The oldest building on the ISU campus — an 1860 Italianate home bequeathed to the university by its last family owner, whose ghost reportedly knocks and paces the stairs when her wishes are ignored.
629 Mulberry St, Terre Haute, IN 47809
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
University president's residence; exterior drive-by on campus. Interior access is not public.
Access
Limited Access
Residential campus street; exterior viewing from public campus paths
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1860 · Oldest building on Indiana State University campus · ISU President's Official Residence · Italianate residential architecture · Condit family bequest
The Condit House at 629 Mulberry Street was built in 1860 for the Right Reverend Blackford Condit and his family. It is an example of Italianate residential architecture with characteristic decorative details, and it predates Indiana State University's own founding — making it the oldest structure on what is now the campus.
Helen Condit, the last member of the family to live in the house, grew up there and remained attached to it throughout her life. When she died in 1965, she bequeathed the property to Indiana State University in her will with a specific condition: the house was to serve as the president's official residence. That condition has governed the building's use ever since — it is the official home of ISU's president rather than a classroom, administrative office, or any other institutional purpose.
The Wikipedia article on the Condit House notes that it was bequeathed to the university in 1962, with Helen dying in 1965; sources available for this article identify 1965 as her death year. ISU has honored the bequest's condition, and the house continues to function as presidential housing. Because it is a residence, interior access is not available to the public, but the building is visible from the campus paths and surrounding streets and is recognized as a campus historic landmark.
Sources
The haunting legend at the Condit House turns on the condition Helen Condit attached to her bequest. She gave the property to Indiana State University specifically for use as the president's official residence, not for conversion into offices or other institutional space. According to the ISU student newspaper's documentation of Terre Haute's haunted history, when the university at various points considered using the building for other purposes, unexplained footsteps on the main staircase and persistent, unexplained knocking at the front door became regular events.
Local tradition reads these phenomena as Helen Condit enforcing her wishes from beyond the house she grew up in. The implication — that a ghost uses property law's mechanisms, insistent knocking and physical presence on the contested staircase — fits the specificity of her bequest. The condition she set was concrete, and so, according to the legend, is her method of complaint.
A secondary element of the tradition holds that infant siblings of the Condit children who died in the house also manifest in the building. The sources do not specify which siblings or what historical records document these deaths; they appear in oral tradition attached to the house's long occupation by a single family rather than in any documented incident.
Notable Entities
The Condit House stands on the Indiana State University campus and is viewable from the surrounding streets and campus paths. As the ISU president's official residence and the oldest building on campus, it's a featured stop on campus historical self-guided tours.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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