The haunting of the Wendy Williamson Auditorium

A woman in a white dress, a man who doesn’t like women with long, dark hair, spirits that emit negative energy – that’s what’s lurking within the walls of the Wendy Williamson Auditorium.

Weird things have happened ever since the building was built in 1972. It only seemed fitting that Friday the 13th would feature ghost tours at the auditorium.

Wendy Williamson Auditorium Manager Shane Mitchell was the tour guide for the event. Before leading the group to the stage, Mitchell gave a historical rundown of the building:

“It was built to be the performing arts center. They got into the construction of the building, and – because it was the university – they ran out of money. So the building sat here as an empty shell for 18 months.”

UAA then asked the Municipality of Anchorage for funds to finish the building. “The Municipality agreed, but not to the way that the building was supposed to be built,” said Mitchell.

“It was supposed to be twice the size to accommodate 2,000 people.”

The Municipality changed the original blueprints to reduce the size, but – according to Mitchell – they didn’t change the plans completely.

“As a result of that, the building is very strange,” said Mitchell. “There is an elevator shaft that leads absolutely nowhere.”

“During the 2018 earthquake, there was a crack that appeared in the wall. When they opened up the wall, there was a full room complete with electricity and lights walled up behind the wall that no one knew existed.”

These strange designs add to the eeriness of the auditorium.

Many people think the Wendy Williamson haunting is nonsense, but after touring the auditorium, even a self-proclaimed psychic believes the building is haunted.

Micthell said that a few days after the psychic explored the auditorium, she told the staff that “there were a minimum of five spirits” haunting the building.

These spirits are a teenage boy, a college-aged woman who wears a white dress, a little girl around the age of nine and two men.

The psychic also noted that “both of the men were aggressive, violent spirits.”

For Mitchell, the psychic’s analysis is accurate, because he’s encountered these spirits before.  

When Mitchell first started working at the Wendy Williamson Auditorium, he noticed that – unlike many buildings across campus – there was no portrait of the building’s namesake Wendell Williamson.

Before Mitchell was the manager of the auditorium, he found Wendell’s painting hidden in the closet. When asked about the painting, Mitchell’s manager  replied “I hate that effing painting.”

“He was my manager,” said Mitchell, “so I immediately put it back.”

A few years later – when Mitchell became the manager – he hung the painting up. “But when I came in the next day the portrait was on the ground, having slipped off the wall.”

For several days Mitchell rehung the painting, only to find it on the floor in the morning.

One time, Mitchell recalled, “the portrait slid down the wall, broke the linoleum underneath the carpet, and the portrait was unharmed.”

From that day on, Mitchell decided “I too hate that effing painting.”

To this day, Wendell Williamson’s portrait cannot be found hanging in the building.

On multiple occasions, Mitchell has also seen the woman in the white dress around the Wendy Williamson Auditorium.

One night, Mitchell was waxing the floor when he heard the sound of high-heeled shoes. Looking in the reflection of the freshly waxed floor, Mitchell could see a woman wearing a white dress walking toward him.

When he raised his head, there was no one there.

Months later, the Wendy Williamson Auditorium hosted a women’s bodybuilding show. After the competition, the women asked someone to take a group photo of the contestants.

“One of their contemporaries took a shot of them and then handed the phone back,” said Mitchell. “No time for any sort of tricks. No time for photoshopping.”

“When we all looked at the phone, there was a woman in a white dress standing behind all of the bodybuilders who had not been there when the picture was snapped.”

While some of these supernatural occurrences are basically harmless, not all of them are. There is an aggressive spirit that haunts the auditorium – one that likes to push women with long, dark hair down the stairs.

When the Wendy Williamson Auditorium hosted the Miss Alaska Pageant, Mitchell witnessed the spirit torturing a contestant.

“A beautiful young woman was standing on the landing,” recalled Mitchell. “Suddenly she pitched forward and fell down the stairs to where two other women were waiting for her.”

After making sure she was okay, the other contestants began to make fun of her. They told her she needed to practice walking in high heels. But the young woman wasn’t walking when the fall occurred. She claimed someone pushed her.

“The most chilling thing was the next night when it was the evening gown portion of the competition,” said Mitchell.

“Her gown was backless and on either side of her spine was a bruise in the rough shape of a palm, as though someone had struck her on each side of the spine very abruptly and with great concussion.”

Between the strange building design, pictures that just won’t stay on the wall, mysterious photobombers  and seemingly hostile incidents, there’s something odd about the Wendy Williamson Auditorium.