1931 Women's Dormitory with Room 312 Folklore
Highland Road, Baton Rouge, LA 70803
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Open public university campus; no admission for grounds access.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Paved campus paths
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1931 · LSU Campus History · Women's Education History
Pleasant Hall — originally called Smith Hall — was completed in 1931 as Louisiana State University's first women's dormitory, named for James Monroe Smith, who served as LSU president during the building's construction. The dormitory opened at a time when LSU was expanding rapidly under New Deal-era construction programs.
The building operated as student housing for seven decades. By the early 2000s, the university repurposed it for administrative and academic use; as of 2002, the structure housed the continuing education department, and the residential use of the third-floor rooms — including Room 312 — ceased. The building now operates as classroom and office space.
Pleasant Hall is part of the Italian Renaissance Revival architectural campus designed by Baton Rouge firm Favrot and Livaudais in the 1920s and 1930s, which gives the LSU campus its characteristic formal, symmetrical aesthetic.
Sources
The tradition attached to Room 312 of Pleasant Hall is among the more persistent pieces of campus folklore at LSU, appearing in the LSU Reveille, Visit Baton Rouge, and multiple regional paranormal publications. The legend, traced by most sources to the 1960s, describes a female student who shot her boyfriend during an argument, fled the scene assuming she had killed him, and died by suicide in Room 312. The boyfriend reportedly survived.
No LSU incident reports, Baton Rouge police records, or news archives from the period have been located to document a specific murder-suicide incident in Pleasant Hall. The account is circulated as campus oral tradition and has not been uniquely identified in verifiable contemporaneous sources. One aggregator source attaches a specific name to the female student, but no other source corroborates that identification; the name is excluded here.
Students, staff, and housekeeping personnel have consistently reported phenomena in the third-floor area: doors operating independently, lights behaving unpredictably, voices heard from visually empty spaces, and objects found relocated between visits. Cold spots and sensations of unease are the most frequently reported accounts, concentrated in the vicinity of Room 312.
The room itself has been inaccessible as residential space since the 2002 building conversion. The former dormitory floor is now used for administrative and academic purposes by Undergraduate Admissions, Financial Aid, and Digital & Continuing Education. Staff report that activity has continued in the form of doors opening and closing on their own on the third floor, and a sensed presence noted by people working alone in the building after hours.
Pleasant Hall on the LSU campus in Baton Rouge served as the university's first women's dormitory (1931) before being converted to continuing education offices in 2002. The building is now a classroom and administrative facility. Room 312, the focus of the campus paranormal tradition, is in the upper floors. Public access is limited to common areas and hallways.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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