Missing: Auburn Ghost. Answers to: Sydney.
He has haunted Auburn University campus for years until recently, when he disappeared.
Melissa Dunn, program adviser for Camp War Eagle, said she has heard several different versions of the Sydney story told to orientation students while they tour campus.
One story is that Sydney is the ghost of a soldier who died in the Auburn chapel when it was a hospital during the Civil War, and he still haunts it today.
The chapel is on the corner of Thach Avenue and College Street and is the oldest Auburn building still at its original location.
Another story Dunn heard is Sydney haunted the chapel when it became a theater for the Auburn Players in the late 1920s, and when the theater moved across campus to Telfair Peet on the corner of Duncan Drive and Samford Avenue in 1978, he moved with it.
"As far as where in the world Sydney is now," Dunn said, "I don't know."
Paul Anton, senior in design and technology, heard stories of Sydney getting blamed when people's belongings would go missing.
"Mostly right foot shoes," Anton said. "He was an amputee in the Civil War who lost his left leg."
Three years ago during a rehearsal break, Heather Rule, senior in theater, said she had a run-in with Sydney.
"I was walking down a dark hallway with a friend my freshman year and we stopped when we saw a silhouette of a tall figure in front of us," Rule said. "He was dressed like a Civil War soldier."
The theater students used to leave treats for Sydney on the catwalks before the opening nights of shows.
Kat Grilli, senior in theater, said one opening night her freshman year the stage manager forgot to leave Sydney a treat and the first line cue of the play was missed.
"The next night we left his favorite, Reese's Pieces," Grilli said. "And everything went smoothly."
When asked about Sydney sightings, Linda Bell, the AU Theater marketing manager said, "We haven't had any sightings here in the last few years."
The tradition stopped a few years ago when Sydney was blamed for everything that went wrong and a new design professor told students they needed to take responsibility for their own successes and mess-ups without a ghostly scapegoat.
"It's a nice tradition that we've observed and enjoyed," Grilli said. "But we're letting go of it."
As students stopped putting out treats for Sydney, he stopped showing up around the theater.
With no sightings in three years, and no more treats being left for him, is there enough evidence to say Sydney is gone forever? Maybe he will return years from now, or maybe he is another tradition that will be lost to the newest generations of Auburn students.
Well, wherever he is now, Happy Halloween, Sydney.
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