Halloween is here, and it just wouldn’t be the same without a few Ellender Hall ghost stories to tell.
In recent years, stories have been passed around all over campus about the alleged ghost that haunts Ellender Hall and its residents.
According to legend, there was a woman resident that jumped out of a sixth floor window and fell to her death. She is said to walk the halls of the floor that she lived on, but there has been no record of anyone’s death or suicide in Ellender since 1948.
According to Felix Cataldie, a resident assistant and head resident in Ellender for the past two years, the most complaints of strange activity have been on, but not limited, to the sixth floor.
“Students have complained in past years of hearing a girl’s voice down the hall, and when they went down the hall to investigate, no one was there,” Cataldie said.
Cataldie also had an encounter with strange occurrences in Ellender.
“I remember going through a room during an inspection and the faucet turned on suddenly without anyone being with me,” he said.
Cataldie, however, does not really believe in the creepy tale.
“I think that the creepy things that happen in Ellender are just a result of the fact that the building is 80 plus years old,” he said.
“I believe that the Ellender myth has only come up in recent years.” Emilie Pitre, archive specialist in Ellender Memorial Library, said. “I think that the whole story is purely folklore, and that there was no suicide in Ellender Hall.”
Residents of Ellender, however, believe just the opposite.
According to Laural Blanchard, freshman from Breaux Bridge, in her short time living in Ellender, she has had quite a few paranormal experiences.
“On one of the first nights that I stayed in Ellender, my phone just started randomly turning on and off repeatedly, and when I told other residents about my experience, they encountered the same thing,” Blanchard said.
Other occurrences include toilets flushing in the middle of the night over and over again with no one in the bathroom and scratching noises coming from the walls.
A few students on the sixth floor have also seen some dark silhouettes along the walls in the hallway of Ellender.
Ellender is not the only building on campus that is said to be haunted. Stories also concern the Student Union, Beauregaurd, Polk and Peltier Halls. Ellender is the only residence hall that appears to be haunted.
“I don’t really believe in ghosts, but I do know that there is something creepy in that building,” Cataldie said.