Franklin & Marshall College’s roots reach back to 1787, when Franklin College opened in Lancaster with help from Benjamin Franklin himself. According to F&M’s own history, classes began that July with instruction in both English and German, making Franklin College the first bilingual college in the country. It was also the first coeducational institution, though that early experiment was soon abandoned and would not return to the college for another 182 years.
In 1853, Franklin College merged with Marshall College, a German Reformed school founded in Mercersburg and named for Chief Justice John Marshall. The new Franklin & Marshall College made its home in Lancaster, adding another layer to a city already crowded with Revolutionary memory, German-speaking heritage, old houses, and institutional lore.
With a past stretching from Benjamin Franklin to John Marshall, F&M is exactly the kind of place where history gathers in layers. Some of those layers are official: charters, mergers, and buildings. Others are harder to document: quiet tales passed through classrooms, offices, and dorm rooms after the official histories end. One of those stories centered on a former college office building at 644–646 Race Avenue. The spirit, if that is what it was, had a name. Albert.
No one claimed to have seen him. No one described a face, a shadowy figure, or a transparent man drifting through the halls. But according to F&M employees, Albert made himself known in other ways. They heard him.
One of the most dramatic accounts came from Jim McLane, a retired F&M printer. In a letter published in the November 1991 issue of The Gazette, Franklin & Marshall’s employee newsletter, McLane wrote that he had encountered Albert in 1986 while working at the college. At the time, he was unaware that the building had a ghost story attached to it.
One morning around 8 o’clock, McLane delivered printing folders to the Race Avenue building. No one seemed to be there. He called through the building. No answer. He went upstairs and looked around for someone—still nothing. As far as he could tell, he was alone. So, he dropped off the folders and prepared to leave.
Then the empty building came alive.
While McLane was downstairs, he heard doors slamming and windows rattling upstairs. When he went to investigate, the noises seemed to move. Now they came from downstairs and from the stairway. As he made his way down, what he described as “a terrific swooshing air” brushed past him, leaving him with an eerie feeling he never forgot.
McLane later told his daughter, Debby Linton, who also worked at the college, about the strange incident. She was the one who “enlightened” him about Albert.
McLane’s letter followed an October 1991 Halloween edition of The Gazette that featured Albert.
The incident that seems to have turned Albert into office legend happened early one morning when Deborah Shenk and Janie Miller were working at their desks on the building’s second floor. The hallway between their offices was empty. Then both women heard what Shenk described as “a male sigh.”
One asked the other, “That wasn’t you, was it?”
After deciding it was neither of them, and that they could not both be imagining it, they became convinced they had heard Albert.
Others had their own stories. Gordon Griffith, a development associate, was not exactly a believer, but he had heard something too. While working late, he heard “movement” in the office, as if someone were walking down the steps from the third floor to the second. He sat at his desk and listened. The sound was light, but distinct enough that he could not dismiss it.
“I don’t believe in it,” Griffith said, “but I don’t have any explanation for it.”
The development staff gave the ghost his name because a former occupant of the house was believed to have been named Albert. But even in 1991, no one available seemed to know exactly who that Albert was. There were stories of an older couple who had once lived there before the building became part of F&M’s campus. When the man died, some said in the house, the widow apparently continued living there for a time.
Long before Albert became the building’s unofficial ghost, 644–646 Race Avenue had another memorable identity. Built in 1925, the property consisted of two attached homes directly across from the F&M campus. From 1930 until the war years, according to The Gazette, it belonged to Phi Kappa Sigma and was known as “Skull House.” The nickname likely came from the fraternity itself, not from anything supernatural. But the building’s later basement lore only added to the legend.
When the college first took possession of the building, security specialist Dick Barr recalled officers discussing the basement. Down there, they said, was a room with a large marble slab or “altar,” large black church pews on three sides, and red felt wallpaper. John Finlayson, a Phi Kappa Sigma alumnus, doubted it had been used for “devil worship,” at least by fraternity brothers, but suggested it may have been used for fraternity rituals.
After its fraternity years, the property was used for a Navy training program during World War II. It later passed into private hands before F&M acquired and renovated it. By the early 1980s, the building had become part of campus life, housing offices and programs including the chaplains, Black Cultural Center, Women’s Center, Campus Ministries, and Student Affairs House. Then, in 1986, the Development Office took over the Race Avenue building.
Albert, however, was not remembered as frightening. If anything, the stories gave him a personality. He seemed friendly. Harmless. Maybe even a little musical.
Jim Wetzel, executive director of alumni programs and development, recalled being in the building early one morning when he heard music coming from Michael Casey’s office. Wetzel assumed Casey might have accidentally triggered an alarm radio. Only later did he learn that Casey, director of corporate and foundation relations, did not have a radio in his office.
Cindy Elmer, the office secretary and receptionist, was convinced Albert existed. She also believed there was nothing to fear. When the front door of the development office opened on its own, even after operations and facilities workers had checked the latch, Elmer treated the unseen visitor as part of the staff.
“Hi Albert. Come on in,” she would say before getting up to shut the door.
F&M continued using the Race Avenue property for decades. By 1999/2000, it housed the college’s Business Office, a use that continued for several years before the offices moved elsewhere. In 2022, the college property was listed for sale as two semi-detached homes ready for renovation and was soon sold. Today, the building has entered yet another chapter under the ownership of Chabad of Lancaster.
Whether Albert remained after F&M left is unknown.
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