History & local legend
Mellon Hall at Chatham University in Pittsburgh appears repeatedly in ghost stories told by former students. For the university’s 150th anniversary in 2019, Chatham gathered recollections from students and alumni, including accounts from residents who had used the mansion as a dormitory.
Katrine Geha Kirn, a member of the class of 1970, remembered loud banging above the third-floor ceiling. Other residents joined her in the hallway, and one looked through an access hatch, but they found no explanation. The students began talking about a servant girl’s ghost. Kirn also recalled hearing splashing and a child’s laughter from the pool, then looking back to find the windows dark and the sounds gone. Only afterward did she hear the campus story of a child who had drowned there.
Kathleen Ayers, class of 1980, described a different experience while working alone on the student newspaper upstairs. She heard a man’s voice say her name, found nobody nearby, and hurried back to her friends in the dining room. Her friends offered to go upstairs and investigate; Ayers stayed behind, and afterward avoided being up there alone.
