Description Of Place: Mission University (previously Los Altos College of the Arts) is a non-profit free-standing educational institution covering 11.5 acres which includes numerous building including the main hall and adjoining student housing structures, eleven out-lying classroom buildings, chapel, school cafeteria and commons area and seven dormitories capable of housing almost 1500 students and off campus. The college offers more than seventy programs in six divisions: business, humanities, math and science, the arts, social science and education and allied health. The two-year college offers associates of arts and associate of science transfer degrees in more than than forty programs. More than 8,000 students attend the college in an average semester with residences both on and off campus. There are various music, art and cultural programs open to the public through the school year.

Ghostly Manifestations: According to one poll, two out of every five colleges and universities are believed to be haunted, although that number could be much higher if there was any credence or verification to the hundreds of collegiate urban legends concerning female college students who took their lives or male fraternity pledges who died in hazing accidents had any truth to them. Manhattan University in Kansas is haunted by the spirit of a dead pledge named Duncan, Vanderbilt University in Tennessee is haunted by a former dean wandering across campus, West Point Military Academy is haunted by soldiers in period uniform and Harvard itself is haunted by half a dozen ghosts. In Southern California, what Mission University lacks in volume, it makes up for in intensity.

The current campus is a former Catholic school that dated back to the 1940s so several of the buildings involve ghosts along a religious theme. This feeling is more or less felt here than anywhere else in the Lopez Memorial Library on campus named for Sister Theresa Lopez who taught here in the Forties.

Since the Fifties, the library has experienced paranormal activity that includes early morning noises, figures moving through the stacks and voices that ask questions. Staff members, patrons, and students have heard strange voices and sensed supernatural activity at all the times.

"In 2004, I gave a paranormal investigator a detailed tour of all four levels of the library after he approached me for such a visit." Staff librarian Martine Bancroft told the CGS. "While on the main floor near the circular staircase, an associate of the investigator felt the presence of two female spirits. Shortly after that day, word got out about our library being haunted. Since then, we have received dozens of requests for paranormal investigations from all over the southwest. In 2010, the San Francisco Courier ran an article about our haunted library, and the calls increased once again.

Less than twenty separate investigations involving eight groups have taken place at the library, and Bancroft has attended each and every one. Most groups have recorded electronic voice phenomena or have captured photos and videos, while for a few there was no activity. Most groups have reported feeling nothing evil, but they're not the only ones who have noted paranormal events. Staff members and students have also reported seeing and hearing strange things inside the library.

"In early September, for example, while another staff member and I were closing the library, we heard a child's laughter." Bancroft continues. "No one was there. After hours, staffers have heard talking and have heard clicking noises they couldn't explain. Both patrons and staff have seen a shadow floating down the stairs and looking out an upstairs window. One evening, around midnight during an investigation, it appeared as though there was a party going on upstairs because numerous shapes and shadows were reported going past the windows. Security came in and investigated, but they didn't find anything.

"A few weeks ago, there was even a few students studying late into the day at the tables, and they described getting spooked by a shadow that they had seen wandering past them from beyond the shelves. They reported never seeing the complete person, but it would jump from behind one row of shelves to the next one without stepping into view in between. They also added reported hearing the same kind of clicking several others had heard, and up to recently we finally figured out the clicking had to be the rosary beads worn by the nuns who used to run the school here. Upon that we realized, we had to have been haunted by the spirits of the nuns who used to run the school."

Bancroft adds that strange shadows are often seen on the campus after dark, most of them in the vicinity of the library. From the quad to the track course, it is not odd to see a what looks like a nun cross from the path behind the library and head toward the back door of the cafeteria. It should be noticed that the college eatery is completely modern, having been built in 2009 over the path from the library to the chapel.

Whereas the campus spirits are unaware of some structures blocking their path, they are more conscious of other buildings on campus. Located in the basement of the Rec Hall, the College Bar and Cantina is where several of the students come to let go, party and let loose their inhibitions, all without alcoholic beverages. Alcohol is forbidden in campus, but the bar does have a cappuccino machine, video games and other distractions from classes and lessons. However, most people agree that something there is something there annoyed by the partying.

"Glasses slide up hill off shelves, chairs jump into your path and strange sounds come from the back room." Nick-named "Dixie," Kyle Canning often assists Josh Radnor who founded the refreshment bar for friends too rowdy for the student cafeteria. "It used to be a storage area, and Josh had the idea to convert it into something after carting off the old stuff in there, but we saw the corner booths, the restaurant-style chairs and tables and brought in a few games, a dart board and next thing you know, we had a campus hang-out."

Students have felt cold drafts here, and objects often vanish. Cell phones and key rings vanish, and turn up in strange places if they reappear at all. Students walking down the hall to the restroom feel as if they are being watched, and strange sounds occur. Tapping noises are heard from overhead which is the store room for the sports gear. Some students hanging out here have had inexplicable feelings of dread or unprovoked stress attacks.

"I heard this one story about a fight that broke out here by two guys looking for alcohol." Dixie adds. "The way it was told to me was that they were guests from another college, and they didn't like the no alcohol rule, so they started a fight and started ripping the place up. Before you could clear the room, there was the sound of this unearthly screaming coming somewhere in the building, and everyone just had this horrible feeling they had to get out. The people I knew that had heard it said it sounded as if someone had opened the gates of hell."

Kappa Alpha Pi Fraternity was once the residence of Union Major Aloysius T. Reidback of the Twenty-First California Infantry in the Late Nineteenth Century. Reidback fought in the Civil War against Confederate soldiers in both Louisiana and Alabama, returning home after the war to live out in retired anonymity. Today, the tenants hear his cranky spirit struggling to get up and down the stairs in his cane.

"Several of the guys living here have heard voices at night on the staircase." Dixie continues. "And it's not for the ghost to be seen wandering through the hall. People have also seen him peeking out from being the curtains when the house is empty in the summer. I think voices have been heard as well. Others have described the sounds of children running in from the back porch and the door slamming by itself. Rumor has it that Reidback's family is also haunting the old house."   

Sigma Kappa Pi Fraternity is located in one of the oldest structures on campus. Dating back to the 1920s, it was once housing for the former dean of St. Katherine's Prep that once occupied the grounds, but in the Fifties, the two-story Federal-style structure was housing for a sorority of boys. Although this history does not ring true with the known history of the campus, it is pertinent to understanding the ghost that does haunt the structure.

"The story goes that back in the Fifties there was sort of a raucous party here that went out of control." Peter Hastings, the head of Kappa Alpha Pi Fraternity regales us in the sordid and imaginary history of the structure. "There was an attractive young lady here visiting her boyfriend who was a student, and she got invited upstairs by another guy who raped her and then locked her in the attic in order to get her to stop screaming. Unfortunately, he left the building and she ended up freezing to death. Story goes that her angry spirit is looking for the guy who killed her."

Whether the story is true is complicated by which building it actually applies to on campus. If one accepts this student legend, the so-called fraternity house was closed down during the resulting police investigation and never reopened. Hastings believes the spirit of the angry young lady haunts Sigma Kappa Pi; however, others are not so sure and point to the Campus Security Building with the medical office on the second floor which was re-opened in 2009 after being closed up since 1947.

Residents in Sigma Kappa Pi often describe being wakened in the middle of the night and hearing something walking the staircase and hallway. Doors slam shut, untouched objects suddenly jump off tables and TVs come on by themselves. From outside, they see curtains move as if something is peeking out from empty rooms, and most recently, five students reportedly saw a young lady enter their house and stroll upstairs where she vanished.

"Ty Madison, the head of Sigma Kappa Pi, was reportedly coming down the stairs at that moment to watch the rest of the football game in the parlor area, and he never saw anyone pass him on the stairs." Peter adds.

Described as a petite curvy brunette in a pale blue dress with brown hair and a crazy look in her eyes, this figure has also been reported in the Campus Security Building. Radios come on, voices mumble conversations in empty rooms, doors open and close themselves and security guards on duty get spooked at being alone in the building at night. On guard on duty trying to rest in the back sleeping area allegedly woke one night to realize he was being watched. He woke, saw a young woman staring at him from over his bed then turned to look at the clock. It was then that he realized that she was standing over him with her hands palms up against the ceiling which would have made her seven feet tall, but when he looked again, she was gone.

To complicate matters, students have a on-campus legend about a former barn on campus. Located in the woods behind the sports arena, the so-called succubus haunts it, and everyone who has gone looking for her has never returned.

Adjacent to campus located down from student housing, Nu Tau Pi Sorority is haunted by a benevolent motherly apparition that puts things away, folds clothes and rummages away in the kitchen and dining room. The girls have woke in the morning to find themselves tightly tucked into bed, and whatever clothes they laid out back in their closet. Rumor has it the ghost is that of Abby, who was the mother of five children here back when the house was a residence.

"I've never seen her..." Yvonne Little of the 2012 Class testifies. "But I've heard about several girls who have reportedly seen her drifting down the back stairs into the kitchen only to go running back out the back door after seeing her, but mostly we get strange noises, like floors creaking or doors closing. Lights go on by themselves at times, but we don't go in the attic. Nothing ever goes on up there that we know about, but no one can stand being up there for more than a few minutes."

In the Student Housing Building, the students not pledged to the fraternities have seen what looks like a young girl in period clothing wandering up and down the halls and vanishing. She also stares down from the windows, screams her blood-curdling cries from the stairwell and tears up the individual rooms when students are at classes, but student Jim Duncan is confident she is not a local spirit since she has only appeared for a short time in October 2012.

"Out of curiosity...." He confesses. "I purchased something called a Ghost Box off E-Bay that was said to create good luck and cause wishes, but the actual activity was anything but.... After opening the box, our room was trashed, I've felt as if something was following or watching me and my best friend, Ginger, was scratched by something she couldn't see." He also surely believes two near fatal accidents, the death of one teacher and the disappearance of one student was connected to the activity haunting him and his roommate, Kyle Canning.

"Since selling the box again, things have returned to what passes as normal here."

History: Los Altos College of the Arts was founded in 1975 and has been accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) since 1988. In August 2007, the college officially reincorporated and changed its name to Mission University, moving in 2009 to a new campus at the former St. Katherine's Preparatory on Creedmore Road (now El Monte Boulevard) from its prior location.

Identity of Ghosts: Of the ghosts described on campus, not many of them have identities that allow them to be researched. Obviously details and accuracy of what historical references that once existed have been altered, added to and expanded to over several generations of students. Among them, Union Major Aloysius T. Reidback has the best historical validity, but rumors he died in the house are erroneous. While he did live in the house between 1853 to 1878, he was wounded in an Indian campaign in August 1882 and passed away from complications from an infection at Fort Champion in Nevada. 

Sister Theresa Lopez was a music and drama teacher on the property back when the area was St. Katherine's Preparatory. There is not much info on her, but it it known she lived on the property from 1938 to 1951, remaining a resident here two years after the school closed. There is also no validation to the legend of anyone every freezing to death in Kappa Alpha Pi Fraternity nor for any former residents in the area named Abby.

Of the ghosts, Katie Malone possibly has the most amount of legend behind her, but it is largely unconfirmed. Her legend first appears in print in 1790 and has been told generation to generation for over two hundred years, usually connected to an antique box or old glass bottle of some age. Legend goes she came to the United States looking for work around 1790 to send money home to her family but was instead sold into slavery. Abused by all of her owners, her last owner kept her imprisoned in a barn somewhere on Cape Cod. Katie was befriended by the daughter of the man who owned her, and the girl used to sneak food to her when she could. When her father found out, he beat his daughter and Katie cruelly. The next morning, the daughter discovered Katie had died overnight and fled. Her father reportedly died the next day, but every couple years, an object reportedly comes along that reportedly holds Katie's spirit and the daughter's presence comes along as well to protect her, usually by causing mischief or harm to come to those connected to the object. Jim Duncan believed he had recently acquired one of these objects, while another such object was found in Chicago in 1989 and stored away in an antique store. Whether this was truly Katie Malone or a similar spirit is yet to be revealed.

Source/Comments: Kill Kate Malone (2012) - Location and activity based on Ohio State University in Akron, Ohio, Eastern Tennessee State University in Johnson City, Tennessee, University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida, Volunteer State Community College in Gallatin, Tennessee, Nebraska Wesleyan University in Lincoln, Nebraska, Pierce College in Lakewood, Washington, Lebanon Valley College in Annsville, Pennsylvania, Slippery Rock University in Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania among other cases.