Vol. 105 Issue 61
@thepittnews
Pittnews.com
Friday, October 31, 2014
Pittsburgh named top spot for trick-ortreating
SPOOK-TACULAR
Emma Solak Staff Writer
Students come in costume to the Quad for Haunted Holland. Christine Lim | Staff Photographer
Ghosts of Pittsburgh Jess Muslin Staff Writer Halloween means ghosts, spirits and things that go bump in the night — or things that go bump in broad daylight while Pitt students are sitting in class. All Hallow’s Eve is a night when the spirits of the dead are said to walk among the living. Thousands of Pitt students study in or walk past haunted places on campus every day without even knowing it. Two years ago, on her annual Halloween evening ghost watch in the Early American Room on the third floor of the Cathedral, Maxine Bruhns was telling a story
about being a young girl on her grandparents’ farm. “When I mentioned “Grandma,” the cradle rocked three times, no more. You cannot make it do that when you rock it,” Bruhns, director of the Nationality Rooms, said. “I can make the cradle rock, and it goes about 14 times.” According to Bruhns, her grandmother haunts the Early American Room, one of the most well-known haunted rooms on Pitt’s campus. Her grandmother was Martha Jane Poe, a second cousin of Edgar Allen Poe, and is the resident ghost of the room’s secret bedroom. To get to the secret haunted
bedroom, you have to enter a closet, push a hidden knob in the wall, climb through a hidden door and climb a staircase to the top. The bedroom is furnished with donations from Bruhns herself, including her grandmother’s wedding quilt that was made in 1850. Bruhns said that once, a custodian was cleaning the room and fixed the quilt on the bed, only to turn and see it folded back with an indentation on the pillow. Another time, a carpenter who carefully wrapped and put away a picture of Martha Jane Poe found it broken later that day.
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Don’t keep your light on during Halloween? Shame on you. Pittsburgh is now one of America’s most “trickor-treatable” cities. Zillow, a home and real estate marketplace that gathers and shares data on homes, real estates and mortgages, ranked Pittsburgh as the 12th best city for trick-or-treating this month. Pittsburgh lost out in the rankings to San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago and Philadelphia, ranked one through four respectively. According to Alexa Fiander, a representative for Zillow, the marketplace considered four equally weighted variables of the top 75 most populated cities in the United States to determine the best city for trick-or-treating: the median estimated value for homes in a given area, population density, the walkability of the area and local crime data. Given the challenge of conquering an entire city for candy, Zillow also ranked the top five neighborhoods within each city. “Using this index, trick-or-treaters can select a neighborhood with the most candy, with the least walking distance and safety risks,” Fiander said in an email. Fiander said Zillow chose the four factors to suit the needs of parents and kids. Parents want their kids to be safe, so
Zillow analyzed the crime indexes of cities, and kids want candy, so Zillow looked at home incomes, assuming homes with higher incomes would be more generous in their candy supplying. “Lastly, for parents and kids alike, the walkability and density of a neighborhood is key,” Fiander said. “You want to cover the most ground, in the fastest time, to collect the most Halloween loot.” The top five neighborhoods in Pittsburgh are Shadyside, Regent Square, Squirrel Hill, Point Breeze and Greenfield for trick-or-treating in Pittsburgh. Not many trick-or-treaters come to Oakland, though. Kyle Kaufman, a junior studying psychology at Pitt, said he only got one trick-or-treater last year who stopped by because Kaufman’s porch light was on at his house on McKee Place. “It was around 7:30 or 8:00 [p.m.], and we had to rush around the house to try to find something to
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Hard Ball Duke makes for a tough matchup after Pitt’s Homecoming blowout loss
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