Pittsburgh is a haunted city, depending on who you ask.
As Halloween draws close and events ramp up, the School of Communication’s annual ghost tour gave students a chance to see a few buildings potentially oozing with paranormal activity on Tuesday, Oct. 21.
Tour guide Judith Riegelnegg, a longtime lover of storytelling and teaching, led a group of students on the tour, accompanied by a crew of students who filmed the tour.
Riegelnegg said her history with ghost tours started with ghost hikes for L.L. Bean. One day, she thought there was a better way to do this. Riegelnegg then decided to research ghost stories around the Pittsburgh area. Soon, she was overwhelmed with the number of stories handed by others as well as archivists.
Riegelnegg credits some of her stories and knowledge to Tom White. He is Duquesne University’s archivist and curator of special collections, some of which are of Pittsburgh’s spooky stories and legends.
The tour, held from 6:15 p.m. to 8 p.m., began with the group traveling along the highway to discuss the incline. The Mount Washington Incline used to be how miners would travel up and down from work, as this was big in the mining industry back then. Riegelnegg discussed how it operated all night in the 1890s and how the nightguards would hear strange sounds at 4:30 a.m.
Riegelnegg then talked about ghost stories people reached out to her about surrounding a small town up north called Bellevue. According to Riegelnegg, it seemed as though the spirits were more playful than malevolent, taking toys and jewelry from the kids living in the houses of Bellevue.
The trip then ventured on to the corner of Forbes Avenue and Smithfield Street, which holds the Downtown Target store. Target, which used to be a high-end shop called Kaufmann’s, was also the site of a bus accident on Mar. 11, 1959, where a runaway bus drove into a crowd during rush hour, killing two people and injuring 16, according to UPI Some people say they can hear the sounds of the victims in the early hours of the morning when the streets are quiet.
The tour then traveled to the Allegheny Courthouse. The building used to be the Pittsburgh prison and still has the “Bridge of Sighs” where inmates would walk across from the courthouse to the jail. According to Riegelnegg, some say the ghost of an inmate who committed suicide made the rest of the prisoners on the floor go mad.
The tour also went to some of the buildings developed by Henry Clay Frick. These include the Union Trust building, and the William Penn Hotel, both of which were recently refurbished.
Riegelnegg shared additional stories on the way back to campus. She spoke about how a hotel called the Monongahela House housed three presidents — Abraham Lincoln, William McKinley and James Garfield. Coincidentally, all three were assassinated.
Although the ghost tours have occurred for years now, they had never been filmed before. After the tour ended, there was a buzz within the group, with people talking about their own experiences and asking Riegelnegg questions about the scary tales.
Even though the tour is over for the year, more spooky Halloween events are still lined up for the month on campus, such as the “Haunting of Point Park” in Lawrence Hall’s ballroom on Oct. 29 and the “Halloween Bash” on Oct. 30, also in Lawrence Hall’s ballroom.
