by Emily Grab

Rumors circulate around UAS about the haunting of Banfield Hall, ranging from the building’s namesake, Mildred Banfield, to various students and even a turkey.

As the days get shorter and the darkness longer, Resident Advisors Zentara Axness, Logan Johnson, Ella Kelly, and I held an Ouija board seance in the Banfield Hall basement on Oct. 24. Resident Advisors Zentara Axness and I tried another Ouija board communication on Oct. 28. Resident Advisors Zentara Axness and I tried another Ouija board communication on Oct. 28. 

Johnson claimed to have heard rumors of a turkey spirit.

“A turkey died in Banfield. I think what I’ve heard is someone brought a turkey into Banfield and (it) somehow ended up dying there,” Johnson said.

According to UAS alumnus and Maintenance Coordinator Karl Sears, there was one death in Banfield Hall. 

“This was back in the late 90s, my friend’s roommate had some type of brain aneurysm in her sleep and just never woke up. This was somewhere on the first floor,” Sears said.

Banfield Hall is now only used for conferences and to house seasonal workers in Juneau, but Resident Advisors dutifully make their daily rounds.

They report greeting and saying goodbye to Mildred Banfield’s portrait that hangs in the Banfield entryway. Otherwise, they may be locked in the building by the motion sensors near the main entrance. 

Former RA Gianna Angeletti recalled a day when she said hello to the portrait, but forgot to say goodbye. 

“And I was trying to exit the building, and it was just me and a fully empty building. And the motion detector door would not open,” she said. 

She said she kept moving in front, then out of the sensor’s view, and it would not let her out. 

“It felt like a horror movie,” Angeletti said. “And I saw like the poster of her on my left, and I was like ‘Oh, I forgot to say bye to her.’”

She recalls saying, “I’m so sorry, Mildred. I hope you have a good night. I’ll see you on my ten o’clock rounds.”

But at that time, Angeletti said, she was “nowhere near the sensor, and it let me out. That has happened to me three times.” 

Who is haunting the echoey halls of Banfield?

When Resident Advisors Axness, Johnson, Kelly, and I sought to find out, we were armed with a camcorder, Ouija board, an exorcism book, tarot cards, tea lights, and offerings of vending machine chips and cereal. We selected an unlocked storage room in the Banfield Hall basement, across from an out-of-tune piano. After fumbling with an upright couch and placing our offerings, courtesy of Kelly, we began using the Ouija board. 

Ouija board setup, photo taken by Emily Grab 

We invited the spirits to chat with us for a little while, letting them know the chips and cereal were for them. We then asked whether Mildred Banfield was present; the planchette slowly moved to “No,” to our disappointment. We then asked the mysterious board if anyone was with us at all, and it moved between numbers 8 and 9.

Several other questions gave us mostly unintelligible answers. For the majority of the session, the planchette moved to letters that didn’t spell words. It also frequently moved to the letter “G” and the number 5. The only words we could make out in the dim tea light were “cat,” “DILF,” and “Rylee.” 

But the planchette quickly moved to “yes” when we asked whether anyone had been here before Banfield Hall was built. Then we asked when, and it moved to the numbers “1, 9, 6, 9.” Could Banfield Hall be haunted by someone who was here before Banfield Hall?  

When we asked whether the turkey was present, the planchette slowly moved to “yes.” 

After about 30 minutes, we wrapped up our session by spelling “goodbye” on the Ouija board. 

Could one of us have been moving the planchette? Possibly. 

Could Banfield Hall really have spirits? Inconclusive.

Could Banfield Hall be totally free from spirits? Inconclusive. 

Could this just be us trying to scare ourselves? Probably. 

At least, that’s what I initially thought, until Axness told me that she found the oven and microwave on with nothing inside when she was doing her routine rounds the next evening. Many cabinets were also open.

Mysteriously, all of the pictures taken on the camcorder were wiped out. 

To see if there really was anything haunting Banfield Hall, Axness and I decided to return four days later for a second Ouija board session. We chose to go into a different, mildly unpleasant storage room in the Banfield basement. 

The planchette moved significantly less—but it did move to the word “yes” a few times and to the letter “D.” However, during this session, we were more focused on what we were hearing. We heard what sounded like a door slamming shut multiple times, seemingly coming from another room in the basement, though we know we were the only people down there. When we closed out our session, the basement doors that were open before we started were still open. 

Meanwhile, Whalesong Editor Rosemarie Alexander-Isett reported editing an article that suddenly disappeared from Google Docs and could not be found. I had typed the same word multiple times, jammed together. Coincidence? Maybe…

After our second Ouija board session, we also noticed that the board appeared to have a scratch that wasn’t there before. See image below.  

Ouija board with scratch, photo taken by Emily Grab 

In conclusion, we may never know what truly haunts the halls of Banfield. Could it be Mildred Banfield?

“I don’t think she does, she didn’t die there, so…,” Axness said, unable to come up with a real answer. 

On the other hand, some Resident Advisors still believe Mildred Banfield’s presence lurks in her esteemed portrait. 

“I always say hello and goodbye to Mildred. I wink at her, too,” Kelly said.