Mary Mayo Hall

The oldest residential hall on Michigan State University's campus, built in 1931 as a women's dormitory. Named after Mary Anne Mayo, a pioneer in women's agricultural education who died in 1903, decades before the hall was built.

Mary Mayo Hall was built in 1931 as the first all-women's dormitory on the campus of Michigan State University, then known as Michigan Agricultural College. Its namesake, Mary Anne Mayo, was a pioneering advocate for women's education who fought tirelessly to expand educational opportunities for women at the agricultural college and rallied for the construction of a women's dormitory on campus. Mayo died of illness in 1903, nearly three decades before the building that bears her name opened its doors. She never set foot inside it.

Despite this chronological impossibility, Mary Mayo Hall has become the most haunted building on Michigan State's campus, with decades of student reports creating a rich paranormal tradition. The most persistent phenomena involve a grand piano on the first floor that plays by itself, sometimes producing recognizable melodies and other times sounding random, discordant notes. Lights throughout the building turn on and off without explanation. Doors slam shut when there is no breeze or other natural cause. Students have reported seeing the apparition of a woman moving through the hallways, particularly on the upper floors.

A portrait of Mary Mayo hangs on the first floor of the building, and students have long claimed that the portrait's eyes follow them as they move through the room. The painting has become a rite of passage for new residents, who dare each other to stand before it and watch the eyes track their movements.

The most infamous legend associated with Mary Mayo Hall involves the so-called Red Room on the fourth floor. According to the story, the room was once painted bright red and used for satanic rituals that claimed the life of a young woman. Michigan State University has found no records supporting this claim, and the university's archives have no documentation of any death occurring in the building under such circumstances. The State News, MSU's student newspaper, published an investigation in 2025 attempting to debunk the myth, noting that the Red Room story has been passed down through generations of students with no verifiable origin.

MSU's Campus Archaeology program has embraced the building's reputation, incorporating Mary Mayo Hall into their "Apparitions and Archaeology" tour, which examines the intersection of campus legends, archaeological findings, and the documented history of the university grounds. The program treats the haunting stories as a form of folklore that reveals what students fear, what they value, and how they process the experience of living in a building older than their grandparents. Whether or not Mary Mayo herself has any connection to the paranormal activity reported in her namesake building, the hall remains the epicenter of ghost stories at one of America's largest universities.