The haunting of USD: nightmare on Linda Vista St.

A hunt for USD’s scariest on-campus ghost experiences 

ABIGAIL CAVIZO / ASST. SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER / THE USD VISTA

With most students having just completed midterms, the scariest thing on a USD student’s mind should be whether their total grade will be negatively affected or not. However, a different fear is looming: fear of on-campus ghosts surpasses any classroom worries. In the spirit of the Halloween season, USD students recall their experiences with paranormal activities. 

Although it might not be well-known to newer students, ghost stories from Founders Hall (also referred to as Founders) are notorious amongst upperclassmen. Sydney Ruiz, a USD junior, lived in the pre-renovated Founders during her first year. It was 3 a.m., traditionally known as “the witching hour.” In the darkness of her dorm, Ruiz got up to get a glass of water. After taking a sip, she noticed a shadow in her closet. It was in the shape of a nun.  “I didn’t want to freak out and I didn’t have my glasses on,” Ruiz remembered. “I’m not a big believer in spirits, so I looked at it for a good minute and moved around to make sure. It was clearly there.” 

Afraid to wake up her roommate and terrified to open the closet further, in the off chance she’d come face-to-face to the spirit, she forced her eyes shut, hoping to fall back to sleep. Ruiz explained that a lot of people in her year, even in previous years, had experiences with the infamous nun haunting Founders Hall. 

Legend has it that this nun used to live there until she was forced out. Agonized over the idea of leaving her home, she hung herself in one of the hall’s corners. She now roams around Founders, but Ruiz explained that she doesn’t believe the nun is a cruel spirit. 

“I was scared when I saw it, but then I thought to myself, ‘I don’t think she was there to harm me,’” Ruiz said. “I don’t think she’s an evil spirit because then a lot of bad things would’ve happened there already.” 

She and her roommate kept their closet closed each night for the rest of the year.

Public Safety and Residential Life had no records of ghost sightings, but Diane Maher, Head of Archives at Copley Library, had been contacted in the past about paranormal activity; confirming that recent ghost experiences are not unique, isolated encounters amongst the USD community throughout the years. 

“About 10 years ago, a grad student contacted me about her experience in the library’s Mother Hill Reading Room (aka the Harry Potter Room),” Maher said. “She wrote, ‘I observed a nun in a full-length blue habit walking up the tiled steps of the reading room with books in her arms.’”

Maher connected the student with other Vista articles covering USD hauntings from as early as 2000.

During his first year living on campus, USD sophomore, Christian Welch, went to bed in Borrego in the Vistas. Other than the building-wide blackout, it was just like any other night. Around 3 a.m., he woke up and heard a scream. He then went back to bed and thought nothing of it at the time. The next morning, his next door neighbor, visibly shaken, knocked on his door. She explained to Welch that during the previous night, she woke up to blood-curdling screams. Instead of going to bed, she looked outside her window and saw a figure of a man standing next to the light post by the grill outside Borrego. 

However, in the blink of an eye, he was gone. When they cross-checked stories, they discovered a sinister detail: both encounters occurred at 3 a.m. Later in the day, Welch came across multiple other Borrego residents that had the same eerie interaction all at the same time. Due to their concerns over possible dangers around the Vistas because of the blackout, Welch called Public Safety telling them everything. They told him that no one was in the Vistas that night. 

“As a lot of people know, there are Native burial grounds in the Valley,” Welch noted. “We believe that was a ghost coming up from the Valley to the Vistas.” 

There have been a few ghost stories from students living in the Vistas. USD sophomores, Ceinwyn Phipps and Cass Matthews, are currently roommates there. Since moving into the Laguna building in the Vistas, they have experienced a few too many paranormal incidents. Phipps recalled multiple accounts of knowing she was alone and hearing strange noises throughout her apartment. During the first week of October, with no AirPods in and no one else awake, Phipps was sitting on the couch when an otherworldly voice whispered into her ear, “Hey.”

“I’d open the doors looking for people, but nothing,” Phipps described.  “I always feel like I’m being watched.” 

These experiences persisted throughout the year, too.

“It got really bad when I’d be washing my face in the sink at 2 a.m.,” Phipps said.  “When I put my head down in the water, stuff would move in the living room.”

As recent as last week, Matthews heard a thud from the other side of the apartment. Nothing had moved, but the next morning, the cross that usually sits up on her dresser was face down. Alone in the apartment with her bedroom door closed, another loud bang ricocheted off their apartment walls. With no windows open and no apartment draft, Phipps’s door had slammed shut. 

The terrors don’t let them rest at night either. Phipps and Matthews have both experienced frightening nightmares. Phipps recalled an especially freaky night terror. At 3:07 a.m., she was woken up by a force grabbing her cheeks, ordering her to “Stop snoring.” 

“I genuinely didn’t realize it was a dream until I got back to my dorm that afternoon,” Phipps said. “Something literally woke me up and was holding me by my face.”

Before their frightening experiences in the Vistas, they had an even more bone-chilling incident in Valley B as freshmen. 

A week before moving out for the summer, Matthews exited the shower to face an upside-down cross drawn on the mirror in the steam. 

Freaked out, she tried to distract herself with packing. From across the room, a loud thud echoed throughout her dorm. When she turned around, she found that the cross on her wall had fallen down. Later on in the night, her friend had picked up the cross and in a video caught by Matthews, an orb can be seen flying around the cross.

“I started crying and praying and forced my friends to sleepover since I lived alone on my floor,” Matthews recalled. 

Although all these encounters are unconfirmed, there is always a lingering truth to every story. It appears as though all around campus paranormal activity is going on. Watch out USD and stay safe this Hallo-weekend.