Berkeley Forum

The File of Lost Souls

The following is a story from The Daily Californian. The date is unknown, but must be from the ‘60’s or early ‘70’s because it talks about the long-defunct “Dwinelle Coffee Shop” and, (see “Naked Elevator Shaft”) students with bare feet!

Dwinelle: Horror in the Corridors

By Pat Dodds

One of the major television networks is reportedly planning to use Dwinelle Hall as the site for a forthcoming made-for-TV horror movie; to be titled “The Building That Knew No Mercy”.

Recent films made for TV have involved terror in aerial tramways, airplanes, and mountain snowstorms, as well as battles with vampires and vengeful computers. But this film’s premise is that a building can be inherently evil, playing sadistic games with anyone who enters and ultimately swallowing him or her up.

The scenario goes something like this:

An unidentified freshman (played by Desi Arnaz, Jr.) looks at his schedule for the first day of classes. It says

9AM - Spanish 8A Language Lab - B40 Dwinelle
10AM- History 49 – 3104 Dwinelle
11AM- Rhetoric 1A – 243 Dwinelle
12PM- Lunch – Dwinelle Coffee Shop
1PM - See Advisor – 267 Dwinelle
2PM - Anthro 2 – 155 Dwinelle

Innocent-Looking Door

Walking up from the west side of campus, the Freshman enters Dwinelle at the innocent-looking door in the northwest corner. Unable to understand the map inside the door, he asks directions to the Language Lab from passersby (played by Paul Anka, Anita Ekberg, and Ricardo Montalbon, in cameo roles). They reply, in Urdu, Norwegian and Sanskrit, that it’s in the basement.

The Freshman finds no stairs going down, so he walks straight ahead past the Olaf Lundberg Memorial Room and up a flight of stairs to level B, the level of the Language Lab.

Confused after having walked upstairs to get to the basement, he makes a right turn, past Romance Philology, down three steps, down a long corridor, still finding no Language Lab.

A stranger (Max von Sydow) suggests in Swedish that he must go upstairs again. He does so, takes a left past the History Graduate Lounge, down three steps, a right turn and down an endless corridor by the Phonology Laboratory, making a left past the Educational TV Office, down a flight of stairs and into the Language Lab.

Dead Ends

Too late for the 9AM class, he departs for the History class in room 3104. He foolishly thinks it must be somewhere above him, so he ascends three flights of stairs until they stop at the 200 level. He takes a left past classrooms, finds another stairway and goes to the 300 level.

Down another corridor to a dead end and he still cannot find the 3000’s, so he descends three floors, staggers out the stairwell, through a hallway, down three steps, and into 3104 as the class ends.

Naked Elevator Shaft

He regains consciousness sometime later, on the floor of 243, gnawed with hunger pangs, and follows the directions of a janitor (Ronny Howard) to the coffee shop. He takes a left turn, down three steps, past the Italian library, right turn, down a tortuous stairway, left past the French department, and into the coffee shop for a stale donut.

Limping badly, the freshman goes off at 1PM to look for his faculty advisor in room 267. From the 4000 level, he goes into the main hallway, up the stairway and miraculously right to 267, a room that looks like a naked elevator shaft. His advisor’s office hours are not posted.

The freshman, though breathing only sporadically, recalls seeing a sign for room 155 down on the 2000 level. Stumbling down two flights of stairs and along a corridor, he sees “155” above a stairway. He ascends the darkened stairwell to a dead end – a door labeled “155”. And immediately 2,000 students come pouring out the door from the auditorium, trampling the freshman under their bare feet.

Final Fall

Blindly, he tumbles down the stairs, rolling toward an uninhabited part of the building, guided by the Building itself, to his final fall down unknown steps to the Willard Higley Durham Studio Theater, where he lies, lifeless.

Director William Friedkin said the screenplay was based on an actual case in which an 18-year-old freshman at Georgetown University was devoured by a building on that campus in 1959.