The Ghosts of Carroll College
On the hill above Benton Avenue, St. Charles Hall has watched over Helena for more than a century. Its dramatic architecture, with steep, gabled peaks and a bright red roof, makes it one of the easiest landmarks to spot from across town. Carroll College began as one bishop’s dream, to one day train Montana’s own priests in their home state. Since its inception, Carroll’s halls have been filled with students, priests, and faculty.
Some say that not everyone who passed through these halls actually left the campus. In the 1960s, a 21-year-old football player was in the fourth-floor bathroom of St. Charles Hall when he reportedly passed out and hit his head, enduring traumatic and gory injuries. He died a few weeks later at St. John’s Hospital. Not long after, students brushing their teeth in the same bathroom reported seeing apparitions in the mirror. A young man, standing just behind them, bloodied from the wound he sustained in the fall. Of course, when students turned around, no one was ever there. Eventually, for reasons no one has fully explained, the bathroom was locked and used for storage.
Over the years, students living on the fourth floor of St. Charles Hall would report their own peculiar encounters. Char Helmick Pentecost moved into the building ahead of her first semester at Carroll in the 1990s, and after spending the day moving her things into her room, she flicked the lights off and climbed into bed. As she drifted asleep, she heard deep, steady breathing, as if someone else were in the room. But when she got up to turn on the lights, no one was there. Char heard it all year, and so did most of the women on her floor. Many simply fell asleep with their radios on. Later that year, Char and a few of the other girls living on the fourth floor stayed up late in the lounge studying for finals. Before heading to bed, the girls stood and chatted outside of the locked bathroom. They reported hearing screeching and scraping from behind the locked door, though the padlock never budged.
St. Charles Hall is full of legends and stories, though some reports have remained consistent across generations. Some say there are walls in the hall where you can’t hang anything. Not with thumbtacks, nails, or Command Strips, because nothing will stay. Many students who lived in the hall have heard tapping on the walls and knocking at their doors late at night, only to find an empty hallway. They’ve even given the visitor a name, The Tapper.
Across the way, there have reportedly been ghostly encounters in St. Albert’s Hall. The building was built in 1924 to house 12 Dominican sisters who came to Helena from Germany. The sisters cleaned the campus for nearly a decade and cooked for students and faculty until 1961. Years after they left, the building briefly housed Carroll’s student radio station, and the Sunday morning broadcast crew was never quite alone. The station signed on at 6:30am, and, so it seemed, someone in the hallway did too. At the beginning of every broadcast, like clockwork, students reportedly heard unhurried steps pass by each room, lingering outside the studio long enough that the students felt like they were being watched. Most chalked it up to the sisters, still keeping the early rounds they’d made for decades.
Carroll has sent thousands of graduates out into the world, but a few residents seem to be in no hurry to leave. Next time you’re in Helena, take in St. Charles Hall and St. Albert's Hall from the grounds, look up at the fourth-floor windows of St. Charles Hall, and don’t be surprised if you encounter one of these spirits.
