Western Colorado University

In Roubidoux Hall at Western Colorado University — known as Western State College when the story originated, renamed Western State Colorado University in 2012 and simplified to its current name in 2019 — local telling holds that a student died of smoke inhalation in a dormitory fire about two decades ago; no record of the fire or death has been found. Residents of the room where he is said to have died describe apparitions near the bed while sleeping, and doors that lock on their own, as he was reportedly trapped in the room when the fire broke out. One former resident's account differs in the details — the figure appears sometimes as a ball of light, sometimes solid, tampering with the stereo, TV, and shower, and by this telling he wasn't trapped at all but had made it out of the building before going back in for something and dying of smoke inhalation on the stairwell landing. Gunnison and the university also share a real, longtime Halloween tradition of communal haunted houses, revived in recent years by a Western student and now hosted at the local Masonic Lodge.