Every college has a few haunting places on its campus.  Either old dorm buildings or older classroom buildings.

Southern Oregon University is no different.

I came up with this idea for once the school year begins in the end of September, beginning of October; to use my journalistic skills and illustrate these haunting places at the University.

In this blog, and in my other one, “Haunting’s of Southern Oregon University Part 2”, will be some of the leads I will try to go after during this upcoming school year.

Suzanne Homes.  It is said that “Suzy” is the second most haunted place on campus.  They are two stories on this building.  The first, is a story about a little boy that had drown in the building of the complex in the 1930s/1940s.  Story has it that this boy has been walking around the basement asking for a towel; still wet from the accident.  Also, typically most floors on campus have one storage room; the basement has two.  This is because one of storage rooms, strangely enough goes from one storage room, to room number 1, to another storage room, and then to another series of dormitory rooms.  Rumor has it this second storage room might be the room that two people had hung themselves in two years.

It was believed that the first girl kept seeing this boy everywhere, driving her to the brink of insanity and had hung herself.  The following year, another girl moved into the room.  After a few weeks in the room, she started to see a body hanging from the ceiling to the ground constantly.  This steady mental abuse had drove this girl to commit suicide herself.

Rough timeframe of these incidents are aimed for the 1960s/1970s.

Churchill.  The oldest building at SOU; built in 1926, it use to be where everything was at like dorms, classrooms, etc.  In here, there was a old amphitheater, (before the new one was built over on the other end of campus), in which it was said that an old conductor’s box was home for paranormal activities.

One known incident was when theater students were building a set and it was getting dark when a student asked if someone can turn on a light.  The light came on, but about 20 minutes later, everyone realized that no one had gotten up to turn on the light.  Funny thing is too, this said man is known to do something if someone uses inappropriate language (i.e. shutting off a light)

Other incidents included that silhouettes of people have been seen in this boxed off area.

Stevenson Union, “The SU”/SOU Bookstore.  The Stevenson Union, aka the Student Union or “SU”, was built in 1972 and named after former president Elmo Stevenson.  Attach to this, is the SOU Bookstore.  Prior to both; the SU and Bookstore were the old Ashland Community Hospital before it move to Maple Street.

The most of these stories come of the SOU Bookstore more so than the Stevenson Union.  One story is that the basement of the bookstore is said to be the old morgue, (where they kept the died bodies from the hospital), and the workers would see textbooks fly off the shelves and across the room as if someone was there.  It is also said that people dressed in old-fashion doctor and nurse outfits would run around the outside of the building as if they were running to one end of the SU over towards the bookstore to help patients that were in the bookstore end of the complex.

Please look into “Haunting’s of Southern Oregon University part 2” for the haunting stories about the Plunkett Center (the Swendenburg House), Taylor and Britt halls as well as rumors of ghost stories in Cascade and Greensprings dorms.