Ghosts in Windsor?

Editor's note: This story was written for our last edition of the semester, the creative edition, in which creative and satirical work is submitted to the paper. This piece does not reflect real life reporting or news.
Rain patters off the tops of old roofing tiles, rolling down the sides of a decades-old surface until it leaps and drops four stories into the muddied soil that lies around the perimeter of Windsor Residence Hall.
Windsor is a residence hall that was erected in 1934 and has since withstood years of students going in and out of the building. Residents at Windsor are predominantly temporary, staying for a year or two until they eventually find other housing to finish their time at Purdue.
But what if Windsor has residents that are a little more permanent? What if Windsor has residents that hide in the nooks and crannies of its basement, coming out to spook residents in the early hours of the morning?
What if. Windsor. Is haunted?
In the first story from the Exponent Unsolved Desk, Kennedi Thomas and Wil Courtney take on Windsor Hall, investigating all the intricacies, stories and supernatural happenings at Windsor's complex to finally answer the question: is Purdue haunted?
Setting the scene
In the daylight, Windsor stands as a model of architecture, providing an aged and gothic look to the Purdue campus. However, on a dark and rainy night, Windsor holds a forbidding aura about it only to be described as eerie.
The lights from the windows look like eyes gazing into your very soul. The wrought iron fence acts as defenses forbidding any students from entering.
It’s when you enter the building that you realize how different Windsor is from every other building at Purdue. The floors are tile and the ceiling is textured with decorative circles and designs.
A warm orange glow seems inviting at first, but the longer you stay, the more it feels sinister.
The majority of this investigation took place not outside of Windsor nor in its lobbies, instead transpiring in the underbelly of the residence hall: the basement.
To get there, the reporters first had to go through the Windsor courtyard, a location that seemed quaint and calm on its exterior, but something stood out in its scenery.
The orb
Within the mist of the Windsor courtyard lie dead leaves still in mud; trees ripped bare of their life. Within their bare limbs, a light glowed just below the damp roof and stood out among the darkness.
The light was strong in its illumination; unwavering in its lime radiance.
It was when the light was photographed that a strange discovery was made.
After looking at the image, the light turned into a large glare that devoured most of the frame.
What is the origin of life? Is it the orb?
The energy of the orb was neither evil nor positive. All that is known about it is it's all consuming presence.
Little did the reporters know, this would not be their last encounter with a supernatural presence.
Chain doors
Lying in the recesses of Windsor’s basement are a series of narrow and low hanging tunnels with red pipes running alongside the walls, leading to a strange white door with bolts in it and chains running at its top. Two of these doors exist in the tunnels, one flush against the wall and another in a triangular jut.
The doors significantly stand out from other doors in the hall. Their handles were more of a crank than anything and the chains looked like ones you would put on a bicycle. I couldn’t explain how the door would open if I tried.
What could be hiding behind this door? Some may just say storage, but then why all of the intricacies? One Windsor resident says that those doors hide Amelia Earhart.
“For my dramatic self, I think Amelia Earhart does,” the resident said. “For my rational self, it’s just boxes.”
The resident said that one time she saw Windsor custodians unloading boxes into the room behind the door. She described the room as small, triangular and with a light inside of it.
However, the resident also said in a later interview that one night when she was doing her laundry at 1 a.m., she heard footsteps behind her, turned around and nothing was there.
Whether the ghost of Amelia Earhart hides within the basement of Windsor may never be known, but that wasn’t even close to the end of the ghostly encounters soon to be had.
Chandelier ghost
The last leg of the investigation took place in a hidden room secluded from the rest of the hall. The room was small and devoid of all signs of life except for the occasional hum and ding of an elevator.
It was no longer than 12 feet and no wider than six, but the standout feature of the room wasn’t its length; it was its height.
The ceiling hung far above the team’s heads with a chandelier drooping down from its peaks. Despite it being late at night, not a single light from the chandelier was on. Three of them flickered sporadically.
The flickering could have been nothing more than old wiring or faulty electrical signals, but what if it was something more? What if it was a spirit trying to reach out and tell its story?
On the spot, the reporters came up with a way for the spirit to communicate. If the light closest to the wall flickered, the ghost was saying yes; if the light closest to the window flickered, it said no.
After asking a series of yes or no questions to a chandelier for over 30 minutes, the story of Kennedi was revealed.
Conveniently, the alleged spirit’s name shared the name of the Exponent Unsolved’s very own Kennedi Thomas.
Kennedi (the ghost) was supposedly a engineering professor in the seventies.
According to the ghost, she was strangled in an affair that took place at Windsor hall, leaving her to roam the halls (or specifically a chandelier) to this day.
Although it was the '70s, Kennedi was a bisexual woman. She had a loving wife whom she hurt most through the affair. The two of them had no children but left a lasting impact on the Purdue community.
Now comes the tough question … who did Kennedi have the affair with?
She was hesitant to answer. The lights remained silent and then flickered erratically.
“Kennedi, is the person you had an affair with haunting this hall as well?” Wil asked. With hesitation, she answered yes.
Doomed to spend eternity with her clandestine lover, Kennedi went quiet and the lights remained dim.
The potential communication could merely be faulty wiring and pure coincidence … or maybe it was something more.
Is Windsor haunted?
As the Exponent Unsolved team left Windsor Hall, the rain had all but ceased. Though they were just off Martin Jischke Drive, the residential side of campus was dead silent.
None of them could say in good faith that what they saw was definitely supernatural, but nobody could deny how much the building stood out from the rest of campus.
Maybe it was its grand architecture, its eerie lighting or simply the aura the building emanated, but Windsor is truly unlike any other residence hall on campus. Ghosts or not.
About Exponent Unsolved
Exponent Unsolved is the newest desk at the Purdue Exponent, organized by staff reporters Kennedi Thomas and Wil Courtney. Exponent Unsolved is on the front lines of reporting the strange, mysterious and most importantly, unsolved. For the Windsor haunting, Exponent Unsolved was joined by photographer Ella Moss.
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