St. Anselm College

A Benedictine liberal arts college founded in 1889, with Gothic Revival architecture set on 380 acres.

A monk fell four stories from an Alumni Hall window, and his spirit has never left the hilltop campus. Saint Anselm College was founded in 1889 by Benedictine monks who established their abbey on a wooded rise in Goffstown, just west of Manchester. Alumni Hall, constructed between 1891 and 1892 by the monks themselves alongside local contractors, served as the campus's central building -- monks lived on the second floor, students on the third and fourth. The granite structure was the beating heart of the young college, its corridors echoing with prayers, lectures, and the steady rhythm of monastic life. Sometime in the building's early decades, a monk reportedly fell -- or jumped -- from a fourth-floor window. The circumstances remain murky, with some accounts calling it a suicide and others describing a tragic accident. What is consistent across tellings is the aftermath: something remained in Alumni Hall that should not have been there.

Students and staff report encounters most often on the upper floors where the monk is said to have lived. Footsteps pace hallways late at night when no one is visible. Doors open and close on their own. Cold spots appear without explanation in rooms that should be warm. The activity is persistent but not aggressive -- more like the restless movements of someone who cannot find peace.

But Alumni Hall is not the only haunted building on campus. Colby Dorm, one of the residence halls, has generated its own catalog of strange experiences. Students hear heavy footsteps crossing empty corridors at night. Brass doorknobs rattle violently in their housings, as though someone is frantically trying to enter -- yet when the door is opened, no one stands on the other side. Mysterious gusts of wind sweep through rooms where every window is sealed shut and every door is closed, as if something unseen has just rushed past.

The Colgate Building may harbor the most visually striking apparition on campus. Witnesses describe a dark male figure wearing a hat, sometimes seen leaning over a railing on the upper levels, other times walking slowly around the building's tower. He appears solid enough to be mistaken for a living person until he vanishes without a sound. The figure has been reported by students, faculty, and visitors over multiple decades, always described the same way -- tall, dark, wearing a hat, and utterly silent.

The Benedictine monks still maintain their abbey on the college grounds, and the monastic tradition of contemplation and prayer continues. Whether that spiritual presence keeps the campus's restless spirits at bay or somehow sustains them is a question no one at Saint Anselm has been able to answer. The monks do not publicly discuss the hauntings. The ghosts, for their part, do not seem inclined to leave.