Ames is the most haunted town in Iowa, & these 5 stories prove it
Ames, Iowa, has experienced several brushes with paranormal incidents. Here are five stories that prove it’s haunted.
What does it mean to be haunted? The answer to that question varies depending on who you ask. For some, being haunted is a concept applied to everyday experiences, like dealing with the looming presence of a to-do list left unchecked, or having to crouch down in the pasta aisle of your local grocery store until your ex breezes past with their new partner. For others, though, being haunted is exclusively tied to the supernatural.
Cambridge Dictionary defines the term as “showing signs of suffering or severe anxiety,” which lends to both perspectives. However, if you scroll through additional definitions, there’s a separate entry indicating that the word applies to a place “often visited by ghosts (= spirits of dead people).” For the town of Ames, this answer seems to be the best of the bunch.
Numerous ghosts reportedly linger on the Iowa State University campus and frequent the halls of the Farrar schoolhouse. A few have even been spotted in the nearby town of Nevada at The Camelot Theater. Thankfully, all of these spirits have the same thing in common: They’re kind, curious entities who don’t want to cause harm to others.
Well, with the exception of whatever may be lurking in the basement of Friley Hall.
Iowa State University
Most of the paranormal activity in Ames happens on the Iowa State University campus. Several hotspots are located amid its hallowed halls, and the alleged ghostly encounters are as much a part of the school’s history as its fun traditions are. What makes this campus especially unique is that each of these haunted locations has its own separate story to tell. They’re not frequented by the same specters, which is even more reason for skeptics to believe that ghosts must be congregating here for a specific, possibly spooky, reason.
C.Y. Stephens Auditorium
Clifford Y. “C.Y.” Stephens attended Iowa State University in the 1920s. He went on to become a prominent member of Iowa society as the owner of High’s Dairy Store. The school named its auditorium after him in the 1960s after Stephens donated all of his stock to the campus. Following his death in a car accident in 1963, stories began to emerge from those who say they saw his ghost lingering around the auditorium that bore his name. The Des Moines Register reports that students have heard his footsteps trailing them or felt cold drafts while walking through the basement halls. Every encounter is, by all accounts, kind, as Stephens isn’t considered malevolent in nature.
His specter has also been spotted sitting in the third balcony overlooking the stage during the school’s various productions. Dancers who perform in Iowa State’s yearly production of the Nutcracker say they consider it good luck to be in his presence before a performance. The next time you’re attending a show there, take a look at the right corner of that balcony after the stage lights have been lowered and the house lights have come on—you might just see Stephens for yourself.
Memorial Union’s Gold Star Hall
The spirits who reportedly linger in Memorial Union’s Gold Star Hall are equally benevolent by all accounts. The hall is dedicated to Iowa State graduates who died in WWI, WWII, Vietnam, Korea, USS Liberty, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia. Allegedly, there’s an eerie moan that continuously reverberates through the building. Some believe that a woman who previously attended ISU and died in WWI is the source of the sound.
To learn more about Gold Star Hall’s history, click here.
Friley Hall
Now, the hauntings reported in Friley Hall are more sinister than those that have taken place elsewhere on campus. A student reportedly died by suicide in the building, and according to legend, any student who was assigned that room afterward would either disappear or die. ISU stopped assigning the dorm at some point, though many believe this decision actually came about due to the fact that it doesn’t have immediate fire escape access, rendering it unsafe.
Iowa State Daily claims that there’s another equally unsettling space in the basement of Friley Hall that’s dubbed “The Devil’s Legion Room” or “Satan’s Legion.” An increased amount of paranormal activity has been reported here over the decades, including ghostly sightings. Perhaps most concerning—and the most difficult to explain—are the strange dreams students say they have about that closed-off room. Many have dreamt about being stuck inside the “Devil’s Legion Room” as the walls begin to drip and ooze with blood.
The Farrar schoolhouse
Even if you make it through Iowa State University’s campus without encountering a ghost, you’ll still be in the presence of spirits at popular spots found throughout the town of Ames. The Farrar schoolhouse, which was closed in 2002, is purportedly so haunted that “thousands” of paranormal investigations have been conducted here. Two Discovery Channel shows, “Ghost Stalkers” and “My Ghost Story,” have visited the school, as did the paranormal team, Kindred Spirits, in 2020 for the Travel Channel.
During Kindred Spirits’s visit to the property, the team investigated claims of a 14-foot entity running around the schoolhouse, among other supposed specters. EVP (electronic voice phenomenon) picked up a woman’s voice, and Nancy Oliver, who owns the Farrar building with her husband, John, said she saw an apparition of a young boy standing on one of the school’s staircases.
The Camelot
Okay, the Camelot Theater is located just outside of Ames in Nevada, Iowa, but we’re counting it toward the overall spooky vibes present in this area of the state. Larry and Cindy Sloan, who previously owned the theater, spoke with the Ames Tribune about the countless supernatural incidents they and their employees experienced there.
Lights turn on and off by themselves. Chandeliers swing for no reason. Whispered conversations can be overheard but not fully understood. A handful of empty chairs seemingly rock back and forth to music when it’s playing. All of these details are common in most alleged hauntings. One thing that isn’t typically a factor in paranormal experiences? Ghosts who have a knack for gift giving.
Cindy told the Ames Tribune that she found a collection of pristine movie posters in the furnace room in the theater’s basement, which she brought upstairs. Larry went down to the same room a few weeks later and found even more posters. He thought Cindy had found them again and left them there…but she didn’t. “That’s the first ‘gift’ we got from the ghosts,” she told the outlet. Like clockwork, the Sloans would find anywhere between 20 and 40 additional posters in the room whenever they entered it.
When a team of paranormal investigators came to check out The Camelot, they confirmed what the Sloans and countless employees already suspected: There was a “definite presence of three ghosts — two female and one male.” So, the next time you catch a movie there, you may just encounter a few friendly gift-giving ghosts!
Our stories may be republished online or in print under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. We ask that you edit only for style or to shorten, provide proper attribution and link to our web site. Please see our republishing guidelines for use of photos and graphics.
