With Halloween upon us, many are more excited than they are scared for the Hallo-weekend festivities. However, Oshkosh isn’t all treats — it has some tricks, too.

The UW Oshkosh campus has had many haunted hearsays throughout the years, with students reporting weird and potentially paranormal activity in dorms such as The Scotts, Horizon Village and Donner Hall.

To help get us in the spooky mood and get us in the Halloween spirit, I will be telling my version of these horror stories. 

First on the chopping block (mwahaha) is Horizon Village. This is perhaps one of the most well-known haunted places on campus, with personal anecdotes from present and past residents.

One of these students lived there their sophomore year. He said, “I remember hearing footsteps on the ceiling even though we were on the fifth floor.” I was confused when he told me this, assuming it must have been the upstairs neighbors. The horror didn’t set in until he explained that there are only five floors in Horizon.

The student explained that the weirdness didn’t stop there, saying “our windows would also pop open all the time even though we had them locked.”

Many students have spread rumors that Horizon Village’s hauntings are a result of being built on top of a cemetery. 

Well, this isn’t too far from the truth.

In her article, “Nearby cemetery cause of haunted Horizon?” A-T and UWO Alumnu Mattie Beck interviewed Ginny Gross, a staff member at the Oshkosh Public Museum about the possible reasons for these hauntings.

According to Gross, Horizon was not built on a cemetery, but one block away from one. Called Locust Grove Cemetry, this graveyard was on the intersection of Wisconsin Avenue and Algoma Boulevard.

Gross explained that this cemetery was sold to make space for buildings as the city grew, meaning the bodies needed to be moved. 

While most bodies were moved to the present day Riverside Cemetery, Gross explained that two bodies were left behind as discovered by workers who were digging up sewers on Elmwood Avenue in the late 19th century. 

This leads me to wonder if there were more than these two bodies left behind in the move, and if these abandoned bodies are the spirits wreaking havoc on the students of UWO.

Another dorm on campus that has been regarded as haunted is the Scotts. I’ve heard the rumors, relatively tame stories of abandoned floors being occupied by demons for the night and lights turning on and off randomly.

None of this prepared me for the horror ahead, and nothing compares to experiencing it myself. 

I remember sleeping soundly in my tiny twin-XL bed as a freshman in South Scott, when all of a sudden, I was jolted awake. I was awoken to find what appeared to be the ghost of a little boy staring back at me. 

I screamed, and ended up sleeping on the floor next to my roommate’s bed for the rest of the night. 

The next morning, I found scratches across my chest that weren’t there when I had gone to bed the previous night. 

My friends and I continued to attribute weird occurrences that would happen to us, such as doors being unlocked and lights flickering, to Billy (the ghost). While these occurrences were likely human error, it was terrifying regardless.

Another student recalls their very interesting junior year living at Donner. The ghost, named Dolly by the community adviser (CA)  that year, was a relatively harmless menace to residents. According to the student, Dolly got her name from its apparent love for (or perhaps aversion to) Dolly Parton, as the spirit would go away whenever the CA would blast her music. 

Dolly lived in the basement and would often move around a small, white bible. When she wasn’t busy housekeeping in the basement, she would travel upstairs to the abandoned fourth floor where she would open doors and turn on lights, despite the floor having zero access to residents.

Dolly raised major hysteria after allegedly leaving blood all over the men’s first-floor bathroom. It was discovered later, however, that it was just the aftermath of a resident’s raunchy nose bleed. 

While some of these spooky stories are more faux than fact, the testimonies of those experiencing them are real and genuine. There is definitely still something to be said for the frequency of haunted occurrences on campus. Some of these occurences could be easily explained away, but let’s be real – it’s more fun to play pretend with the paranormal.