It was built in 1928 as West Hall and renamed White Stone Hall before being named Florence Schneider Hall in honor of a former Western registrar and bursar. Over its life, this stately Georgian Revival building has been home to the college infirmary as well as to Army Air Corps cadets who trained here during World War II. Its white limestone facade, however, is said to hide a singularly bloody and maniacal deed.

It was 30, 40, perhaps 50 years ago. Western was on spring break and the campus was quiet, but two girls had stayed behind in the hall to catch up on some schoolwork. One of them–we'll call her Judy–was in the wrong place at the wrong time. As she worked quietly at her desk one night, a killer–some say an escaped mental patient on a deranged mission–entered her room through a window. Raising the ax he clutched in his hand, he brought it down savagely upon Judy's head, then fled.

Mortally wounded, Judy managed to crawl down the hall to the room of the building's only other occupant. Weak and bleeding, she scratched on the door for help while her friend huddled inside, too terrified to open it. When she finally peered out the next morning, there was Judy's body, an ax embedded in the skull. Some say there was no body, only a pool of blood and the crimson stains of her fingerprints streaked across the door.

But Judy lives. She revisits the scene of her murder every spring break, although residents have sworn to hearing her at other times of the year. She sits in windows, moves furniture, turns alarm clocks and computers on and off and still scratches futilely on doors, eternally trying to escape her killer.