There are always rumors on college campuses about abandoned buildings, haunted dorm rooms and other such terrifying tales. But at Oakland University, at least some of the tales of the abandoned buildings are true.

Or at least, were. For decades, the Kettering Magnetics Lab and Observatory remained campus mysteries, tucked away off a beaten path, out of sight from the everyday student.

Each year, some resident assistants would bring their freshmen down to the labs to show them the spooky buildings, telling horror stories along the way.

“It was always fun to take residents over to the magnetics lab,” said Jeff Waters, a resident assistant in Oak View Hall. “It sort of became a part of campus culture.”

But the meat behind those stories is now gone. The Kettering Magnetics Lab and the Observatory were demolished this past year, leaving two vacant plots of land in the dense trees behind the newer parking structure.

“[The magnetics lab] was an unusual building,” said Dr. Anne Hitt, associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.

Hitt recalled rumors about an abandoned laboratory deep in the trees on campus back when she started at Oakland in 1997. She saw the lab for the first time just a couple of years ago.

“It was in pretty bad shape,” she said. “People broke into it . . . the door was ripped off. It just became a safety and liability hazard, and couldn’t be repurposed at all.”

Back in 1964, OU dedicated the Kettering Magnetics Test Laboratory. According to the University Archives buildings page on Kresge Library’s website, Charles F. Kettering donated $60,000 to OU to build and maintain a research laboratory. Due to the nature of the research, the facility had to be far removed from any other building that could interfere with magnetics.

The Observatory, on the other hand, had a bit more of an elaborate story. Danny O’Dowd, the high-school aged son of then-university president Donald O’Dowd, worked with OU student Jerry Pesha and the university’s Physics Club to build the telescope.

Built with $10,000 of grant funding from the OU Foundation, the telescope was constructed in a way different than many other telescopes, Hitt said. It also came equipped with a motor to help track stars while the operator sat in a chair attached to the telescope.

Terry Stollsteimer, director of Facilities Management, said facilities had been asked by the university several times in the past five years to reuse or tear down the unused labs.

“They ran their useful life,” he said. As of May 2016, the labs were torn down with funds from the university General Fund budget.

The telescope, which was still inside of the Observatory when the building was torn down, has since been moved to Facilities storage, where it is waiting for a place to be properly displayed.

“It’d be nice to see it displayed in the new dorm, or maybe in one of the science buildings,” Hitt said.

No equipment remained in the magnetics lab. Hitt explained that, through the years, vandals broke into the lab and stole any copper or bits of equipment left behind.

Hitt said that the reason both labs fell into disuse was simply that nobody was conducting research there anymore.

“People in lines of research leave and retire all the time,” she said. She also noted that changing technology could have played a factor in the abandonment of the buildings.

Hitt also explained that in the new Campus Master Plan, that area of campus is dedicated to research.

“‘Research’ is a big word, though,” she said.

Back in 1999, the area where the labs were located was marked as a biological preserve. In the spring, a group of OU researchers are performing an ecological study in the area to track invasive species.

“About 1,000 students go out there each year for research, so the area is being used in some way,” Hitt said.

As of right now, there are no further plans for construction where the two labs were located, nor are there any finalized plans about the final resting place of the telescope.