Fifteen years have passed since the Blizzard of '78, when students used the stone slabs flanking Widener as ski jumps and food service workers remained snowbound in the Union for three days; when the snow was so deep that even the ghosts were driven from the Yard.

Since then, Cambridge has endured periodic snowfall; but both residents and weather experts alike perceive a change in the nature of winters here. Snow and ice have yielded to slush, and once-bitter cold has eased.

The 80s and 90s have seen nothing like the storm of 1978. For the first time in Harvard's history, the University officially closed. Only emergency vehicles were allowed on the road. The city was silent. The Square shut down and students were stuck in their rooms.

"It was an extraordinary feeling of isolation...if you're going to butcher your roommates you're going to do it under those circumstances," says W.C. Burriss Young '55, associate dean of first-year students.

Orchard Professor of the History of Landscape John R. Stilgoe, who lectures about the seasonal effects of winter on the environment, says that Cambridge's severe winters have enhanced the city's character and served a useful purpose.

Historically, farmers relied on frozen swamps to support their carts when gathering wood, and residents once acknowledged beneficial effects of the cold, Stilgoe says.

"In the middle of the 19th century there was the belief that very cold, dry winters were good for the health," Stilgoe says. "It was once thought to be a good thing...in the same way a drafty house could be considered a good thing because it brings in fresh air."

Stilgoe even suggests that Harvard may have severe winters to thank for its academic prestige.

"There's a strong argument that all of the country's great universities are in places where the winters are bad. The damp winters like those in Cambridge keep people indoors studying."

The area's snow and cold have also enhanced local folklore. Young recounts the story of Emily Pickman, whose ghost reportedly still roams the Yard.

Pickman and her fiancee were crossing the Cambridge Common in a sleigh more than 100 years ago. When the horse suddenly panicked, the two were thrown from the sleigh. Pickman's fiancee, his neck broken, died in her arms.

The distraught Pickman buried her fiancee's body in the Old Burying Ground, only to find the crypt violated three days later and the body missing.

On the same night, Boston police apprehended an unruly drunkard dressed in gentleman's clothing. When questioned, he admitted to stealing the body, selling it to Harvard Medical School and keeping the clothes for himself.

By the time police contacted the Medical School, then located in Holden Chapel, the body had already been dismembered and used for research.

Pickman soon left Cambridge and moved to Cape Cod. But following each winter snowfall, she returned to the Yard dressed in her mourning dress and roamed in the vicinity of Holden Chapel, lamenting her loss.