Mystery Image Found in Hulley Tower

By Paul Danehower

DeLAND – Two Stetson University students looking for historical artifacts found more than bats in a dilapidated belfry late Monday evening.   Senior history major Jessica Riverson and junior music performance major Brian Hausker had planned concurrent senior research papers on the history of the Eloise Chimes, the former bells of Stetson’s Hulley Tower.  What they found was music to any historian’s ears- a piece of long-forgotten Stetson history.

Hulley Tower from Woodland Blvd, before its removal.  Stetson Archives.

                “I was going through leftover bricks from the original Hulley Tower to try and get a sense of what the campus must’ve been like when [the tower] was first built in 1934” said Riverson.   “When they took the tower down in 2005, the administration took the unusual step of documenting the architecture and taking archival photographs.”

                “But they didn’t make the effort to catalogue the bricks themselves” chimes in Hausker. 

                And that, apparently, is where the real story begins.  When sifting through mounds of brick left over from Hulley Tower, the students came upon a stone panel depicting an as-yet unidentified bipedal creature.  Both students believe that the panel most likely was located near the tower’s peak next to the 11-bell carillon.  Photographs of the stone itself have yet to be released to media, but a purported original rubbing of the stone’s image has circulated online since news first broke.   Both students denied ties to the rubbing but have affirmed its relative accuracy.

A rubbing of the stone's original image.  Huffington Post.

                “I’m not sure if the image was included in the original structure of the tower, whether it was added at some point since the Great Depression, or if it was transferred along with the bells from Elizabeth Hall” mused Stetson history professor Dr. C____.  “One thing’s for sure- whatever that stone represents…it’s been here a while.”

And there's the rub; on a small central Florida liberal arts campus, what has existed at Stetson since its inception?