HauntBound archive · catalog record
Reported phenomena — as catalogued
Campus residence hall near old cemetery ground with a long haunted reputation
Broad Street (SUNY Plattsburgh campus), Plattsburgh, NY 12901
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Macdonough Hall is a SUNY Plattsburgh residence hall. The exterior can be viewed from public campus walkways; the interior is restricted to residents and authorized visitors.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Paved campus walkways around a four-story building.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1951 · SUNY Plattsburgh Campus History · Disturbed Burial Ground · Cold War-Era Construction
Macdonough Hall sits on Broad Street on the SUNY Plattsburgh campus. The four-story Georgian-style building was constructed in 1951, originally serving as the campus center with dining facilities and administrative offices. A full renovation in 2005 converted it into student residence space, which remains its function today.
The building's reputation is tied to what lay under and around it. The site was marshland that had to be drained and excavated, and during that work in 1949 a bulldozer operator unearthed bones and two headstones about twelve feet down. One marked the wife of Benjamin Vaughn, who died December 12, 1812. The east side of the building is closest to Riverside Cemetery and to ground that served as a 19th-century public hanging site, and that side is where students report the most activity. Regional coverage notes that some popular campus legends are unfounded: the basement, sometimes called a former morgue, was actually built as Cold War-era bomb shelters with connecting passages, and a story about a butler named Mortimer murdering a girl in the attic was a fabrication by a former student.
The Northern New York Paranormal Research Society investigated the building and reported hearing a number of sounds it could not source. Macdonough Hall is part of how Plattsburgh's broader haunted reputation gets discussed in regional tourism coverage, though it is an active residence hall and the college does not run paranormal programming. Its history of disturbed graves and proximity to old cemetery and gallows ground keep the stories alive on campus.
Sources
Macdonough Hall's ghost stories are the kind that circulate through a residence hall: students describe crying and laughing in empty rooms and corridors, toilets that flush on their own, and furniture found overturned. The reports concentrate on the building's east side, which sits closest to Riverside Cemetery and to ground that once served as a public hanging site in the 19th century. The disturbed graves uncovered when the building went up in 1949, including a headstone for the wife of Benjamin Vaughn, give the legends a concrete anchor.
The Northern New York Paranormal Research Society investigated Macdonough Hall and reported hearing numerous sounds whose origin it could not determine, stopping short of any firm conclusion. Regional coverage is careful to separate the documented elements from the invented ones: the often-repeated tale of a butler named Mortimer murdering a girl in the attic was traced to a former student's fabrication, and the supposed basement morgue was in fact a Cold War bomb shelter.
Because Macdonough Hall is an occupied residence hall, the legends live mostly within the student body and in regional accounts of haunted Plattsburgh rather than through any public ghost program. Visitors interested in the stories generally encounter them in writing or by viewing the building from campus walkways. The college presents it as student housing, and the haunted reputation remains informal campus lore grounded in the real history of the site.
Macdonough Hall is a four-story residence hall on the SUNY Plattsburgh campus with one of the college's most-repeated haunted reputations. The interior is residential and not open to the public, so visitors view the building from the surrounding campus walkways and learn the history of the cemetery ground and former hanging grounds nearby. There is no organized paranormal program.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
Dillon, MT
Bannack State Park preserves Montana's first territorial capital and one of the West's most intact ghost towns. Founded after the July 28, 1862 gold strike at Grasshopper Creek, Bannack grew to a peak population of approximately 10,000 before declining through the late 19th and 20th centuries. More than 50 historic structures survive along the original main street.
Auburn, NY
Auburn Correctional Facility opened in 1816 as New York's second state prison and became the birthplace of the Auburn System of penal discipline — enforced silence and regimented labor that influenced prison design across the country. On August 6, 1890, Auburn became the site of the world's first execution by electric chair when William Kemmler was put to death in a procedure witnesses described as taking two shocks over eight minutes. Fifty-five men were executed at Auburn by electric chair over the facility's subsequent history.
Staten Island, NY
The parish of St. Andrew's on Staten Island was established in 1705 when the Reverend Aeneas Mackenzie arrived, and the first church was built between 1708 and 1712, receiving a royal charter from Queen Anne that year. During the British occupation of Staten Island (1776–1783), the building was used as a barracks and hospital for British and Hessian troops, sustaining severe damage; two skirmishes were fought in the churchyard when New Jersey Patriot militias raided Richmondtown. The building was burned in 1867, and the current Gothic Revival structure was built in 1872 by local architect William Mersereau.