| City/Town: • Oklahoma City |
| Location Class: • Church • School |
| Built: • 1901 | Abandoned: • N/A |
| Status: • Abandoned • Gutted |
| Photojournalist: • Michael Schwarz |
Even though Mount Saint Mary’s isn’t abandoned, it does hold quite a bit of history. There is a whole floor that isn’t used, and, for lack of a better word and for our purposes, has been abandoned. The 4th floor has been rumored to be home to a ghost. “Yes there is a ghost, A little old nun lives up here,” Mrs. DeNegri said. “She has been spotted a couple of times, but we never know when to expect her.” Kid’s at the Mount have stories of seeing the ghost. Old bathrooms and old classrooms sit up there with desks from the 70s, and old speaker’s that the school used to use. There is only a couple of way’s into this floor, and one of which is one of the oldest running elevator’s in Oklahoma. One room even has the original ceiling!!
History
Mount Saint Mary was founded in 1903 by the Sisters of Mercy as an all-girls school. The school became coeducational in 1950.
In 1884, five Sisters of Mercy, at the request of Bishop Theophile Meerschaert, traveled to what was then known as Indian Territory to establish a school for young ladies at the Sacred Heart Mission near Shawnee. When fire destroyed the school in 1901, the Sisters decided to relocate to Oklahoma City on donated land on a hill just south of downtown Oklahoma City, overlooking what is now known as the Oklahoma River. The cornerstone was laid on December 12, 1903, and young ladies arrived from across the United States to be educated at Mount Saint Mary Academy. The school building stood as a landmark, one of the few tall buildings in Oklahoma City (The yearbook says “For many years the Academy was the sole landmark on one of the highest points in the area now known as Capitol Hill.”)
In these years Mount St. Mary’s was a boarding school for young women, and it also served as a novitiate for the Sisters of Mercy of Oklahoma. In the 1910s, the school began admitting local young women as day students in addition to boarding students, and a rear wing including the cafeteria and auditorium was added in 1922. Mount Saint Mary’s Academy continued as a novitiate until 1929, when the Sisters of Mercy of Oklahoma amalgamated into a union with a larger body of the Sisters of Mercy. During these early years when Mount St. Mary Academy functioned as a school for girls, the school graduated more than 270 young ladies, at least 32 of whom went on to answer a religious vocation.
For more info visit Mount Saint Mary’s Website
THE 4TH FLOOR IS LOCKED AND OFF LIMITS TO STUDENTS AND THE PUBLIC. DO NOT ENTER THE 4TH FLOOR WITHOUT PERMISSION!
Gallery Below
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Wow nice.
I once got stuck in the elevator. It was during the summer and almost no one was there, so how the elevator stopped midway and I had to crawl out of there. This was about 6 years ago when I started going to school there.
My dad went to msm in 74-77 and I showed him the pics of the old elevator and he said once when a nun died he and his brother had to carry her and her casket in the elevator he said it was terrifying… He'd also told me about o he time being on the 4th floor and seeing a face on the ceiling!
i go to mount st. Mary's right now and i can promise you its haunted you even have a picture of one of our ghost
we even have a morgue in the school called the dark room
They use the morg as a kitchen now
The administration simply has no money to maintain such a big building, that is why the story about the ghost has been created.
Not true, we use the 4th floor as storage
I taught/coached there for a couple years 2000-2001. It is for sure a little eerie to go up there. The windows let in some odd lights and the shadows sure resemble 'something'. A few times, some students and I had to store some things there and there were some nervous 'sightings' Was it real or your mind, who knows? I do not know if there are truly ghosts or spirits, but, if it is possible, a place where people died could be logical.
We would always mess with each other up on the 4th floor, but I've had some experiences up there with the guy I was dating and the music teacher. Something would always shut the elevator which sucked since it was the old time elevator with the lever and everything.
safety mats
Went to MSM. We would always mess with each other up on the 4th floor, but I've had some experiences up there with the guy I was dating and the music teacher. Something would always shut the elevator which sucked since it was the old time elevator with the lever and everything.
Many years ago I went to a Camp the Mount hosted and one day the people running it took us up to the fourth floor. They were seniors from the school and we were just middle schoolers so we were thrilled. Of course none of us believed in the ghost stories they were telling us but we went anyway. I at the time was a definite non-believer, but I watched horror movies. So I figured, huh i'll be in the back so these "so called ghosts" can get me. So as we walked down the hall they told us stories… Read more »
THe main memory I have was the beautiful staircase. Of course the last time I was there was in Aust of 1935 and my memory is probably in error but in my memory is wrong but the staircase was immense. I was certain that the building looked like a castle.
When i went to grade school there in the 40's we lived on the fourth floor in small dorms. When the nuns died they were brought to a small room to lie in state and someone kept vigil the entire time. That lasted until their burial. A candle burned as the only light. I never wanted to do that but only the older girls participated. We did go to say a prayer at times. It was spooky at the school then with lots of shadows and echoes. An old retired Priest lived on the Campus in a small house. He… Read more »
True! Wow, Never even noticed… Creepy!
Hello, i feel that i noticed you visited my web site thus i got here
to return the want?.I’m trying to find issues to improve my web site!I guess its ok to use some of your concepts!!
The Catholic Church doesn't believe in ghosts…
Yes we do
My grandpas family were Catholic and he believes in ghosts ;D
I agree because I had a friend who is Catholic And she believes in ghosts
what about the Holy Ghost?
Yes they do. look it up
from a student
For the record I just graduated from the mount last year and I have to say that I've never heard a thing from freshman or people who were at one point freshman there about being scared on purpose or initiated in any way. Personally I think it's bs. Yeah I've been to the fourth floor, one time really quick before my teacher freaked out and made us leave, and I really do think it could be haunted. I've heard from multiple students stories of hearing or seeing things, often the exact same things. I used to get weird feelings in… Read more »
Lmaooo
I put this as a reply but wanted to make sure others saw it 🙂 It's used for storage and they take incoming freshman up there to initiate them into the hoax of the ghost. The third floor is also a retreat center but as of fall '09 they have started adding classrooms as well. A nun, Sister Betty as we call her, also lives and teaches at the mount. Additional classrooms were also added in the 60's, it's referred to as the "new" part of the school. There is also a 10 year and 20 year plan to update… Read more »
okay, no one has seemed to comment on the silhouette oh a man standing in that hallway shot.. anyone? no?
It's a cardboard cut out intended to scare underclassmen.
oh shoot! well it got me! haha
or how about the person in the window on picture #7??
It's the same deal. It's a cardboard cut out of a person that was placed there with the objective of fooling people who happened to look up at that window on the top floor. I remeber as a freshman (2012-2013) at the Mount being freaked out by that same trick. However, one of the teachers took us up there during class and we got to tour the 4th floor. It was then that I realized that there were numerous cardboard cut outs like that, all of which were designed to fool people! XD -Konrad K.S. (Senior at Mount Saint Mary's,… Read more »
It's just one of many cardboard cut outs that have been up there for a while. In the mid-late 2000s they were used as props in a play and after that, they just kept them on the 4th floor. This year (2016) we haven't seen them, so I think they finally got rid of them. We used to move them around in doorways, hallways, or windows to scare freshmen and people walking/driving by. Most of them were pretty beat up by 2014 and half of the heads were bent back, so we're pretty sure they finally tossed them. They've been… Read more »
I remember riding in that elevator a few times in high school i was kinda nervous at first but then after i got on it the first time it was no big deal.
When I was in High School at the Mount back in 2004-2008 we were told stories about the 3rd and 4th floors being haunted, but now that the third floor has been developed it is no longer haunted only the 4th floor remains haunted. I remember going up to the 4th floor about 2 or 3 times during my high school years to take some old items up there and i remember seeing a shadow of something but i couldn't tell what it was and i was only up there for about a total of ten minutes.
are they sure it was a nun and not just someone that was a escaped convict that ran to that school and was dressed as a nun. and when they died they continued there stay.