Archeological Dig at Hospital a Haunting Experience

--An archeological dig at the site of a British hospital built in 1231 for “poore scholars and other miserable persons” is apparently giving up its ghosts. Magdalen, an Oxford University college founded in 1458, has the reputation of being haunted. But reports of ghostly apparitions and singing and loud footsteps in empty rooms have proliferated since the excavation of the Hospital of St. John the Baptist beneath the college began six months ago. The Rev. Jeffrey John, Anglican dean of divinity at Magdalen, blessed the room of language student Catriona Oliphant, who ran out of her room screaming after seeing a shadowy group of figures in her room. “I went there and said prayers for the peace of lost souls,” John said. “These things can happen from time to time and it’s important to calm the presences down. You have to stand up to whatever they are, spiritually and physically.” Other students have reported similar experiences. Ian Burrow, who heads the dig, said no graves have been unearthed so far, just “the usual things like bits of pottery, belt buckles and a piece of a dagger.” But the Rev. Brian Findlay, Magdalen’s former dean of divinity, said both the university and his old college are “full of ghosts.”

--A professor of dentistry at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor would give his eye teeth for donations of old bicuspids, incisors and molars. It seems that there’s a shortage of natural teeth for dental students to practice on, and associate professor H.W. Brodbelt says they’re being forced to use plastic dentures instead. “We’re one of the few schools that works on natural teeth to the extent we do,” Brodbelt said. In the past, the school has relied on extracted teeth from about 8,000 dentists, most of them Michigan alumni. Not only are fewer teeth coming in, but the ones that are arriving are in poor shape, according to Vincent Mack, who manages the school’s tooth room. Better dental care means people are keeping their teeth longer, and many of the teeth are pretty rotten by the time they’re pulled and sent to the school, he said.

--When it’s time for tea, Dorothy Preston, longtime resident of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Boston, just pops down to the dining room with one of her 330 teddy bears. Preston, 88, something of an institution at the hotel, began adding to her collection of teddy bears for “something to do” after her husband died in 1980. Her oldest bear is 30-year-old Theodore, and she has others from England, France, Switzerland, Ireland, Germany, Austria and across the United States.