by Wesley Harris
Every old town has its ghosts.
Some have names. Others are nothing more than footsteps in an empty hallway, a shadow where no shadow belongs, or a sound in the darkness that makes you stop and wonder whether you’re really alone.
Stories have long circulated about strange happenings in some of the Ruston’s older buildings. Stow’s Bar—the old Hotel Ruston/Harris Hotel—had footsteps and things that went bump in the night. The old Ruston Sanitarium held tales of a nurse who perhaps never went off duty. Louisiana Tech’s Howard Auditorium possesses an audience that might not always be entirely visible.
Call them ghosts, spirits, or, in the old Southern vernacular, haints. Believe them or don’t.
During my years as a Ruston police officer, I visited all three places after dark. I don’t believe in ghosts, except the Holy Ghost. But I encountered a few things in those old buildings that I still can’t explain.
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Stow’s: Something Upstairs
Of Ruston’s old ghost stories, perhaps none was better known than the haunting of Stow’s. Long before Stow’s became a popular Park Avenue watering hole, the old building had accumulated stories of gambling, backroom politics, and even a visit by a notorious outlaw couple.
As police officers, we had plenty of reasons to visit Stow’s that had nothing to do with the supernatural. We answered fights, disputes, and the usual problems associated with a busy bar.
The interesting stories came after closing.
The bouncers were probably the best witnesses to whatever was—or wasn’t—happening. They were there when the customers had gone, the music stopped, and the old building became quiet. These were big men accustomed to corralling drunks and breaking up fights. It took a good bit to rattle them.
Yet I saw it several times: a burly bouncer wide-eyed and anxious after seeing or hearing something he could not explain.
Seeing the fear in a big man’s eyes can make a believer out of you.
They talked about footsteps and movement upstairs, where the building retained remnants of its earlier use as a hospital. People who ventured onto the upper floors remembered hospital furnishings, old bed frames, equipment, and abandoned rooms. Others reported footsteps overhead and sounds resembling beds being dragged across the floor.
One former bartender later wrote on a supernatural discussion board that he repeatedly heard what sounded like screaming from the upper floors while closing the bar. On another night, while mopping after closing, he said he watched bar stools topple from tables with no one near them.
Then there was Dr. John Brooks Harris, the presumed ghost, according to his descendants.
According to local lore, Harris suffered a serious brain injury in an automobile accident and was cared for upstairs, where he paced the floor day and night before eventually dying.
Around Halloween one year, two men conducted their own late-night investigation upstairs.
One man noticed a human-shaped shadow on the wall. Assuming it belonged to his companion, he called out to him.
His friend answered from farther down the hallway.
The shadow wasn’t his.
Both men quickly left by the fire escape, only to encounter a Ruston police officer outside shining a light on the building.
Maybe there were reasonable explanations for all of it. Old buildings creak. Pipes knock. Shadows move.
But explanations are harder to come by when a man who has spent his night breaking up bar fights tells you something is upstairs. And he’s scared.
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Ruston Sanitarium: The Nurse and the Empty Elevator
An old hospital does not need a ghost story to be frightening at night.
The Ruston-Lincoln Sanitarium opened in 1928, with a morgue on the first floor and surgical suite on the fourth. In 1963, the building became a nursing home, and in the 1970s it passed into use by Louisiana Tech.
Somewhere along the way came stories that someone from its medical past was still making rounds.
In 2007, The Tech Talk, the student newspaper, published accounts of strange experiences there. One former employee believed the presence might have been the nursing home’s former director of nurses, a strict but caring woman who lived in a fourth-floor apartment so she could respond quickly when needed.
Another staff member working after hours reportedly heard doors opening and closing along the fourth-floor hallway. When he investigated, every door was closed and securely locked.
Then there was the elevator. Stories circulated that it sometimes traveled from the first floor to the fourth without being called.
Of all the stories about the old sanitarium, the one about the elevator has always bothered me most. Because I watched it happen.
One night, while working as a Ruston police officer, I was among several officers sent to the old hospital to investigate something. I no longer remember exactly what prompted the call.
Our flashlights cut through dark corridors and empty rooms as the old hospital creaked and groaned around us. Occasionally, some sound deeper inside made us stop and listen.
We searched the building and found no one. Afterward, we gathered in the lobby, talking about just how creepy the place was.
Then the elevator started.
We heard the machinery engage above us and the car descending the shaft.
Conversation stopped. Had we missed somebody?
We stood back as the elevator reached the lobby and stopped. There was a moment’s hesitation before the doors opened.
The car was empty.
A chill came over us when those doors opened. For one strange moment, it almost felt as though something had gotten off.
After an interval, the doors closed, and the elevator rose again, traveling back to the top floor.
At the time, I knew nothing about an old nurse supposedly haunting the upper floor or stories of the elevator moving on its own.
There could have been a mechanical explanation.
But we had searched the building. No one was there. Perhaps the old nurse still had rounds to make.
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Howard Auditorium: Something in the Dark
Theaters seem made for ghost stories. Once the performance ends, the actors leave, the audience goes home, and the theater becomes dark.
Students and faculty have long shared tales of strange occurrences in Howard Auditorium: props and set pieces moving on their own, ghostly voices echoing in the empty theater, and unexplained cold drafts sweeping through the building.
Some performers have reported feeling a spectral presence while on stage, as if being watched by invisible eyes. Stage lights flicker, curtains sway, and mysterious sounds have left many to believe that Howard Auditorium is still occupied by spirits who never took their final bow.
The most well-known ghost is said to be that of a former actor who passed away under tragic circumstances. According to legend, this ghost can still be seen sitting in the audience or backstage, forever watching over the performances he loved in life.
The best-known story concerns the auditorium’s spring-loaded seats, which normally return upright when someone stands. According to legend, a seat has sometimes been found lowered when no one was sitting there.
One seat, down in an empty auditorium.
My own experience happened elsewhere in the building.
For reasons I no longer remember, I once accompanied a Louisiana Tech police officer in searching Howard Auditorium. Anyone who knows Howard only from performances might think of the stage and several hundred seats. But below the auditorium are numerous rooms. That was where we spent most of our time.
It was dark, with no convenient light switches. Our flashlights swept across walls, doorways, corners, and empty rooms.
The old building made noises around us—creaks, groans, and strange grunts, almost as though it were straining and stretching.
Then we heard other sounds that were harder to place. The kind that make you stop, turn toward the darkness, and listen.
Nothing. Shine the light. Nothing. We found no one.
But somewhere farther into the darkness, the old building had another noise waiting for us.
A door slammed. Hard. It seemed so close someone had to be just steps away.
I jumped. But we found nothing.
Wood expands. Pipes knock. Air moves through ducts. Old buildings settle. All perfectly reasonable. In daylight.
Reason becomes less reassuring when you are beneath an empty auditorium, pointing a flashlight toward a dark room you haven’t searched yet.
Especially when something inside it just made a noise.
And somewhere above you, hundreds of empty seats are waiting in the dark.
At least, you hope they’re empty.
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Haunts and Haints
Are Ruston’s ghosts real?
I never saw Dr. Harris walking the upper floor of Stow’s, an old nurse making her rounds at the sanitarium, or anything waiting in the dark beneath Howard Auditorium.
But I have seen a big, tough bouncer frightened by something he could not explain. I have heard strange noises beneath an empty auditorium. And I have watched an empty elevator descend through an old hospital after we had searched the building and found no one there.
There’s an explanation for all of it.
Probably.
But if you ever find yourself alone at night in one of Ruston’s old buildings and hear footsteps behind you, remember one thing.
You don’t have to believe in haints. Haints don’t necessarily require you to believe in them.
One final warning: Don’t go trespassing in search of Ruston’s ghosts. The haints may or may not get you, but the police certainly will.
Happy Halloween!
