As Halloween approaches, students are revisiting the well-known ghost stories from the Streit-Perham, Stevens, Orton and Regents residence halls. 

Streit-Perham

In the 1980s, a man blew himself up with dynamite in Streit-Perham after trying to find his girlfriend and get her to go home with him for spring break, according to an Our Story article. 

Cheyanne Hutchins, sophomore kinesiology major and former Perham resident, said the man was named John, and he blew himself up on the fifth floor of Perham Hall. 

While the majority of rooms in Streit-Perham have built-in closets, cabinets and shelves, the rooms where Hutchins lived have different features in the room, she said. 

Sophomore accounting major Ciaragh Thompson said she lived on the fifth floor, and about half of the rooms on the floor had been remodeled because of the explosion. 

There were a total of 10 girls living on the floor when Hutchins lived there, she said. They had a group chat and would talk about hearing things out of the ordinary. 

While Hutchins was never spooked by the story, the girls on her floor always joked about hearing the ghost named John, she said. 

“They would always joke about like, ‘oh, it’s John, John’s here guys,’” she said. “[They were] talking about him and all that.”

Thompson said some of the girls were complaining about noises in the hallway when she first moved in. 

“A girl sent an article about the story of the guy who blew himself up on our floor and everyone was a little freaked out,” she said. 

Stevens

While Streit-Perham is supposedly haunted by the man from the 1980s, Stevens is rumored to be haunted by a black cat. 

Every year, the hall hosted a reading of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat.” There was a rumor going around that a black cat roamed the halls, and bad things would happen wherever it went, according to the Our Story article. 

WSU alum Savannah Crnick said she lived in Stevens for four of the five years she was at WSU, and they would still do a reading of “The Black Cat” every Halloween. 

“Someone at some point had a black cat, and I think that might have freaked people out,” Crnick said. 

The spirit of a girl who died in the building in the 1970s freaked people out too, she said. 

Crnick said the girl would sneak into the building while she was taking classes over the summer and would play piano and write letters to her boyfriend. 

One day, someone followed the girl into the building, and she never made it out alive, Crnick said. Her body was dumped at the Snake River.

“No one knew where she went, she just disappeared,” Crnick said. “They had people searching for her but they didn’t end up finding her remains until [a few] months later.”  

Crnick said the hall sometimes is scary when people are alone, especially when a lot of people go home for the weekend or during breaks. 

Sometimes resident advisers are the only ones in the hall. Crnick said some of them would talk about how creeped out they were when nobody was around. 

“Some people have said that it was super quiet and they feel kind of freaked out because there aren’t a lot of people around,” she said. “It’s not like a big hall or anything; it just feels that way when you’re all by yourself.”

Regents and Orton

Residents of Regents have heard doors and closets open and close at random times, according to the Our Story article.

In the 1970s, a girl died by suicide in her room right before graduating, and residents claim she is the one opening the doors and closets, according to the article. 

Orton residents claim to see the building’s ghost, Railroad Sam. He appears on the 12th floor, and only appears when trains go through town because he watches the trains, which is where he got his name, according to the article.