More Phantoms of Oxford

by M.P. Pellicer | Stranger Than Fiction Stories
Oxford College, Ohio has many ghost stories associated with it. The most famous being the unexplained disappearance of student Ronald Tammen Jr. in 1953. His fate has never been discovered. These are the lesser known mysteries associated with a campus which once served as a mental asylum.

---

Participants at Miami University Freshman-Sophomore Pole Rush, Hepburn and Brice Hall in the background c.1905

Old Fisher Hall was once the Oxford College for Women. In 1882, Dr. Harvey Cook bought the building and made it into an asylum and sanitarium after it closed. He added other buildings and it was then called the Oxford Retreat. There was also the acquisition of a building that was named The Pines, and Dr. Cook lived at an adjacent structure called Cook Place.

There was a tunnel that led from The Pines to Cook Place. The story told about the tunnel, is that Dr. Cook used it to get to his house from the Pines without being seen by the patients.

Miami University first acquired the Retreat property in 1925. The old college building was renamed Fisher Hall, and was used as a residence for the male students. Every once in a while the students would come across discarded strait jackets and other remnants of what the building was once used for.

According to When the Ghost Screams: True Stories of Victims Who Haunt (2006), Fisher Hall already had a reputation for being haunted. The structure had been occupied since 1856, when it was a female college with a dining room which seated 800 students. Two hundred students lived in the building. During World War II, it was used as a barracks for the Naval radio training school.

---

Henry Snyder a professor at Miami University who committed suicide in 1898.

THE STRANGE DEATH OF PROFESSOR SNYDER

It was September 14, 1898, when Professor Henry Snyder died at his home. There were whispers of suicide, but none could figure out why he would have done away with himself. The coroner determined that Professor Snyder was "eccentric" and his death was a case of "suicide beyond doubt."

Snyder had experienced trauma early in his life when he was 9 years old. In 1865, his mother Amanda died during childbirth of her last baby, Charles.

Dr. Harvey Cook from the university analyzed what poisons Snyder had taken, however at the inquest a month later he was unable to identify which drugs caused his death.

Hermina Snyder nee Meiser, 38, was asked to give testimony at the inquest about what she knew concerning her husband's death. She confirmed they were married in 1884, and that he had been connected to the university all those years. He was the Chair of the Physics and Chemistry Department. Hermina said his health declined in the last 8 years, but six weeks before his death, he had a sunstroke which affected him badly.

Was it coincidence that only a few months before his “suicide”, Snyder received a considerable inheritance from two uncles, William and John; neither who were married or had offspring. Professor Snyder had gone to Springfield two months before to oversee the erection of a monument for their graves, which is when he suffered the sunstroke.

Mrs. Snyder testified that he had been despondent. She had even asked Dr. Alexander, a friend to intervene. Dr. Alexander visited him at his laboratory in Brice Hall, however Snyder refused to unbolt the door.

---

Brice Hall where chances are the chemicals that killed Prof. Snyder were concocted

David Snyder, Henry's brother was also questioned, and he concurred that his brother had not been in his right mind the last few weeks of his life.

On the day of his death, Professor Snyder had gone to Brice Hall where he taught. From there he returned home and died. He refused to have a physician called, however his wife asked for help. Dr. Alexander, Dr. George and Harvey Cook all used a stomach pump to wash out his stomach, but nothing worked. Some wondered if when he visited his laboratory he had concocted the strange chemical that took his life.
​
His wife Hermina, nicknamed Minnie, was the polar opposite of her staid husband. She dressed like a gypsy who loved to sing on stage. Could she have done away with Professor Snyder? Some said no, but then she went on to marry her husband's lab assistant William Pugh in 1904. He was 13 years her junior, and in 1919 he abandoned her, leaving her destitute. Perhaps by then she had run out of any money she had inherited from her first husband. She died in 1940.

---

Helen Kimball Kimball Union Academy (KUA) class of 1844

THE GHOST OF MISS PEABODY

For 30 years, Helen Peabody was the president of the Western Female Seminary in Oxford. In 1904, it was renamed to the Western College for Women at Oxford. She was known to be stern and unbending, and any boys trying to slip on campus knew they faced a dragon who believed proper young ladies didn't spend time with boys, unless they were chaperoned. She was vehemently against coed education.

She died on October 8, 1905, in Pasadena, California, and Seminary Hall built in 1855, was renamed for her that same year.

Miss Peabody had resigned as president in 1889, and traveled to Japan on mission business. She returned and relocated to Pasadena, however despite her absence, her body was shipped back and interred in a cemetery in Oxford, Ohio. She left no immediate family except nieces and nephews, and her estate worth $50,000, which included different properties, were to be used to found a home for Christian workers in foreign lands, and home missionaries afield.
​
Students claimed that it was her ghost that haunts Peabody Hall. Low growls are heard, also reports of the shower turning off by itself. A large portrait of Helen dominates the foyer, and many claim the painted eyes follow you as you hurry along.

---

Herbert A. Lucas c.1957-58

MURDER AT REID HALL

Reid Hall is also said to be haunted. Footsteps are heard in empty rooms and bloody hand prints were seen on a door. Supposedly the prints will not wash away, and were made many years ago by a student shot and killed when he tried to break up a fight. Two boys once experienced what they called a small earthquake that was only felt in their room.
​
On May 9, 1959, Herbert A. Lucas, 18, was being searched for by the police. Earlier in the day he came to the dormitory at Reid Hall looking for another student named James Walker, 18. There was a dispute over Sandra Epps, 18, a freshman from Greenville, who both young men had dated. In the past Lucas had warned off rivals, even though Sandra Epps was only dating him, which is what caused her to break off with him. Apparently Lucas did not take being jilted lightly. 

---

Roger Sayles (1938-1959)

Roger T. Sayles, 20, a dormitory counselor like Ron Tammen, came to quiet the students. In response Herbert Lucas pulled a .22 caliber automatic and fired at Walker who was wounded in the shoulder, he then shot Sayles in the head and chest.

Sayles was affiliated with Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity and Delta Sigma Pi business fraternity. His reward for being a peacemaker was death.

In a heartbreaking turn of events, Sayles' mother was visiting him for Mother's Day and had been staying at the campus.
​
Lucas was later found in a telephone booth at Ogden Hall where he shot himself in the head. He lay there for five hours until a student came to make a phone call and found him slumped on the floor. He had a suicide note in his pocket, and he was carrying two stolen .22 caliber automatic pistols with 250 rounds of ammunition. He had taken the firearms after gaining entry into the ROTC indoor rifle range by breaking in through the roof.

---

Sandra Epps and James Walker c.1958-1959

A university spokesman said Lucas made a high score on the freshman qualification tests, but failed to live up to his potential. He behavior was "erratic" and he was dropped from the Naval ROTC for poor grades and spotty attendance.

Lucas' dormitory counselor said he roomed alone and was by himself a lot. He didn't talk much about his personal life.

Another student and friend of Lucas described him as "an intellectual who like to be called 'Duke' and who recently had his head shaved bald."
​
Dr. Boone who had taken a blood sample from Ron Tammen, was the coroner who examined Herbert Lucas’ body.

On a happier note, Sandra Epps graduated in 1966, and she married Berkley Sterling in 1968.

---

Henry Higgens with his wife Mary Ann, probably at their marriage c.1880

THE GHOST OF THE MOTORCYCLIST

Another ghost story that circulates at Miami University is the story of a young Oxford man who was decapitated by barbed wire stretched across a road. He ran through the wire while riding his motorcycle. The story goes that he was traveling on Oxford-Milford Road, on the way to visit his girlfriend who lived on Earhart Road. He is said to repeat the ride that he is never destined to finish.

To see him one would go to Earhart Road, and park facing south. If you flash your headlights three times, you may see the motorcycle headlights which suddenly disappear as they approach the fatal curve. There is no record of this incident occurring at this place or the way described. It's probably an urban myth.

---

Mary Ann Higgins obitg c.1912

Likely the story was based on the death of George Higgins. On June 21, 1911, he was instantly killed when he ran into a barbed wire stretched across the main road near Colby, Kansas. The wire caught him below the chin. He was riding tandem with another man named Charles Quick who was also badly cut, but would eventually recover. They were traveling at a high speed and it was believed the wire was put across the road maliciously. They were on their way to Atwood near Jim Campbell's farm. 

​Higgins was the custodian of the school buildings of Colby and Quick, and was formerly the Clerk of Thomas County.

---

George Higgin's motorcycle accident probably spurred a ghost story told at Oxford Univ c.1911

Within a week it was discovered that the barb wire was stretched across the road by a boy, at the direction of a farmer in the area who made it his custom to stretch the wire, while driving the stock from one pasture to another. The boy would have taken the wire down within another five minutes.

The repercussions of that ill-fated day went on to claim other lives. Higgins was a man in his 40s, and had a 22-year-old son. His wife Mary Ann was an invalid, and she died the following year. It was described she arose on a Sunday morning to prepare breakfast, and suddenly fell over dead. Many believed the grief of her husband's death contributed to her collapse. Also by then of her six children, only one, John Henry lived into adulthood.

Charles Quick the tandem rider survived and by 1913, was back on a motorcycle. He made the papers because he broke down out on a country lane, and the story recalled how he barely escaped with his life only two years before. By 1914, he was working for the Twin City Tractor Company, and went on to live many more years.

---

Harry Thobe in his white suit

THE GHOST OF THE SHOWMAN

Harry Thobe was a brick mason born in 1870, and during his lifetime became notorious for gate crashing different sports events, including 20 World Series games, 8 Rose Bowls, 3 Orange Bowls and a Sun Bowl, of course without paying.

He sported a white suit and hat, and diamond-studded teeth. Thobe also carried an umbrella and megaphone. In other words he was unmistakable. He claimed he attended 54 Miami University Homecoming games, consecutively.

In 1900, he won $150 on that year's election. He hired bands and exploded fireworks and set fire to a huge pile of boxes and barrels in Oxford's public square.

​Thobe claimed the outcome of Miami games would come to him in a dream. Then he would announce it through his megaphone on gameday.

He "designed, donated and built" a fountain for the Miami's campus. The fountain was used to dunk "overfresh Freshmen", and the administration was forced to fill it with rocks.

​After his death in 1950, it fell into disrepair, and a smaller one was put in its place. This replacement was removed in 1959, and a plaque and monument was erected to commemorate Harry's gift. If there was something about Harry is that he didn't like to be overlooked. Stories are that his spirit still hangs out by the site of the fountain, which is between King Library and Harrison Hall. All you have do is call out his name, and he'll echo his name back to you.

​No doubt there are many untold stories, originating from when the Oxford Retreat welcomed insane patients, to the drama that unfolds between hot-blooded college students. Any of them could be one of the many phantoms of Oxford.

READ THE STORY ABOUT THE STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE OF RON TAMMEN FROM THE OXFORD CAMPUS

---