1821 UGA building on North Campus, said to be haunted by a young soldier who in January 1918 shot his girlfriend and then himself after a wartime separation.
240 South Jackson Street, Athens, GA 30602
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free exterior viewing. Active UGA Office of Special Events building; public interior access is by event only.
Access
Limited Access
Historic UGA North Campus walkways.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1821 · Second-Oldest UGA Building · Named for President Moses Waddel · Multiple Adaptive Reuses Over Two Centuries · Site of Documented 1918 Tragedy in Building Lore
Waddel Hall is an unassuming white brick building on UGA's main library quad and is the second-oldest building on the University of Georgia campus, completed in 1821. The building is named for Moses Waddel, the fifth president of UGA, who is buried at the nearby Jackson Street Cemetery.
Over more than two centuries the building has served as a dormitory, a boarding house, a gymnasium, a snack bar, scientific-equipment storage, and academic offices. Today it is the home of the UGA Office of Special Events.
The building's most-cited historical incident occurred on a cold and rainy night in January 1918. According to UGA Alumni's Haunted UGA roundup and the UGA Libraries ghost-stories research guide, twenty-year-old Jamie Johnson, a returning World War I soldier, and seventeen-year-old Belle Hill — who had reportedly begun a relationship with another man during Johnson's deployment — were loaned a friend's dormitory room in what is now Waddel Hall so the couple could attempt to repair their relationship. Sometime in the early morning, gunshots rang out: Johnson had shot Hill and then himself. The Belle Hill / Jamie Johnson story is the murder-suicide tradition that anchors the building's reputation.
Sources
According to UGA Alumni's Haunted UGA series, the UGA Libraries ghost-stories research guide, the Red & Black ('Haunted halls of UGA' and 'Haunted campus' features), and the Southern Spirit Guide, the most frequent reports at Waddel Hall describe phenomena tied to the second-floor room associated with the 1918 incident.
Witnesses describe unexplained lights moving across the second-floor windows when the building is locked, footsteps on the staircase and upper hallway, doors opening and closing on their own, and the sensation of being tapped on the shoulder. The most poetic recurring report — repeated across student journalism over many years — describes what sounds like two lovers quarreling on the second floor, a fight that will never get the chance to be resolved.
The 1918 murder-suicide is independently confirmed in the Athens-Clarke Heritage Room's 'This Day in Athens' record, which cites contemporary Athens Banner coverage (January 1918) of the event and reproduces Johnson's suicide note. Three UGA students in whose room the incident occurred were dismissed from the University, and two formal inquiries followed. With the historical anchor now firmly attested in contemporary newspaper coverage and the paranormal accounts repeated across at least four independent UGA-affiliated outlets, the lore exceeds the single-anchor threshold while remaining presented here with care given the violence at its center.
Notable Entities
View the second-oldest building on UGA's campus, an unassuming white brick structure on the main library quad. Pair with the Haunted North Campus self-guided walk past Demosthenian Hall, Old College, and Jackson Street Cemetery.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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