One of my favorite year-round pastimes is reading, telling, and listening to ghost stories. I can’t even tell you how many “Minnesota Ghost Stories” books I own or how many paranormal investigation shows that I watch regularly. When I moved down to Winona for school, I couldn’t help but look at the different buildings and say, “I bet that’s haunted.” If you don’t believe me, just ask my friends. In honor of Halloween, I felt the need to tell the Her Campus community about the haunted locations around our dear ol’ Winona, as well as my personal ghost stories throughout the years.
Lourdes Haunting
Shortly after arrival, every freshman at Winona State is told the story of the haunting over on West Campus. If you didn’t know already, West Campus was formerly owned by a Catholic college. The story goes that a priest impregnated a nun who then threw the baby down an elevator shaft after it was born. The nun ended her life by throwing herself down the stairs and the priest hanged himself in the chapel, which is now the Lourdes Pool. Past students have said that they have seen eerie shadows, had items move, and, if quiet enough, can hear a baby cry while riding the elevator. Some have even reported their ankles being grabbed while swimming and being pulled down!
I have a friend who has a friend that has seen the ghost of a small child while on the third floor of Lourdes. According to my source, the child ran towards them after they spotted him before disappearing. I’m not sure about the validity of this story, but I’m including it because it is almost Halloween and I want my readers to have a good scare.
In addition to that, our Her Campus editor-in-chief also works at the pool in Lourdes; you know, the one where the priest supposedly hanged himself. She told me once about strange noises, but she doesn’t believe they are ghost or demon noises. Say what you will, Hannah, but there’s definitely something spooky going on!
Speaking of demons, I have heard through the grapevine about several people who have used Ouija boards on West Campus throughout the years, so I have a PSA for you all: DO NOT USE OUIJA BOARDS. Like, ever. Even if you don’t believe in that stuff, you don’t want to use one and then have a “f*ck this sh*t, I’m out” moment that subsequently leaves a demon. So just don’t. Please.
Somsen/Phelps
After doing my own research last year, I found the same exact story for two different locations on Main Campus: Phelps Hall and Somsen Hall. According to trusty ol’ Google, Somsen and Phelps contained a preschool in which many children died when it burned down. But, I found the true story! Before Somsen was built, a building called College Hall stood in the same spot. In 1922, the building burned down, and no, there were no preschoolers in the building. The story I read about the incident stated that there was a space between the floor and the ground where dust and the very-flammable floor polish collected which was apparently the source of the fire. I’m starting to question the legitness about that story, though, because I can’t find it anymore! Though it isn’t a haunted story, it sure does make you think how life would be without Somsen’s agonizingly steep stairs if College Hall still stood today.
However, apparently the lights do like to go out in the Somsen auditorium at night and footsteps can be heard. So, maybe Somsen is haunted after all.
Richards Hall
If you’ve ever lived in or been in the Quad, you know how eerie Richards Hall can be. I remember when my friends and I would go down to the basement late at night to use the TV and ping pong tables. But we made the conscious decision to walk all the way to Conway to use the bathroom because the bathroom in Richards basement was too creepy to use. If you didn’t know already, a student in the 1970-80s—the sources I have found say different things—hanged himself in the closet of a dorm. It is said that you can see shadows moving through the halls late at night and in the bathrooms in the early morning on the second floor of Richards.
The Performing Arts Center
As a music student, I spent most of my time in the PAC last year between band rehearsal, my Intro to Music and Film Music classes, band concerts, and my jobs as an usher/stage manager/piano mover. In 1973, a student had fallen from the catwalk above and was found in the middle of the main stage, which is now called the Vivian Fusillo Theater. He didn’t pass away on campus, but he did die later in the hospital from internal bleeding. However, it is believed that his spirit still resides in the PAC. According to my research, the space where he was found is never disrupted by a leaky roof, wasps/bees, and you can sometimes feel some cold spots of air. It is also believed that Christopher will put the stage lights to the setting “C” when people are not looking.
Like I have said, I spent most of my time in the PAC last year, but I never saw anything weird. Granted, most of the reported events happened in the auditorium, which we only went in a few times a year for concerts.
I never said it wasn’t eerie, though! If you didn’t know, WSU’s radio station used to be located in the PAC before it moved to Phelps Hall. In fact, the giant antenna is still there surrounded by brick. You can see it if you take a look at it from outside, but most people don’t even realize it’s there. In May of this year, my bestie Taylor and I went on a hunt to try to find a way to get into the old radio room. It was a weekend and around 8 PM, so we needed our ID cards to get into the building. When we went down to the basement, which I didn’t even know existed, we found the way musicians go to get into the pit of the stage. For those who don’t know, the pit is where they can play music during a play without being seen by the audience. The hallway was insanely dark with so many doors. Why does a theater need so many doors?
Besides it being so dark, it sounded like there were two men having a conversation in the theater above us. But to our knowledge, the only other person in the building besides us was a female general maintenance worker (GMW).
When we made it to the third floor, Taylor found a locked room that had a radio playing which was a little weird. A little bit after that, I found the entrance to the antenna and it was… locked. That’s when the GMW found us and scared the bejesus out of me. We asked her about the antenna and if we could look at it. She told us that she did not have keys to it, and the last time someone had unlocked it was during summer 2017 when they needed to spray for bees and wasps… the same bees and wasps that steer clear of the spot where Christopher fell, maybe? She also told us about how she walks past that same locked room that Taylor found and will occasionally hear the radio playing when it was silent before.
Maybe you just have to be in the PAC after hours to have Christopher spook you.
Conway Hall 201
My roommate and I captured a light orb in many Snapchat pictures and videos that we named Bertha. Some incidents include our closet light turning on and weird furnace dripping—was it probably just hot water dripping from the hot water furnace? Yes. But this is my ghost story.
One night, I remember waking up at, like, 3 AM to someone knocking three times on my door before going away. If you knew me, which I guarantee you probably didn’t because I had three friends, I only had three friends and one of them lived with me. There was no reason anyone should have been knocking on my door in the first place, especially at 3 AM. I should clarify this, too: I didn’t wake up because someone knocked. I woke up, someone knocked, and then I fell asleep. I don’t know, it just creeped me out. And it was probably Bertha.
Conway 208
Unlike many people, I actually became really good friends with my RA. We had each other’s Snapchats and were friends on Facebook (which was probably not allowed… oh well, she’s not an RA anymore, so it doesn’t matter), and she recently came to my apartment to show me her cute new hedgehog. Her dorm room was right next to the bathrooms—this detail will come to play in a hot second.
She told me that her closet light (which was motion sensored) would often turn on when the door was closed. A few times, she was woken up to her closet door opening where she would see a man walking toward her and sitting on her bed. It could have been night terrors, but I don’t think so.
Conway Hall also has urinals because every few years, so I’ve heard, they switch the genders of the dorm. Last year, when I lived there, it was all female, so the only time we had to worry about men in the bathroom was when someone’s boyfriend spent the night and they needed to pee in the early morning hours.
I often did my homework until 10:30 PM-ish (because I’m a procrastinator) and I hated when the RAs yelled: “RA: is anyone in here? Are you okay?” when they did rounds at 11 PM, so I often took my showers at midnight or later. One night, as I was undressing, it was as if someone pounded on my shower stall with a fist. I was pretty sure I was the only person in the bathroom, but I paused to make sure. The doors of the stalls sort of slam really loud once you leave, which I thought may have been the case if someone left one of the stalls near me, but there were no footsteps nor did the bathroom door open. As I was listening for any footsteps, the slam happened again. This was a few days after I awoke to the knocking at my door, and you bet that I never took a shower that late again.
Las Vegas
Want to hear a cool fun fact about me? I used to live in Las Vegas—for seven years. I can tell you so much about that, but for now, I’m just going to tell you my select ghost stories from that city.
Maybe it was just a figment of my imagination, but I’m pretty sure I saw a black cat hop down from the partial wall in the kitchen to the floor in the hallway. Now, you might be thinking, Maybe it was your own cat, you goof. To which I would tell you another fun fact about myself: I’m allergic to cats.
I’m about to tell you about the time I went to a friend’s house for a sleepover. She had a rather large family with two older sisters, two younger brothers, a brand new baby sister, her parents, and her grandparents living in a large house. My friends and I were hanging out in her and her sisters’ shared room when the door kept flying open as if someone was kicking it in from the outside. This happened at least five times and we kept running out to the hallway to scream at her older sister to stop. We learned a few hours later that her whole family had left us alone to take her sister to the hospital because she fell off her bike. So, to cap that off, we, a group of 8-year-olds, were alone in a house that had a door keep getting kicked in by a force that wasn’t there.
Oh, and her parents also grew marijuana in their bedroom. That’s not scary, but it’s interesting.
Minnesota
My aunt thinks I’m crazy, but I swear her condo is haunted. One day, I was speaking to my grandpa on the phone while sitting in my aunt’s office and he kept asking me to tell the people I was with to be quiet. I was confused because I was the only one in the house at the time, and I didn’t have the TV on or any other background noise. It was totally silent, and he told me it sounded as if someone, in addition to me, was speaking into the microphone of the phone.
A little while after that, I was sitting in the office with my aunt’s cute dog, Bijoux, with the door open. In the corner of my eye, I saw who I thought was my uncle exit their bedroom and walk over to the closet, opening the door. Bijoux saw him too and began to growl. “Stop,” I told him. “It’s just Kevin—”
But Kevin wasn’t there. No one was there, but the closet door was open. Moving on.
My family had a friend who was getting older and was not her usual, healthy self. I swear to this day that the following actually happened. I was in my room with the lights off at night because I was trying to go to sleep. I saw a light orb, with my own eyes, move from the top of my ceiling to the wall. Right after I saw the light orb, my mom called me to come into the living and told me that our family friend had passed away earlier that day. I’m convinced that it was her.
Patricia
In the apartment that I live in now in Winona, I have caught several light orbs on video. My roommate and I named the ghost Patricia. When my old RA came over with her boyfriend, the lid to my garbage can began to swing by itself and the corner of my Halloween door covering likes go wiggle by itself. I also blamed Patricia when my string lights fell after being perfectly sturdy for three months. What the heck, Patricia?!
Anyway, those are my ghost stories. I hope it gave you all a good shiver because just writing them sure did gave me the chills. Happy Halloween!
Sources