Having stayed on the second floor my freshman year, I'm totally convinced that this place is haunted. Mynders Hall was built in 1912, and it was named after the U of M's first president, Seymour Mynders. The building was built in the shape of an "E" to honor Mynders's young daughter, Elizabeth, who died when she was 21. It is Elizabeth who is said to haunt the dorm. I've heard rumors that she committed suicide by jumping off of the Mynders roof, but I've never confirmed them. The building also served as a hospital for some time during the 1940s, increasing the possible number of deaths. For years, residents have reported all kinds of strange happenings, from books opening by themselves to knocking sounds inside the walls. The Daily Helmsman (the U of M's newspaper) has published several articles on this haunting, articles containing residents' firsthand paranormal accounts.


Really weird things happened to both me and my roommate during our stay here. Ashley was lying in bed one morning when something started slowly pulling the covers off of her. Another morning, she was lying in bed while I was in the shower, and she heard someone whisper, "Hey!" She sat up, thinking it was me, only to find that I was still in the shower. I've never known her to be scared of anything, but she absolutely hated spending the night alone in that room. Our suitemates told us that objects would randomly fly off of their desks. One of them refused to ever sleep in the building again because everything on her shelf was knocked off in the middle of the night.

Mynders is the only place I've ever actually seen something. The way the rooms are set up, there are 2 adjacent rooms joined by a small hallway, and the bathroom is between them. If I opened both rooms' doors to the hallway, I could see into our neighbors' room. Anyway, I was lying in my bed one day while both the doors were open. I glanced into the next room just in time to see the back half of a woman with reddish hair walking past the door. Of course, no one was in the room when I looked.

There's an old elevator shaft at one end of the building that no one is allowed to use. It's shut off behind a door, but there's a small window on the door that you can see through. A few of us were ghost hunting one night & decided to snap a picture through the window, into the elevator. In the picture, you can see the image of a person dressed in older clothing standing in the elevator. It's on the "pictures" page.

Ernestine and Hazel's

With its dicey history, it's no wonder this run-down downtown bar is haunted. It was built in 1860, and turned into a bar a few years later. The upstairs section served as a brothel for decades, so obviously, this place has seen some pretty shady things in its lifetime. The jukebox is reported to start playing by itself, and the song is usually relevant to what people are talking about at the bar. Ghostly figures have also been seen in the building. Some visitors say they feel a very negative energy in the place, which isn't surprising because there's no telling what kind of bad things occurred there over the years. No one is quite sure who haunts the bar, but owners and visitors alike agree on one thing for sure: the liquor at Ernestine & Hazel's isn't the only kind of spirit there.

Voodoo Village

I don't know if it's haunted, but this place is weird. The stories and legends I've heard about Voodoo Village are so bizarre that no other place in Tennessee could possibly compete with its sheer eccentricity. Located deep in southern Memphis, Voodoo Village is a neighborhood of followers of a very secretive religion that some describe as a cross between African voodoo and Masonry. The houses are brightly painted, some having strange symbols and pictures painted in fluorescent paint on the outer walls. Strange objects hang from the trees, adding to the creepiness. Animal sacrifices are apparently common there.

The religion is led by a "chief" who is purported to be well over a hundred years old, kept alive by the secret rituals they practice. Residents hate thrill-seekers invading their neighborhood and have been known to chase people out with weapons. On a cruise through this spooky place, my friend saw a man with a machete standing on the side of the street. I've even heard stories of angry residents parking a bus in the middle of the street so that visitors can't get out. They especially hate people taking pictures once inside Voodoo Village. In fact, they fiercely forbid it. Some say it's because the ghosts of all of those killed by the members of this strange religion will appear in the pictures. Others believe that, if captured on film, members of the religion will appear as they truly are: old, withered corpses kept looking young by rituals. No one knows for sure. Voodoo Village and its denizens will perhaps forever be shrouded in the thick, fascinating mystery that it's come to be infamous for.