THE STORY
Reported Haunting
Several buildings across the Marquette University campus are the subject of longstanding ghost stories. Students and staff have reported apparitions, unexplained footsteps, mysterious voices, and other unusual activity in older campus buildings.
There are several spots at Marquette University rumored to be haunted. One is the Helfaer Theater where a deceased artistic director’s apparition has been seen and unexplained banging erupts on the catwalks. Another is the Humphrey Hall dorm building, which was once a children’s hospital. Ghostly children have been captured on security camera monitors and heard laughing, crying, singing or screaming. At Johnston Hall, the ghost is rumored to be a Jesuit priest who committed suicide by throwing himself off the top floor. Another suicide victim haunts Mashuda Hall, and until her room was blessed, her ghost emitted sounds, sent objects flying and wrote messages on foggy windows. Straz Hall was once the East Hall and a YMCA building where Petey, a small boy, drowned in the basement pool. He haunts the basement still, audibly walking toward witnesses in the vicinity. And at Varsity Hall, there’s a ghost of a stagehand who suffered a gruesome death when he fell into a large fan and was cut to pieces.