1. An Architect’s Apparition
HUMANITIES BUILDING
The legend goes like this: Once upon a time there was an architect tasked with designing the Humanities Building for UW–Madison. He spent painstaking hours designing the structure, but due to a simple error (some say upside-down blueprints) his designs were built facing the wrong direction. Distraught and humiliated, the architect jumped off the roof of his building and died in the courtyard. His ghost haunts the hallowed halls to this day.
This dramatic tale spreads like wildfire to new students each semester, but every detail of it is false. The Humanities Building was built exactly how architect Harry Weese intended. The design is consistent with the styles of Brutalist architecture, which was all the rage in the ’60s and early ’70s. After the grand opening of the Humanities Building, Weese went on to live for another three decades, growing increasingly wealthy and famous until he died in Chicago in 1998. Still, the stories of a ghost wandering the halls of Humanities spread every year.
2. Booooo-ks
MEMORIAL LIBRARY
Helen Constance White’s (PhD 1924) journey to campus started when she joined L&S as an English professor in 1919. She was possibly the first woman to earn a doctorate degree from the College, and she continued her trailblazing ways by becoming the first woman to chair the English department, teaching at UW–Madison until she died in 1967. Although College Library is housed in the building named after her, it’s long been rumored that her ghost lingers elsewhere. Reports of White’s spirit floating in the stacks of Memorial Library have gained enough notoriety that the legends made it onto Encyclopedia Britannica’s list of haunted libraries.
It remains a mystery why she might haunt Memorial and not her namesake library, but students, librarians and visitors alike have sworn to see her wandering around — some even claiming they hear her whispering from the shelves.
3. Haunting Headlines
VILAS HALL
One of the early stops on a Campus Ghost Walk swings by Vilas Hall, which is home to the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, the Department of Communication Arts and The Daily Cardinal. The student newspaper has been covering campus news since 1892, and it’s believed the office may be haunted. Orv Larson was the printer for the paper for many years, and the winter after his death something strange happened. Legend has it a printer in the office turned on by itself and spit out the letters “ORV” on a piece of paper.
Larson worked third shift and was notorious for bringing in an ale from his favorite local tavern, the Black Bear Lounge. Since alcohol is not allowed in campus buildings, he would try to cover the sound of popping the top with a cough. To this day, some students report hearing a mysterious cough around Vilas Hall, which they suspect traces back to the late printer.
4. The Mad Professor
SCIENCE HALL
Lore about UW–Madison’s most haunted building runs deep. From tales of a mad professor conducting twisted experiments in the attic to finding literal skeletons in the closet and students claiming their beakers inexplicably fly off the shelves, there’s a seemingly bottomless belief that something supernatural is afoot. Science Hall’s dramatic Gothic architecture and secret tunnels add to the mystery, but a lot of the ghost stories can be traced back to the building’s origins as the home of the anatomy department.
The department moved out of Science Hall in 1956 and today, the building is home to the Department of Geography, the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies and other campus units. But stories related to the building’s origin inspired a comic book series, The Phantom of Bascom Hill, and a mystery novel set in Science Hall — plus countless campus ghost stories.
5. Bascom’s Bodies
BASCOM HILL
Bascom Hill may not have a closet, but it has a couple of skeletons. Just steps outside of South Hall — the administrative hub of L&S — are the graves of two early Madisonians. William Nelson and Samuel Warren were buried on the hill in the 1830s, but their graves weren’t discovered until the 1900s when workers were installing the Lincoln statue.
Today, their graves are marked with small brass plaques to the left of the statue, but that’s not all. Passersby on Bascom have reported sightings of two ghostly figures walking the hill at night, and some even swear they’ve heard the two names whispered in Bascom Hall.