THE HAUNTED UNIVERSITY CAMPUS
What could be more unspooky than a radio station early in the morning, right? However, it's sometimes this setting that catches the unsuspecting in a moment worthy of a Twilight Zone episode.
It was an early summer morning when college senior, Victoria Bailey sat by herself in the studio of KXCV radio station on the Northwest Missouri State University campus. She was engrossed in her task when she caught something out of the corner of her eye that made her believe she was not alone. Like what happens to many of us, when she turned, nothing was there. The movement she had spied made her think it was a person and she walked into the hallway, and again found nothing. It was a Sunday, when not even the janitor made an appearance.
Victoria went back to work, but soon she went to the hallway for a drink of water. This time however, it was more than a sighting from her peripheral vision. She thought she saw someone in the hallway on the other side of the glass door. Like the time before, all she found was an empty hallway. She then thought it was the person coming in to relieve her, who had arrived early, but this was just an excuse to break free of the creepy feeling she was starting to get.
A quarter of an hour later, she went for a bathroom break and another visit to the water fountain. When she came back to the door leading into the studio, she didn't see a wispy form that disappeared, instead it was a man she didn't recognize. He was staring at the computer equipment.
She described him as Asian, wearing a blue shirt and khaki pants, and young enough to be a student. At that moment Victoria had a mishap with her contact lens, and when she looked up again the figure was gone. She yelled out if anyone was there, and only silence answered back.
She had heard that Wells Hall, home to Northwest Missouri State University’s Department of Communication and Mass Media was haunted, but she believed it was just an urban myth, like many that abound at college campuses. When she posted her experience on Facebook, she found out the identity of the ghost. His name was Amos Wong, 18, who died in a car accident in August, 1991. He was a photographer for the Tower yearbook.
Victoria researched in a yearbook for 1991, and found his picture, and this was the very same person who she had seen that Sunday morning in the studio.Â
Dominic Genetti, saw him in 2008. He was a reporter then for the student newspaper, The Northwest Missourian. Like Victoria he caught someone out of the corner of his eye; a man in a blue shirt who just walked by. In the Convergence lab, which was once the dark room, he had spied what seemed to be someone walking behind in the reflection of a computer monitor.Â
It seemed though that Wong made his presence known soon after his death. One of the students who had worked on the staff with him commented to a professor, "You know, Amos is back in the darkroom." Since this was the time before digital photography, the darkroom was frequently used by the photographers.
Wells Hall was built in 1938, and no doubt there could "others" who flit by in the hallways.
There is one ghost that predates Amos Wong.
When it was Maryville State Teachers' College, at about 1:30 a.m. on April, 28, 1951, a gas storage tank exploded causing a college dormitory fire that injured 50 girl students. The three-story dormitory was only 300 feet from a 25-foot tank that exploded. Later it was found that it was allowed to corrode and rust. The blast sent a steel beam crashing into the Women's Residence Hall, that touched off a fire. There were 100 girls that ran over glass as they fled the building in their pajamas.
Three of the students were in critical condition. One of them was Roberta Ann Steel, a sophomore at the university. She lived at 2524 Lucille Street.
Eventually she was released by the hospital after a 9-months stay due to the extensive burns on her head and body. She tried to return to the school and continue her studies, but in November, 1952, she returned to the hospital. On the 29th, the day of her 20th-birthday she succumbed to liver failure caused by her injuries.
​Her father Ned Steel had died earlier in that year in February.Â
In June 1961, the Residence Hall was renamed Roberta Hall in her honor. A black and white picture of Roberta was hung over the fireplace in the lounge.
It's not sure when the stories about Roberta haunting the dorm started, but soon stories circulated that the dorm piano would play by itself. The elevator goes up and down without anyone inside. The radio switches stations by itself, the electric coffee pot starts to percolate without being plugged in, figurines fly across rooms and things disappear.
A black and white picture of a dark haired Roberta hangs over the fireplace, and at least once per year it's found on the floor or hanging upside down.
