The Little Boy in Hogle Hall

While Converse Hall was the first building built on Westminster’s Sugar House campus, this tale of the haunting in Hogle Hall is even older. Before Westminster moved to its current Sugar House campus location in 1912, the area was rural.

Legend has it that a family farmed the land that Hogle Hall now sits upon, and that one day, a young boy was playing in Emigration Creek while his father used a tractor in the fields. The little boy found a frog in the creek, and rushed to show off his prize to his father. The man was operating a loud and cumbersome tractor.

He didn’t hear the cries of the boy running toward him. As the story goes, the boy fell in front of the tractor and was crushed, thus beginning the haunting of Hogle Hall.

Although this tragedy occurred over a century ago, the spirit of the little boy seems to have made Hogle Hall his home. His mischievous spirit is thought to be the cause of incessant flooding and flickering lights on the third floor. Even though they are fixed regularly, drinking fountains in the building will sometimes overflow and, upon occasion, a frog will appear with no explanation as to where it came from.

Some of the most chilling stories of the ghost of the little boy come from students who have lived in Hogle Hall. Throughout the years, students have reported hearing the laugh of a little boy lingering through the halls late at night, and campus patrol officers have reported the same when the residence halls were closed for Winter Break. One campus patrol officer encountered the chilling laugh on his rounds one night, and the next week, he came across two students running down the stairs of Hogle, terror-stricken.

The students reported that they had been studying in the lounge when they saw a spectral, floating boy with no legs circling the room. He vanished, but sightings of the ghost in Hogle Hall continue to this day.

Thanks for listening to the Westminster Haunted Tour, presented by the Westminster College Alumni Office. Check out our other episodes wherever you listen to podcasts, and visit westminstercollege.edu/alumni for upcoming events and alumni resources.

This production was made possible through the idea of Trey Hansen, class of 2016, and the research and journalism of Graham Kennedy, class of 2020, and Westminster’s student newspaper, The Forum.

Disclaimer: These tales of legends and spirits are just for fun!

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