Coe College — Voorhees Hall

Helen Esther Roberts, an 18-year-old first-year student from Strawberry Point, arrived at Coe in the fall of 1918 and died of influenza-related pneumonia on October 19, 1918, only about three weeks into her first term, during the Spanish flu epidemic. She had lived in Voorhees Hall, where she fell ill. Her parents donated a grandfather clock in her memory, and stories of Helen began about a year later.

Generations of Voorhees residents have told them since: doors that lock, electrical items that switch on and off, pictures that fall from walls, a figure at the foot of a bed, piano music in the parlor at night, and the clock itself as the place she is said to rest. Coe's own history of the story calls her a "friendly ghost" whose pranks are "never mean or vindictive," and the account is repeated each year around the anniversary of her death. Helen was a real student who died young, and the college tells her story with that in mind.