History & local legend
Mercyhurst University in Erie has a campus legend about a nun who returns to a familiar place in the chapel garden. Guide Meaghan Hubert recounted it during the university’s haunted campus tour in October 2023.
In the story, sisters gathered at picnic tables in the garden during the 1930s and 1940s. One quiet nun regularly went there to smoke. After her death, people continued to report seeing a woman seated in the area with a cigarette. The tale places the figure near the chapel’s magnolia tree.