Abby Peschges/Winonan

Faculty and students have reported many incidents of the supernatural in Lourdes Hall since Winona State University acquired the facility in 1989, including sounds of footsteps, pictures being turned upside down, feeling tugs while swimming and seeing shadows walking by windows.

Others have yet to have any experiences. Former Lourdes fourth floor Resident Assistant Laura Lake said, “I hate to disappoint, however there have been no ghosts since I have been there.” Others do not want to hear the stories in fear they will get too spooked.

Librarian and Archivist for Winona State Russell Dennison said, “I get two to six students a year asking about the hauntings. And they fall under two categories: Civil War soldiers and ghosts of nuns.”

It is thought that injured Civil War soldiers were brought to Winona to recover. Dennison said that this is “highly unlikely” because of the dates and circumstances of the war. The city of Winona was settled in 1851, just 10 years before the Civil War started. At the time, the quickest transportation to Winona from the south was train and boat. Both would have been very uncomfortable for injured soldiers, and it is unlikely that they would have come to such a newly settled town.

The stories of the nuns are the most commonly known on campus. The most famous tale is that of the nun who became pregnant by the priest. It is believed that in the early 1800s, the nun, who has been given the name Ruth and Rebecca over the years, was a student at the College of Saint Teresa, sister school to St. Mary’s University. She had lived in room 4450 of Lourdes in the infirmary, where she carried her baby to term.

The legend goes that after the baby was born, the priest threw it down the elevator shaft on the south end of the residence hall. Ruth or Rebecca then killed herself by throwing herself down the north stairs. The priest hung himself a week later out of guilt in the chapel, in what is now the swimming pool.

Though personal supernatural experiences of residents and faculty may be true, the legend behind them is false. Again, the city of Winona was settled in 1851, and the College of Saint Teresa’s was founded in 1909. Lourdes Hall was not built until the year 1929, a hundred years after the supposed suicide of Ruth or Rebecca. There is no record of any death of this kind in past Winona newspaper articles, which are all available online as part of the Winona Newspaper Project.

Lourdes Hall was built for the sole purpose of being a dormitory. The infirmary for the school was indeed on the fourth floor, but the swimming pool was never a chapel. It is an original feature of the building. The high ceilings, which caused speculation of the room once being a chapel, are a feature of all swimming pools to prevent electrical problems from moisture.

For all their historical appeal, the urban legends of hauntings may have originated fairly recently. Dennison, who started at Winona State in 1980, remembers a show on KQAL in the mid 90s that featured a new haunting of Winona State every week. “Reports and stories started surfacing frequently after the show aired,” he said.