A young woman in the middle of the hall raised her hand, and Ludwig pointed at her. "Yes, ma'am?" The woman had her hair pulled back in a ponytail and appeared to be blushing.
"I heard that if you kiss someone in the Holtman Gazebo at midnight while the bells in the clock tower chime, you'll be with that person forever."
The women in the room cooed, while the men laughed, which caused many of them to receive playful punches in the arm from nearby female students. Ludwig nodded.
"Another excellent example," he said. "And also a good example of a piece of folklore that has stood the test of time here at Fields. You may not know this about me, but I attended Fields as an undergraduate many years ago, back during the Civil War." Some laughs, but Ludwig also knew that some of them were racking their brains, trying to remember if it were possible for him to have been alive during the Civil War. "My college sweetheart and I tried that out. We kissed in the Holtman Gazebo on the night of our six month anniversary."
"Awwww," the women said.
"And it worked, we were married shortly after graduation."
"Awwww." Even louder.
"Of course, we divorced seven years after that. So when I started dating again, I brought my next lover back here to Fields for a visit, and we too kissed in the gazebo. And we married soon after. And divorced soon after that." They were all staring at him now, not knowing how to take his tale of woe. He didn't know whether it was a tragedy or a comedy either, so he shrugged. "That's why I gave up on marriage and came to teach at Fields instead. Now I'm married to my work. And we've never kissed in the gazebo."
They laughed, a little nervous, a little relieved. For a second, they thought they were going to witness some sort of meltdown by one of their professors, the kind of thing they could talk about for weeks at the cafeteria table or the frat house or in the bars.
"Any other examples come to mind? Anything?"
A long pause. Ludwig thought that perhaps the discussion had run its course, that he was going to have to return to lecturing. But just as he was about to turn his eyes back to his notes, a hand went up near the back.
"Yes?" Ludwig said, nodding.
It was a female student wearing glasses and looking too shy to speak. She cleared her throat several times before speaking.
"I live in Maxwell Hall," she said. "And they've been telling us there's a ghost there."
Ludwig smiled. "Ah, I'm so glad you brought that one up. The Maxwell Hall Ghost. What have you heard about it?"
The girl looked around nervously. "Just that there's a ghost, and she lives on the top floor."
More hands went up. Ludwig pointed to another woman.
"I live in Maxwell, too," she said. "And I heard the same thing. They said she was a music student who hung herself in a closet, and at night you can hear a piano playing. And there's no piano in the building."
"I heard you can see her in the courtyard when the moon is full," someone said.
"I heard she's crying for her boyfriend who died in the war."
"This is all bullshit," a guy in the front row said.
"Okay, okay," Ludwig said, signaling for quiet. "For weeks you guys don't talk, and now you explode." He waited until they settled down. "It's true, there is campus folklore that says the ghost of a young woman haunts Maxwell Hall. And that story has also been around since I went to school here as an undergraduate. But none of the details you gave me are the real story behind the woman whose ghost supposedly walks through Maxwell at night. Do you want me to tell you the real story?"
"Yes," they answered in unison.
"Very good. The woman who supposedly haunts Maxwell Hall is named Faith Brenner. She went to school here in the 1830s, when Maxwell Hall was not part of Fields, but rather a dormitory for the Holly Ridge College for Women, which merged with Fields at the turn of the twentieth century. Back then, you understand, there were different expectations for women. They couldn't go on a date unsupervised. To hold hands with or, God forbid, kiss a boy, would have been scandalous."
They all groaned, just as he knew they would.
"Well, it seems that Miss Brenner fell in love with a young man who went to school at Fields. Now, Miss Brenner was from one of the most prominent families in the New Cambridge area at the time. It's long gone now, but her grandfather founded the Brenner Furniture Company, which at one time was the largest furniture manufacturer in the Midwest. Needless to say, they had a lot of money and a lot of power. But the young man whom Miss Brenner chose to fall in love with wasn't so fortunate. His father was a farmer, and a rather poor one at that. Looking back, it seems somewhat remarkable that such a young man would be attending college at all, but apparently he had some gumption. Little is known about him, really, and I ought to know. I've been researching this story for the past fifteen years." He cleared his throat. "Miss Brenner's family didn't approve of the match, and they forbade the young woman from seeing this young man. But they interfered just a little too late. Do you know why?"