Location
1929 Skinner organ
Woolsey Hall was built as part of the Beaux-Artes Bicentennial Building in 1902 to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the founding of Yale University. It is the University’s main auditorium and is home to the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, the Yale Bands, the Yale Symphony Orchestra, the Yale Philharmonia, the Yale Glee Club and the Davenport Pops Orchestra. The auditorium features the Newberry Memorial Organ, one of the largest organs in the world with over 12,500 pipes.
At the center of this haunting is the giant Newberry Memorial Organ. Both students and staff have reported hearing the Organ being played behind the locked doors of the auditorium when no one could possibly be inside. Some have even been inside when the Organ mysteriously began to play music with no one at the bench. The hauntings didn’t start until the classic-style hall was refitted to accommodate rock concerts in the 1960s. Jimi Hendrix played there on November 17, 1968. Since the rock concerts started in what was intended to be a classical hall, workers there became aware of a “menacing and melancholic” presence in the auditorium, especially in the basement and organ chambers. The sensations became so strong that workers refused to go to certain areas alone, especially in the evening.
As legend has it, the phantoms wandering the auditorium and playing the Organ are likely two former professors, both appointed official University Organists in their respective eras and both forced against their will to retire from their Yale positions. Harry Jepson, Yale’s first University Organist and a key player in bringing the Newberry organ to the school, left the school in the 1940s and died at his home near the University in 1952.
