Current Campus Legends (2005):
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Contributor: Leah Lattanner
Informant: Brittany Mehl
Title: “Legends”
Fall 2005
I interviewed several girls and boys collecting different legends around campus. I collected this legend in my dorm room in Foster- Magee, with a few girls sitting around talking about different random things at about 9 o’clock at night. Brittany Mehl comes from a family of five, with two older sisters. Brittany lives in Erie, Pennsylvania. She is a freshman student here at Indiana University and lives down the hall from me. The legend she heard was about the doctor who lived on North Jordan, who gave abortions illegally to girls. She had heard this legend about the first month of school at a fraternity party.
LL: Have you heard of any legends that have to do with the dormitories, surrounding haunted houses or any other legends having to do with campus?
BM: If you walk up on North Jordan at night, people say you can hear babies crying form an old house. I guess a doctor lived there a while ago and would give college girls abortions before they were legal. He would then put the remains into the walls so he wouldn’t get caught. Now the house is haunted with the babies. You can gear them cry only at night.
LL: Do you believe this to be true?
BM: I do, because I have talked to people who have been by the house and heard babies crying.
LL: Do you know where the house is located?
BM: Somewhere on North Jordan, I believe the Phi Tau Fraternity used to live there.
This legend has been told for years at Indiana University, though no one really knows if this it a true legend. When Brittany told me this legend she seemed convinced this was an actual encounter. The legend Brittany told was about how people are scared walking to the fraternity houses to attend a party. This simply warns people to beware of walking at night on North Jordan along with the horror of abortions. The mystery of the legend is that people do not know that actual house, so people are just frightened when walking on North Jordan.