UW La Crosse

This report was found on W-FILES.COM

While in college in LaCrosse, Wisconsin (UW-L), I lived with one other person a few blocks off campus in a house that was definitely haunted (yep. definitely).

The house was really pretty strangely laid out. It was an old converted farmhouse. The kitchen was (by far) the largest room in the house. The bathroom was so small, you had to duck under the sink/over the toilet to get to the bathtub (the bathroom was obviously an afterthought: I'm sure when the house was built, a nifty little outhouse stood out back ;-). There was one bedroom downstairs, and two upstairs (upstairs was essentially one room, with a dividing wall--typical old cape cod style. The basement was creepy: a bunch of storage rooms around the outside perimeter and one huge, octopus of a furnace in the center (the furnace made quite a noise whenever it kicked in).

The place was really kind of a wreck (typical student housing). There were even a few holes in the walls (in Wintertime [pretty much half the year in Wisconsin--back then!], my roommates clothes-closet would fill w/snow!)

The strangest thing about the whole place was that in the backyard was another house! A really tiny place, almost like a playhouse. It was completely functional however, and totally separate, with it's own utility service, etc. A deaf lady lived there the entire time we did. We had virtually no interaction with her at all, and I never did see the inside of the place.

Anyway...getting on to the ghost...

Things began to happen immediately: we'd be watching TV (not remote-controlled), and just when the best part of the show would be coming on--BLINK!--the set would shut off. Or, it would turn on in the middle of the night, with the sound turned ALL the way up.

Whenever you would take a shower when you were alone in the house (since it was just my roommate and myself, this would be pretty obvious), you could hear someone RUNNING up & down the stairs (the bathroom was right at the bottom of the stairs). Thinking someone was in the house, you'd shut off the shower--no sound--shrug and start it up again ... and sure enough, the running and bumping would start up again.

A couple of times, my roommate heard someone scraping on a frying pan in the kitchen sink (a pretty recognizable sound). Thinking it was me, he'd go into the kitchen--the sound would stop, and no one would be there.

My girlfriend swore that a couple of times when she was lying on my bed, she felt someone sit down on the bed next to her--thinking it was me, she turned--to find herself all alone in the room.

Oh, and once in a wall, a knock would go along the outside wall of the house--ALL the way around.

This kind of stuff happened ALL THE TIME. It got to be a real nuisance (especially the TV going on in the dead of night). It was so common it wasn't even freaky any more. I personally never felt threatened at all--I think it bothered my roommate more, as things seemed to center more around him than me.

After we moved, a family bought the house and renovated it. That was about 15-20 years ago. Nowadays, whenever I get over to La Crosse (once in a while), I think about knocking on the door and asking the occupants if the ghost is still hanging around--'cause if it is, I'm sure it's obvious.

Maybe one day I will...