Spirit and Traditions: Mirror Lake

In Fall 2021, I decided to throw together a haunted road trip. I take a road trip to a specific location and back while trying to find conveniently haunted places. It's not really to ghost hunt, but it gives an exciting spin to what kind of road trip it is. If a restaurant happens to be haunted and I need to get lunch or dinner, I eat there, or if some place is on the path of travel that is of interest, I go there. 

When I stopped at the campus, it was bustling that day, as it was a weekday. Around the lakeside, students had their laptops open, studying for exams and doing homework, and whizzing around where food delivery robots were for people ordering Doordash. I was fascinated by that, as Kent State did not have those when I was there.

Mirror Lake’s origins

Mirror Lake originally belonged to William Neil. Years later, Ohio State University purchased the property with the lake after they drank the water and thought it was tasty. When the spring began to dry up in 1891, they began to source the water from the Olentangy River. People must have enjoyed drinking that water. 

The Lake Ghost Stories

According to legend, a woman in pink is sighted gliding across the lake. The story goes there was a college professor around 1900 who would invest in oil mining in Alaska. The oil mining investment was proven a failure as he lost much money. He told the college president and faculty members about his situation, who brushed him off and said things would be ok. Consumed with grief over financial loss, he took his own life. 

His wife was enraged by the college’s apathetic behavior toward her husband. She vowed that she would remain on campus forever. When she died in the 1920s, many people started reporting seeing a woman in pink on the lake. Typically, she is seen on a winter night, and there are some reports of her wearing white. 

There are also reports of her seen at Pomerene Hall. The story is connected to the lake as this is where the professor shot himself in the garden that occupied that land before Pomerene Hall. 

Mirror Lake Jumps

While Mirror Lake may be known for its ghost stories, alumni mainly remember it for its yearly tradition. Mirror Lake had an infamous tradition called Mirror Lake Jumps, where the team would jump in the lake late at night the week before the annual football game between Ohio Buckeyes and Michigan Wolverines. As an Ohioan, we take this rivalry seriously.  Also, I recommend not drinking the water at this point, or you might be in an ER getting your stomach pumped.  It was also not the most sanitary thing to do, as when students would do the jump, some of them would choose to go number one in the lake. The petri dish of a lake was used as a research study to check the sanitation of the lake. Many students who participated in the jump went to the emergency room for injuries. One participant ended up paralyzed after jumping into the shallow waters. 

The tradition would, however, come to an end after one of the jumps led to the death of one of the students in 2015, Austin Singletary. The college paid the family $450,000 in the lawsuit. As a result, the campus took the lake jump more seriously and had the campus police start enforcing the idea of jumping into the lake as a misdemeanor. In addition, more vegetation was added, and a quick drain feature was added to ensure nothing like this happened again. I will leave a link to an article talking about the case. Also, my condolences go out to the Singletary family. 

Links: 

https://www.daytondailynews.com/news/osu-pay-450k-family-area-student-who-died-lake-jump/WxV8Oq7nrBHJDrZ9JyjvNJ/#:~:text=Singletary%2C%2022%20of%20Bellbrook%2C%20died,Ohio%20State%2D%20Michigan%20football%20game.