Are you disappointed every time spooky season ends? Does Halloween’s passing leave you in despair, with only the cheer and love of other holidays and not a ghost in sight? Well, look no further because we have compiled some of the darkest, eeriest, most cursed places on campus for you to visit on those rare days this winter quarter that your spirits get too high.
Fisk Hall
You’ve heard of ghosts being in cold spots, now get ready for warm spots. No, seriously — it is so unnaturally warm there might be a portal to hell here. And, as any student who’s gone through the first year at Medill could tell you, this theory makes a lot of sense.
It’s everyone’s favorite ancient journalism building. Paranormal attractions include: Strange boxes in the stairways filled with chilly air. Ladders ascending perilously into foreboding attic spaces. Cobweb-adorned ceiling pipes. Dark closets. Advising offices. The room your Reporting and Writing lab was in. It must be said, Fisk Hall has stood for 121 years and it’s been spooky for most of them. What an accomplishment.
Locy Hall
The graffiti-esque paint on the off-white walls. The wiring snaking every which way along the ceiling. The eerie singing that you just can’t quite identify or locate. The Locy basement looks like an abandoned building that got repurposed by a post-apocalyptic commune of artists. And what is with the disembodied hand pictures? We don’t know, but they’ll be in our nightmares for months.
Deering Library
One night last quarter I went to the archives. The only light shining came from the Pre-Action Room at the end of the dark hallway. I tried the doorknob, and this clearly made the resident ghost(s) angry because the door began to rattle and a light flickered. I ran down the dark hallway and never came back. Until now.
It’s hard to deny that the most atmospheric and architecturally-pleasing library on campus is also the most haunted-looking. Perhaps it’s the dry, cracked vines running over its edifice like a mass of angry snakes. Perhaps it’s the eerily silent hallways housed deep within its basement. Or perhaps it’s the accumulated psychic pain of decades of students struggling with midterms and finals. Either way, Deering certainly has plenty of baggage.
2122 Sheridan/Haven Street Building
Is this building a church? We’re pretty sure it’s not. Is it some strange old gothic building just vibing on the corner of Haven and Sheridan? Absolutely. This building, often described as “that one kind of across from Tech that looks like a church,” houses an eclectic group of Northwestern offices and an astonishing array of supernatural attractions.
Why are the doorknobs so fancy? Are those window frames made of lead? Why is that fireplace in a classroom? Is that door bolted shut? These are the kinds of questions that won’t get answered if you decide to pay a visit to this cursed locale.
With such a richly spooky history, it would be impossible for us to cover all of campus’ eerie venues. Still, we’ve picked these four as some of the most foreboding of the bunch. So, if you need a little supernatural terror in your life to counter the fear of those midterm grades coming in, try the ghostly vibes of these buildings on for size; it will soon become clear that Northwestern is a deeply haunted place–and the buildings are pretty cursed, too.