Haunted Watterson

To access "Watterson Towers, Illinois State University, 1969," please go to the Illinois State University History Archive.

Everybody who’s ever heard of Illinois State, or has been here, knows of Watterson Towers because it’s the building you can see for miles. What I’ve noticed it nobody truly knows the exact history behind the building. As a freshman, I have heard many rumors involving the architect and architecture of the building. I’ve heard that the architect responsible for Watterson designed mostly designed prisons so he decided to model it to look “prison-like.” Then, I heard that the architect of Watterson was mentally unstable, which is why the building is designed very “prison-like.” Another rumor is that, after the construction of the building concluded, the architect committed suicide by plunging to his death off the top. Because most rumors are never true and only created by people in a pathetic attempt to add interest to their lives, I decided to research the history of Watterson Towers.

From the picture that I found in Milner Library’s archive, I know that the construction of Watterson ended in the summer of 1969, yet the dormitory opened in 1968. It was named after a popular professor named Arthur W. Watterson. There are even rumors online claiming that Gary Gygax, famously known as the creator of the Dungeons and Dragons game, was the designer of Watterson. In my opinion, this would explain a lot as to why Watterson is set up the way it is. Whenever I walk through the building, I sometimes feel like I am in a video game. The long corridors with bright, fluorescent lights and the millions of vents on the ceiling that creak and make all sorts of odd noises add to the effect. Not to mention, the elevators only stops on every third floor, so you often end up having to walk up or down the creepy and disgusting stairwells to get to the floor you want. Although it would be fun to believe that Gary Gygax actually did design the building with inspiration from his beloved videogame, there are actual facts that disprove this rumor. Multiple sources online have confirmed that Fridstein and Fitch Architects, a firm from Chicago, actually designed the building. Through my digging, I could not find the name or names of the exact architects who drew up the design. I guess no one will ever know for sure what the inspiration to create Watterson Towers was.

Interestingly, if you went around and asked every resident of Watterson Towers whether or not they believed the building is haunted in some way, chances are that you would get a fairly alarming amount stating that it is. In fact, my roommate and I would be within the portion of residence who claims this place is somewhat haunted. I can’t even count the amount of times we’ll be sitting in our room doing homework or studying and we’ll hear some awful noise coming from the vent or ceiling. Once it even sounded like some mythical creature was being murdered within our walls. The main reason we’re convinced at least our floor is haunted is because of the incident that happened Tuesday night [date?]. I woke up Wednesday morning to see my roommate sitting in her chair next to me wide awake, looking frazzled, like she hadn’t slept for days. When I asked her what was wrong, she told me that she hadn’t slept at all that night because our room is haunted.  Being the non-believer that I am, I rolled my eyes and thought she was crazy until she actually told me what happened. She claimed that once every hour she would hear what sounded like someone scratching on our door, wiggling the doorknob, and then ripping our door open. After that, whoever it was would rustle vigorously through my desk drawers. At one point she even heard our posters being torn down and she never once heard our door ever close. She literally thought someone was in our room, but when she went to tell this person to get out, the door was closed and no one was in our room. After the first couple of times, she finally got out of bed, opened our door and looked in the hall to see if anyone was awake, but there were no signs of activity anywhere. When she finished telling me the details of her night, the expression on her face was one of pure terror. Now, let me tell you, my roommate is what one would call a total “hard-ass,” which means she doesn’t get scared very easily. Not to mention, when I looked over to our wall, I saw some posters had been torn down. Because of this, my heart sunk a little and the non-believer became basically terrified. The spiritual world is definitely one of the most subjective concepts out there, so of course there’s no factual information proving or disproving whether Watterson is “haunted” or not. There are however, actual documented suicides that have happened in Watterson, which means it’s possible, for those who believe, to think that Watterson houses spirits who have yet to find peace and that they’re going to haunt the halls of Watterson forever. However, after doing research, I found that a woman, right about this time last year, climbed the scaffolding up the side of Watterson and committed suicide, landing on Fell Avenue. This story sent a chill down my both my roommate’s spine and my own since it’s about that time of the year that woman committed suicide and our dorm is on the Fell Avenue side of Watterson. I’m still not quite sure what to think, but it’s quite a coincidence that all these facts are falling into place to correlate to the incident that my roommate experienced Tuesday night.--Olivia Phillips