Established in 1952, the University of Massachusetts Shadowgard sits on a small campus with no athletic facilities and minimal laboratory facilities. It offers mostly the more popular arts and sciences (English, psychology, theatre, various languages and literatures, etc.), academic programs of regional interest (such as agriculture, for the benefit of the many farmers' children who come to the school), and - in association with Greyson University and, to a lesser degree, Mesqotonic College of Arkham - a few specialized programs unique to the Shadowgard campus, most notably occult studies and folklore. UMass Shadowgard is where most of the locals go when they don't have the grades to get into Greyson or Mesqotonic but want to pursue higher education anyway; it helps that the campus offers one and two year prep programs allowing for transfer to a better school, and that it features even lower in-state tuition for residents of Kerry County. For some reason, UMass really seems to want the locals on this campus.

Largely functional and prosaic in design, the campus does feature one unusual element: Seven Gates, an abstract sculpture by local artist Ashmont Greenwich, a sort of open-air stone 'gazebo' with seven rippling marble buttresses rising and curving to meet at the top. The color and veins of the marble produce a sort of trapped mist effect that accentuates the strange curves and curlicues that the stone has been shaped into. There are benches around the sculpture, and these are quite popular with students in search of fresh air and sunlight, but very few ever actually step inside the sculpture for a closer look, even though it's perfectly permissible - an unshakeable campus legend claims that anyone who does step inside will die before the end of the year, and even the least superstitious students seem disinclined to test that.