POLARIS: At first glance, the ghost stories that swirl around the Sackett Hall dormitory on the Oregon State University-Corvallis campus seem like an old urban legend. [For more on hauntings on Oregon State University, click here.] Students whisper about two female ghosts: one who was murdered in the maze-like basement below the residence halls; and the other who wanders the upstairs hallways after being killed in her dorm room. Many American colleges have bizarre stories about murdered coeds or students who killed themselves over failing grades. On occasion -- as the team discovered on the UC Berkeley campus at the Sather Tower -- these stories seem to have a tragically true origin. To our surprise, this also appeared to be the case in Corvallis.

Of the two haunting legends, the one in the basement was easier to research and document, although the details of the story have become skewed over the years. Students may talk about how infamous serial killer Ted Bundy, who stalked college campuses in the Pacific Northwest for years, had lured a girl into the catacombs below Sackett Hall and then butchered her there. That story is partially true, as a Sackett Hall resident named Roberta Parks (her friends called her Kathy) was abducted by Bundy outside the building on May 6, 1974.

Ann Rule's famous biography about Bundy, THE STRANGER BESIDE ME, provides an intriguing account of Kathy's last day on Earth:

The next girl to walk away forever lived in Oregon. Nineteen days after Susan Rancourt vanished -- on May 6th -- Roberta Kathleen (Kathy) Parks had spent an unhappy and guilt-ridden day in her room in Sackett Hall on the Oregon State University campus in Corvallis, 250 miles south of Seattle.I knew Sackett Hall; I'd lived there myself when I attended one term at O.S.U. back in the 1950s, a huge, modern dormitory complex on a campus that was then considered a 'cow college.' Even then, when the world didn’t seem to be so fraught with danger, none of us would ever go to the snack machines in the cavernous basement corridors alone at night.

Kathy Parks wasn't very happy at Oregon State. She was homesick for Lafayette, California, and shh'd broken up with her boyfriend who'd left for Louisiana. On May 4th, Kathy had argued in a phone call with her father, and, on May 6th, she learned that he'd suffered a massive heart attack. Her sister had called her from Spokane, Washington, with the news of their father's coronary, and then called back some hours later to say that it looked as though he would survive.

Kathy, whose major was world religions, felt a little better after the second call, and she agreed to join some of the other residents of Sackett Hall in an exercise session in the dorm lounge.

Shortly before eleven, the tall slender girl with long ash-blond hair left Sackett Hall to meet some friends for coffee in the Student Union Building. She promised her roommate she would be back within the hour. Wearing blue slacks, a navy blue top, a light green jacket, and platform sandals, she left Sackett for the last time.

Kathy never made the Student Union Building. Like the others, all of her possessions were left behind: her bike, clothing, cosmetics. [pp, 67-68]

This historical incident would seem to resolve one of the haunting tales of Sackett Hall, as Bundy did abduct Parks from the OSU campus, but undoubtedly killed her elsewhere. In 1975, her skull was found at Bundy's "dump site" on Taylor Mountain, outside of Seattle, Washington. Still, the circumstances of her abduction, death and the emotional turmoil she endured over her father's illness would make Kathy Parks a reasonable suspect for any haunting activity at Sackett Hall.

But what about the other female ghost said to roam the halls, the one who had been killed in her room and was often referred to as "Brandy?" Curiously, as I read through Ann Rule's book on Ted Bundy, I encountered this passage:

Lieutenant Bill Harris, of the Oregon State Police Criminal Investigation Unit, was stationed on the O.S.U. campus and he headed the probe in Oregon. He had had a tragic homicide in Sackett Hall a few years before, where a coed was found stabbed to death in her room, but his successful investigation had resulted in the arrest of a male student who lived on an upper floor. That youth was still in the Oregon State Penitentiary... [p. 68]

I wondered: could this murder be the "Brandy" incident? But the timeframe was not correct, and we quickly determined that Ann Rule was probably referring to the February 1972 murder of Nancy Wyckoff. Rule was also incorrect on a couple of points. The Wyckoff murder actually occurred in Poling Hall across the street from Sackett. Marlowe James Buchanan, then 17, had lived one floor below Wyckoff and was convicted of the crime later that year. At first glance, didn't seem that this murder could be the source of the "Brandy" legend so we continued our research...

Most of the accounts we read about the "Brandy" haunting had similar elements. The girl was stabbed in her room by a male visitor. Some accounts reported that this killing was accidental, others that the young man was intoxicated and killed her during an attempted rape. A few provided some supposition on how promiscuous "Brandy" was and how her sexual appetites fed her own demise – echoing an age-old theme of the horror movie about how sluts always get killed first. The haunting phenomenon sometimes took the form of an apparition floating down the hallways, often weeping or wailing. Other times the ghost manifested itself through angry poltergeist activity -- messing with electrical appliances, moving items, slamming doors... The other consistency was that the killing took place in the 1950s. Although the team found contemporary accounts of several murders in the Corvallis area during that decade, we did not find any that related to a young female coed on the OSU campus -- and certainly such a thing would have made headline news as it did with Kathy Parks two decades later.

In her excellent book HAUNTED HALLS: GHOSTLORE OF AMERICAN COLLEGE CAMPUSES, author Elizabeth Tucker has an interesting explanation for stories like the "Brandy" tale at OSU:

Some of the eeriest ghost stories on college campuses describe women who wail, weep, scream, or make other mournful sounds. The female figure who laments killing her own children -- "la llorona," the weeping woman -- is well known in the southwestern United States. Another important female legend character is the ghost who cries or screams because she has been sexually assaulted, brutally murdered, or both. Under the foundation of a building or in a basement, attic, elevator, or other liminal space, she makes so much noise that it is impossible for students to ignore her. Since the mid-1960s, probably earlier as well, American college students have told legends about weeping, wailing, and screaming female ghosts that demonstrate the danger of assault. As they listen to the ghost’s story, students lean about the importance of staying safe. They may also learn about a female ghost with a close connection to rape and murder victims: a kind of protector who watches over women living in the hall that she haunts.[p. 134]

After our fruitless search for a 1950s-era murder and much discussion, almost all the team members returned to the Wyckoff murder for answers.  Certainly the timeframe was wrong, but it was never specific to begin with -- "sometime during the 1950s."  Could the modern legend about "Brandy" actually be a mistaken recollection about "Nancy?" The other elements of the story fit, as were described in this May 17, 1972, article from the Eugene Register-Guard describes:

Buchanan said he had gone to the third floor with several smoke bombs, the flashlight and a knife about 3:30 a.m. He planned to "rat fink" the girls, his expression for pranks. (Earlier testimony had revealed that Buchanan was an instigator and frequent participant in dormitory practical jokes.)

Buchanan said he entered the room, crouched by the bed and put the knife on the floor. He balanced the flashlight on his right knee. As he was reaching for the smoke bomb in his shirt pocket, the dropped the flashlight and awakened [Wyckoff]. When she screamed and jumped from the bed, he grabbed the knife and stabbed her.  As she continued screaming, he stabbed her twice more and fled down the hallway and through the fire escape door to reach his room one floor below.

Although Buchanan claimed it was all part of a practical joke, the psychologist who interviewed him believed that he "worked constantly at repressing his natural desires, including sex drive." In fact, Buchanan appeared to be stalking Wyckoff and had invaded her room several times before the murder. He was also tied to two other assaults in which young women were struck in the head with chunks of concrete just days before the killing. It seems that Wyckoff's murder may have come about as the result of a botched rape attempt.

Buchanan did his time behind bars and still lives in his native Oregon.

So the results of our "Brandy" investigation were mixed and certainly open to interpretation. Since we weren't able to trace when the "Brandy" ghost stories first began, it may be impossible to know if this legend is a fanciful morality tale or an imperfect recollection of a real event. It, in fact, may be a mutation of both.