Every Halloween season at NYU, there’s freshman small talk in elevators across campus about an impromptu ghost hunt to put all the newly acquired ghost rumors to rest. But it seems NYU students have only sensed ghosts, mainly in NYU’s more worn down or newly renovated buildings that still hold the spirits within their walls. WSN hunted down people who had something to say about these ghost conspiracy theories.

NYU’s Brown Building was home to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory before there was a fire on the eighth, ninth and 10th floors with 146 garment workers inside. NYU acquired the building in 1929, and it has been used as the main building for pre-medicine study, but people still question if the building has ghosts or if it’s just its landmark status panache.

“I’m a chem major in pre-med, so I’m in lab a lot [at Brown and Waverly],” CAS sophomore Sanjana Manjunath said. “They’re connected so I can use elevators for either buildings, and those elevators are wonky. But honestly I think they’re just old.”

Aside from floating around in NYU academic buildings, NYU ghosts make the dorming experience a little more homey or just plain spooky, depending on who you ask.

“At first, I thought Palladium elevators were controlled by ghosts,” Gallatin sophomore Emily Golchini said. “They would always stop on the same two floors every Saturday. I told a security guard, not wanting to buy into the ghost conspiracies, but he ended up telling me the elevators are automatic for Sabbath.”

Sometimes it isn’t even ghosts that are lurking around, just some other spirited creatures.

“I live in Third North [Residence Hall] and I haven’t really sensed or seen ghosts,” CAS freshman Anam-Cara O’Brien said. “The most I’ve ever heard is probably the dead mice under the floorboards.”

Tisch sophomore Tayler Everts lived in Brittany Residence Hall last year and found herself in a spooky situation after doing some laundry. Her white bed sheets weren’t the only ghostly thing around.

“One time I was doing my laundry in the basement of Brittany, and I was going over to the elevator to bring my stuff back upstairs,” Everts said. “I could hear the echoes of people talking from above floors coming through the caged-door elevator shafts in the basement. But this was over winter break — when everyone was gone.”

Brittany Hall is the home of the old Brittany Hotel. Most guests of the hotel are long gone, but one guest still seems to reside at Brittany — Molly, a young girl who died over 90 years ago in those hallowed halls. Molly comes out to play, often delaying elevator rides for rushing residents.

“Molly just wreaks havoc in the elevators,” Everts said. “I heard she’s mainly on the fifth floor, but sometimes the door of the left side elevator keeps opening and closing. At that point, she’s practically everywhere.”

Email Pamela Jew at [email protected].