many of the school's strange or unexplainable
events, and they're eager to share these stories with the
university community.
"Some people don't know," Teal says. "Some
people are undergraduates, and because they only stay on one campus or
something, they never actually know what's on the other campuses."
For
example, many affiliated with Rutgers may not know about the strange
goings-on inside the University Inn and Conference Center on Douglass
campus in New Brunswick. During a summertime visit to the inn's
unoccupied third floor, Brennan and Teal recount how their
battery-operated audio-tape recorder began turning on and off by
itself. Then Brennan, who was operating a camcorder, says he
experienced something that defies explanation.
"As I'm walking
(down the hall), I feel — it was a physical pulling — like some force
had grabbed my camera and pulled it towards my body," Brennan explains.
"The strap got real tight. It was actually a force. It was stronger
than I was, because it was actually forcing my hand.
"And you
can see while I was shooting the video, it (the camera) starts to point
up a little. And the whole time I'm thinking, 'Oh, it's gotta be air
currents ...' "
At the same time, Teal says, the doorknobs in
the hallway began rattling. A light also was visible from underneath
the door to one of the empty rooms, and they heard a distinct knocking
sound. The pair learned that some of the inn's employees had odd
stories of their own, including receiving phone calls from an empty
room.
But it was their own firsthand experience that made them
less skeptical. "I've never had any kind of experience close to that,"
Brennan says.
Occasionally, Brennan and Teal have ventured
outside the university's campuses to conduct investigations. They've
stumbled upon cemeteries buried deep within the woods and poked around
the site of a former chemical company, both in Piscataway.
While
it's obvious the pair are excited about their findings, they're equally
determined to keep things as real as possible, and have spent
considerable time researching the history of Rutgers, New Brunswick and
its surrounding environs. All of this information is included on the
Web site.
The site also features numerous photographs and video
footage, as well as detailed accounts of their experiences, maps of the
Rutgers campuses — which point out the sites of Rutgers Rarities
investigations — and a bulletin board where visitors are encouraged to
share their tales and photographs of the strange and unexplained. Teal
and Brennan are also sponsoring a photo contest on the site. The winner
will receive an official Rutgers Rarities T-shirt.
The
pair plan to continue gathering stories and conducting investigations
over at least the next year, and thoughts about parlaying it into a
documentary are not far from their minds.
In the end, though, Teal says it's important to keep a level head.
"You've
got to have a sense of humor about these things," she says. "We're not
ghost hunters or ghost busters. We're just like regular students —
we're just curious."
More information on Teal and Brennan's investigations is available by visiting www.rutgersrarities.com.
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