Harris Hall

A three-story brick dormitory built in 1925 at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, housing female students for generations. A tragic elevator accident left a permanent spiritual resident.

Harris Hall was built in 1939 as a women's dormitory at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, named for Thomas H. Harris, former state superintendent of education and former president of the Louisiana Teacher's Association. The three-story traditional-style residence hall served as an all-girls dormitory for over eighty years until the fall of 2023. Throughout those decades, it became the setting for one of the most enduring ghost stories in Acadiana, the legend of Lily.

As the story is told, a student named Lily was living in Harris Hall in the 1960s when she was killed in an elevator accident. The details of her death vary with each retelling. One version holds that the elevator malfunctioned and fell on her, decapitating her. Another claims she was coming from a party when someone pushed her into an out-of-service elevator shaft and the car dropped on her. A 2012 article in the university newspaper published the name Lily and described how the elevator was subsequently sealed and closed off behind a steel door. The building has since been remodeled, and it remains unclear exactly where the elevator was located or whether it ever existed in the form the legend describes.

What is clear is that something unexplainable has been experienced by residents and staff for decades. Faculty and staff have recounted feeling a presence in the elevator area and hearing their names being called by an unseen voice. A housekeeper who worked in Harris Hall from 1997 until 2023 reported seeing Lily multiple times over her twenty-six years in the building, most recently in May of 2023 while working in the third-floor bathroom. In the 1980s, a student reported witnessing a girl with a 1960s-style haircut waving at him from a dormitory window. A documentary titled The Haunting of Harris Hall was reportedly produced and presented on AOL in the mid-to-late 1980s.

Residents across multiple decades have reported strikingly consistent phenomena. Students describe feeling their beds move as if someone had plopped down at the foot during daytime naps. Furniture sounds are heard from upper floors and the attic area around two in the morning. Footsteps echo on stairwells with no visible source. Blinds open on their own, footlockers and closet doors swing open repeatedly, and keys that have gone missing mysteriously reappear in residents' rooms. Some report cold breezes that move their hair when discussing the ghost. One resident described a mysterious bright light flashing in her eyes during sleep. Some students have requested room changes or moved out entirely due to the frequency and intensity of the strange occurrences.

Despite the unsettling activity, Lily is consistently described as a friendly ghost. Multiple residents across different eras describe her presence as benign, even helpful. She seems to have a particular talent for returning lost items, and her manifestations, while startling, are never threatening. Students currently living in the dormitory continue to talk about Lily and speculate about where the tragedy might have occurred. The legend has been passed down through generations of residents, making Lily as much a part of Harris Hall's identity as its bricks and mortar.