With Halloween’s mysterious aura surrounding Indiana University, urban legends and ghost stories charge people’s imaginations. Though some tell of “a friend of a friend” and others take place at “a campus out west,” others find their home a little more locally.

On the busy streets of 7th and Woodlawn, the Latino Cultural Center also known as La Casa inconspicuously sits between other small homes turned into offices. Inside, the center displays various Latin trinkets hung on the white and beige walls with pamphlets advertising organizations and events scattered all around the desks and shelves. Though not the description of a traditional haunted house, La Casa’s stories are just as ghostly.

Lillian Casillas, director of La Casa, first suspected something was afoot when a male student told her of something he had experienced the night before. The student assumed he was alone in the La Casa, but had heard a typewriter being used in a room upstairs. When he inspected the room, he saw that it was empty. “The typewriter was unplugged, so it couldn’t have been a short,” Casillas said.

Casillas also said lights would randomly turn on throughout the house, something she originally accredited to the home’s aging wiring. She contacted an electrician who found no problems.

Casillas’s curiosity was finally piqued when a student came to her with yet another closing story. As the student locked up La Casa, he looked in an upstairs window and noticed he had forgotten to turn off a light in an upstairs room. Along with the glow of light he also saw a woman’s figure through the window.

The student refused to close up alone anymore.

Afraid that the woman in the window may have been an intruder, Casillas investigated the issue and began hearing stories from students and around campus about a woman who was said to haunt the home when it acted as the center for the Student Association before being turned into La Casa in 1976. Casillas said alumni from the 60’s even often visit the building, asking “Is she still here?” which is a relief to her. “I don’t want people to think just the Latinos are crazy,” she said.

After being informed of the houses supernatural history, the incidents continued to pile up.

A student told Casillas that as he had been closing he turned off the downstairs lights first and headed upstairs. As he finished turning all the lights off upstairs, the student headed back down to see that all the downstairs lights had been turned back on. Annoyed, he turned them back off and closed up.

Casillas once again contacted the electrician who once again found no problems. “I drove electricians crazy,” she said.

Faulty wiring couldn’t be used to explain everything that was happening in La Casa when a student was having some trouble and staying the night there. Casillas stayed upstairs while the student slept in the living room downstairs. The next morning when Casillas spoke to the student, he asked if she had been checking up on him the night before. When Casillas questioned why he asked, he said he had seen her in the doorway. She had never gone downstairs.

Most students that have come in contact the woman in La Casa know nothing of her story. Casillas says she doesn’t like to tell people of the haunting to keep their imaginations from getting the best of them. “I don’t want to belittle the thing,” she said. Usually it is after students experience something at the house that Casillas informs them of the woman. According to Casillas, she tells them the story to “validate experiences” and let them know that they are safe. “The woman has never done anything bad, she just likes picking on people, especially men,” she said.

Casillas says that the spirit in the home has become more of a family member than a horror. “She connects with us,” she said. So much, that last year during La Casa’s Day of the Dead celebration, a student created an altar in her honor. According to Casillas, as long as La Casa is around, the woman will always have a place to stay. “She is a part of our home, part of La Casa,” she said.

(Halloween Assignment, J200)