Is a building in my university haunted?

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drakon
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Is a building in my university haunted?

Post by drakon »

I just read this today in my university's magazine. I'll quote the relevant excerpts. Basically, since 2014, in one of the buildings in my faculty, there has been a strange smell and people working there have been getting sick.
There was a strange smell in the air when the department of Cultural Anthropology and Development Studies moved, at the end of 2014. According to lecturer and researcher Francien van Driel, staff complained about the stench right from the start. She only began to suspect that something might be seriously wrong when she ended up in hospital. ‘My GP advised me to stop working there as soon as possible’, she says. ‘I haven’t had a migraine attack since I left.’
Lots of staff have reported health problems: headaches, nausea, sore throats, shortness of breath, sore eyes. The sheer variety of problems made it difficult to isolate the cause.
Now, I know the 'rule' to not jump to paranormal conclusions until all possible physical causes have been exhausted, which is why I found the following quite interesting:
Accommodation coordinator at the Faculty of Social Sciences Esther Huijs says that the university took measures immediately after the first complaints came in: air vents were fitted to get rid of the musty smell in the rooms. Staff working on the second floor were moved to the first. An independent investigation commissioned by the Department of Occupational Health and Safety and Environmental Service (AMD) concluded that a chemical smell present in one room was probably caused by a stale pot of glue. As all the readings were under the permitted levels, the report could only conclude that the air was not a health hazard. ‘People felt unwell in four particular rooms’, says Huijs. ‘We tried all sorts of things, including changing the carpets. Nothing seemed to help so we decided to take the rooms out of service.’

And yet the people working on the first and second floors are still reporting problems. ‘A lot of the complaints are informal; people don’t want to make a fuss’, says Lau Schulpen, who works in the room next to Van Driel’s old office. ‘The symptoms tend to be vague and vary in severity, so people don’t report them. Opening the windows to ventilate helps to a certain extent, but that’s not a viable option in the winter.’
So apparently the university did everything they could to get to the bottom of this - changing air vents, changing the carpets, calling the Occupational Heath and Safety Service, and yet the phenomenon is still persisting.

Is there a chance this could be paranormal-related? Or am I just over-reacting?

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Desecrated
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Re: Is a building in my university haunted?

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It's a psychological phenomenon. If you tell people that there is a room that makes people sick, people will feel sick if they go there.

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Daud
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Re: Is a building in my university haunted?

Post by Daud »

Could be haunted, could be a psychological effect or it could be the result of some chemicals used in the paint or something. Maybe theres more of that glue around that the people neglected to pick up.

Try inducing a trance in the room and see what you find, if you genuinely think it is haunted.
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Robin_Alexander
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Re: Is a building in my university haunted?

Post by Robin_Alexander »

I'm not sure it is psychological, but I also don't think it's spiritual . . .

I'm thinking of one time when I volunteered in a shop; we had an awful, awful smell in one of the supply cupboards, to the extent the woman working in the attached office had to leave the doors open and spray air-freshener everywhere . . . the pipes were good, there was no mould or damp, and so forth, so we were all stumped. One day the manager cleans out the cupboard; she finds a dead rat decomposing in a box.

There was also a bad smell from where someone spilled coffee onto the carpet and forgot to clean it up, while smoke-damage from a building nearby caused our building to reek for weeks, as the fire was so bad and the smoke enveloped everything nearby . . . basically, it could well be anything, as stuff is easily missed.

Being sick to such an extent probably is psychological, though, so - now I think about it - it could be a combination of a real smell and people thinking they'll get sick from it and then getting sick.

It reminds me of an old prank in school; essentially, someone put something in one person's beverage, but the other students thought their drinks were spiked, too, and - despite only one drink being spiked - all students who drank any anything from the source were violently sick and forced to go home . . . those involved knew it was impossible for the others to be sick, as only one person was spiked, yet all were sick nonetheless. The brain is a powerful thing.

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Desecrated
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Re: Is a building in my university haunted?

Post by Desecrated »

Daud wrote: Try inducing a trance in the room and see what you find, if you genuinely think it is haunted.
That is a genuinely bad idea. On several levels.

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If the room is haunted, stay out of it.
If the room has poisonous chemicals in it, stay out of it.
If the room is causing people to be delirious, stay out of it.

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