B2SB: School Spirits: Scary Sterry Hall

By Diego Gonzales

Blog Content Contributor

The moving-in process for Texas State Freshmen could be scary for a variety of reasons. A bad roommate, homesickness and a long walking distance from your classes are valid fears to have for your first year of college. But perhaps the scariest thing that could happen to an incoming freshman is to be haunted by a restless spirit that seeks to torment you.

While ghosts such as the ones in movies like ‘Poltergeist’ are unlikely to exist, dozens of TXST students still spread stories of such entities being on campus. Sterry Hall in particular is the subject of such stories, earning itself the nickname of ‘Scary Sterry’. Is this name just an excuse to employ an alliteration, or is there truth to the ghostly gossip? I reached out to some former residents of Sterry Hall to find out.

“My friends told me this story about Sterry,” said TXST student Laura Quiñones “and it’s the same story you’ll hear about with Tower and San Jacinto, where someone jumped off the top of the building and now it’s haunted.”

“The creepiest parts of the building are the lower floors,” said Quiñones, “My friend told me that on the first floor’s girl bathroom, they keep the door open because when no one’s in there the lights are fine, but as soon as someone goes in there the lights start flickering. When my friend was in there it was flickering and as she checked to see if someone was playing with the lights one of the stall doors started to swing, so she booked it out of there.”

I was not able to visit Sterry Hall myself since it is the summertime, so I instead made an artistic recreation of what I imagine Quiñones was describing. Please note that I spared no detail and that the visualization I made may be disturbing.

“Me and my roommate at the time both experienced ghost encounters,” said Texas State student Sara Fanta, who also resided at Sterry in the past,  “The first thing that happened took place in my dorm room at Sterry. My roommate had these Christmas lights, and I was in there alone, and those came on by themselves. I was like ‘Whatever, sometimes things just turn on by themselves’. But then, I’m in class and I get a text from my roommate that says ‘Are you here right now in our room?’ and I said ‘No’. And she’s like ‘I very much remember turning off our overhead light to go to the bathroom, and then I came back and the lights are on.’ And that really creeped us out, especially since the whole rumor was the ghost lived on our floor, the fourth floor”.

These stories, inspired by true ghostly events or not, are just a glimpse into the odd parts of Texas State lore. A reminder that the campus has interesting stories in every corner if you look hard enough. For instance, the Danny Devito shrine. Please stop what you’re doing and search for the Danny Devito shrine.