A Strange Light in Willer Hall, Quincy University

Witness: [Name withheld upon request]
Location: Quincy, Illinois
Date of Encounter: August 1996 – May 1997

If you believe the stories, almost every college is haunted — usually by a student who killed themselves or was hacked to death by an axe wielding murderer. Obviously such stories are meant to scare underclassmen and are pure BS — such a story has circulated about Padua Hall (the freshman boy's dorm). That ghost story is totally untrue — not once while I was at Q.U. did anyone claim to see a ghost in Padua Hall.

What there were was actual occurrences in Willer Hall (a coed dorm, mostly for juniors and seniors). There were incidents on several floors. The building has been there only since the 1970s and I have never heard any story about anyone dying in that dormitory. 

At first, things felt strange — at times I didn't feel comfortable in the room, and sometimes felt as if I were being watched. This often happened around 5:00-6:00 PM. Just a feeling like I was being stared at. Several months later, when I talked to my roommate, she said she had had the same feelings, but she was a skeptic and thought she was being silly.

On four occasions (when I was alone) I saw a large pane of light seemingly hanging in the middle of the room. It was blue-white, very big (maybe 5 feet in length). It would appear for possibly 10-20 seconds and just vanish, not fade away. It was always around 5-6 PM. At first I thought it was an outside light. First, the dorm room faced the college grounds, and not the street nor the parking lot. Second, the blinds were fully closed. The light never moved along the walls or reflected on anything else — it just hung in the middle of the room. No ghostly noise, no phantom figures, just this bizarre light. Sometimes weeks or a month would go by and everything was normal. Then for a day or two I would get 'weird' feelings of being watched and seeing this light. I was never terrified, just perplexed. 

My boyfriend also had this same experience when I was in the bathroom once (he was alone in the room) and he immediately told me about it. It was at this point I asked my roommate if she had ever seen anything strange in the room — she admitted she had seen a similar light but had thought it was her imagination or an outside light source.

My roommate and I talked to other people on our floor and on several other floors — several others also had strange experiences. A girl on our floor said she woke up to see a light in her room that disappeared. She thought she was dreaming.

Our Resident Assistant said the previous year she had lived on the first floor suite with several other girls (the floors were divided into four suites). They had been sitting in their living room watching TV when the partial figure of a man walked through the door and went into the hallway into one of the girl's rooms. They all looked at each other in shock, one of them finally said, "Did anyone else see that?" 

Another girl on a different floor said books had been stacked in her room on several occasions, even when she knew she had scattered them on the desk and no one had been in the room prior to her return. She also felt "watched" at times. 

I never did find out who or what was causing some of the bizarre goings on in Willer, and I have no idea if anyone currently living there has experienced the same things. Obviously there is no way to prove my story or anyone else's, I was bothered that other people saw the same light I did. I was always curious if there had ever been any prior buildings where the dormitory currently stood. It was just very strange.