Overview
The University of Nevada at Las Vegas (UNLV), is situated just a mile and a half away from all the gambling glitz of the famous Las Vegas Strip. Proximate to both the mysteriously tragic Luxor Hotel, and even Ghost Adventures paranormal frontman Zak Bagans Haunted Museum, UNLV is of all things just a simple university that happens to be situated in the center of Sin City. But not it’s not the bright lights, big-time shows, or high stakes games that students have been known to muse about in their time away from academia. In fact, the whispers across this desert campus are tinged with paranormal frights.
Is the University of Nevada Haunted?
UNLV is relatively new in terms of its age, as it was first established in 1959 as an extension of the University of Nevada. Designed to be a system university, the state legislature put together a paltry $200,000 at the time to construct the first building on campus, Frazier Hall. The location of the university borderline predates the big casino boom that would eventually overtake the area. Over the past fifty years, UNLV has expanded its athletics program and grown to accommodate an over 30,000 student body population offering up a number of top-flight programs including one of the top five creative writing doctoral programs in the entire United States. With such a thriving and albeit normal appearance, just what spirits lurk around this desert campus?
The Ghosts at UNLV
Kitty Rodman Hall for all purposes is a normal, three-story block-shaped dormitory that has a capacity for over one hundred students. There is a long-gestating rumor that a student here had taken her own life sometime early on in the school’s history. This origin aside, the spirit is that of a female with long dark hair who appears to be wearing a white dress that is from the late 19th Century. Her face is often obscured with her hair, but that is not the most terrifying aspect of this ghostly sighting. Some students have woken up to find this glowing white spirit standing in the doorway of their room closet! Silent and foreboding, her spectral visage has been known to just stare in silence before fading completely away.
Not to be outdone, at times some students at the nearby Tonopah Residence Hall have remarked that there has been a tapping sound somewhere in the vicinity of 3 am when they’re trying to sleep. The hallways are lit and what is most disturbing is that there doesn’t appear to be any feet seen underneath the doorway as the knocking is said to have occurred. Other times a frustrated student has opened the door to find nobody standing there at all.
One particular chilling story involved a student sitting in the grassy complex area of the hall on a winter day near the end of the semester studying over last-minute notes for a test when a pale and awkward behaving female student asked him for the time. Turning to his side to fetch his watch, he grabbed it to turn back and tell it to her when she had completely disappeared. Some have even claimed to see darker shadows in the evening time against the campus lights.
Shadow men in outdoor resident complexes? Closet spirits and mysterious 3 am knocks on doors? While none of these occurrences are malicious in nature it still no doubt suggests that the UNLV campus has some paranormal activity. Class dismissed.
