The brick tower of Washington Hall at the University of Notre Dame, with a stone plaque reading 1881

Washington Hall, University of Notre Dame, Indiana: The Gipp Ghost Story vs. the Record

Midwestern US Haunted Schools

Washington Hall, a Victorian Gothic theater just east of the Golden Dome at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, has collected ghost stories for roughly a century. The best known says the spirit of football star George Gipp haunts the building, galloping up its steps on a white horse. The building and the football player are both well documented. The ghost story is campus folklore, and the university’s own publications say important parts of it have no evidence behind them. This post separates the record from the legend.

What the record shows

Notre Dame’s original music hall stood on the site until a fire on April 23, 1879 destroyed five major campus buildings. Washington Hall went up in the rebuilding, which the university’s own Washington Hall history credits to the Chicago architect Willoughby J. Edbrooke. The university’s history page dates the building to 1881; the university Archives say it was not dedicated until 1882, although it was in use earlier. Notre Dame’s founder, Father Edward Sorin, named it for the first president rather than for a saint. The octagonal theater inside held painted murals that were covered in a 1956 renovation. The hall served as the university’s main performing arts venue until a new center opened in 2004, and it is part of the Main and North Quadrangles historic district on the National Register of Historic Places.

George Gipp is also well documented. He grew up in Laurium, Michigan, enrolled at Notre Dame in 1916 and became the school’s first football All-American. He died at 3:23 a.m. on December 14, 1920, at St. Joseph Hospital in South Bend, at age 25. Flags flew at half staff, classes were canceled, and students walked his coffin to the train station. A university magazine account says his illness was reported first as tonsillitis, then pneumonia, then strep throat, in the years before antibiotics.

The legend

The legend has several layers. The core version, as told on campus, says Gipp missed curfew, fell asleep on the steps of Washington Hall, caught the pneumonia that killed him, and now walks the building. Wikipedia’s history of the hall, drawn from the hall’s own staff history, says few students scoff at stories of doors slamming on windless nights, footsteps on the roof and unexplained noises during late-night play preparation. A student newspaper article from 2006 quoted a longtime faculty member who worked in the hall and wrote its history. His account of how the stories began is more complicated than the Gipp version.

  • Christmas 1920: Eight students living in the hall reportedly heard a French horn they could not trace. The account calls this episode well documented, and it came just after Gipp died. Not every story starts there; one listed below is older.
  • 1925 to 1926: A student from Brazil is said to be the first person to announce seeing a ghost, describing Gipp on a white horse riding up the south steps and through the entrance. That is where the Gipp connection starts, about five years after the horn.
  • An 1886 steeplejack: One story says a worker fell through the ceiling and died. The same faculty historian told the student paper that evidence for it is lacking.
  • A brother who died at a movie: A Notre Dame Magazine feature says another ghost could possibly be a Holy Cross brother who died during a film screening in the hall in 1946. Custodians, according to a priest who collects campus ghost stories, have described an older, balding, red-haired man who said he was “with the building.”
  • Ouija tales: The hall’s own web page, as relayed by the student paper, described students sleeping in the hall and trying a Ouija board to reach Gipp.

A student-run ghost tour that drew about 100 people one Halloween, described in the same magazine, drew on these stories. All of them are campus oral tradition. Who tells each one matters, and none is backed by an independent record.

What the record does not support

The Gipp story is the weakest link. A Notre Dame Magazine article marking the centennial of his death says there is “no evidence” he was locked out of his dorm and slept on the hall’s steps, thereby catching his fatal illness. It adds that he spent most of his college years living in a room at the Oliver Hotel in South Bend. The 2006 student paper account agrees on one point: Gipp did not live in Washington Hall.

Sources do conflict on the detail. A separate Notre Dame Magazine feature says tradition holds the Gipper haunts the hall “where he lived at the time of his death.” The university’s own sources, then, disagree with each other, and the better-documented ones place him in the hotel. The related “Win one for the Gipper” speech is also weaker than its fame suggests: the same centennial article says there is no evidence Gipp made that deathbed request, and that the coach first mentioned it in 1928.

The 1920 horn may have an ordinary explanation. The student reporter wrote that the episode, though well documented, “may very well have had natural explanations,” and the faculty historian said a student then living in the hall, who later became a longtime band director, might have been the horn player. If it were a hoax, he said, that student might have been involved, but it is not known. He also described the 86 years of stories as layered, with “additional stories, additional layers.”

On the larger question, the magazine quotes a Notre Dame psychology professor who says ghosts are no more real than alien abductions, calling belief a kind of “fantasy prone” thinking. The same article notes that the Catholic Church has never issued a definitive statement for or against ghost encounters. No physical evidence for a haunting of Washington Hall appears in any source reviewed.

Visiting

Washington Hall sits on the main quad of an active university campus and is used as a student venue, so access depends on events and university policy. No visiting hours were found in the sources reviewed, so none are given here. Checking the university’s event listings is the practical route inside, and the exterior and the quad are visible from the walkways. Out of respect for students and staff, ghost stories are better enjoyed from outside than by trying to enter the building after hours.

Gipp’s own grave is far from campus, in Lakeview Cemetery in Laurium, Michigan, overlooking Lake Superior. The headstone reads “George Gipp 1895-1920.”

Frequently asked questions

Is Washington Hall really haunted?

No documented evidence supports a haunting. The stories are campus legend, and the university’s own historian and magazine describe them as layered folklore.

Did George Gipp sleep on the steps of Washington Hall?

The Notre Dame Magazine centennial article says there is no evidence of it. Gipp mostly lived at a South Bend hotel, and he died in a hospital.

When did the Washington Hall ghost stories begin?

The faculty historian quoted in 2006 dated them to about Christmas 1920, with the first sighting reported in 1925 or 1926.

Is Washington Hall open to visitors?

The sources reviewed give no public hours, so check the university directly. The building is used mainly for student and campus events.

More haunted campuses: DePauw University (Greencastle, IN) and Indiana University (Bloomington, IN).

Sources

Shop the gear

NicheStuff is our own shop; some links in this post go to products we sell.

Top image: Washington Hall tower at the University of Notre Dame, Ben Franske, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons