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Zoey Berg doesn’t believe in ghosts. But since moving into her house in the Eastside neighborhood this semester, she’s seen a thing or two.

“I wore a cross necklace to sleep, and I’m not religious in the slightest,” Berg, a Syracuse University junior, said.

Berg and her four roommates live in an off-campus house in the Eastside neighborhood. After multiple run-ins with odd sounds and sights, they suspect they might have some paranormal company this semester.

The roommates found their current home through tours last fall. While it wasn’t their first choice, they decided they liked the house for its sunroom and pantry.

But shortly after moving in, the five began to notice strange happenings.

One night, something fell in Berg’s room and woke her up. Looking straight ahead at her closet, Berg saw what she said looked like a blonde woman in the doorway. Half asleep, Berg expected the figure to be her sleepy eyes turning her clothes into something else. When she kept looking at the figure, it didn’t change, so she went back to sleep.

“I saw what looked like a woman standing in my closet,” Berg said. “I don’t believe in ghosts, but it just kept looking like a lady.”

Benjamin Tupper runs Rent From Ben, a home rental business in the Eastside neighborhood. Tupper has owned Berg and her roommates’ current house for 10 to 15 years, but said he and his staff have never heard anything from past or current tenants about paranormal activity or ghosts.

“There was never any mention by anybody, the owner, the current tenants at the time, about any paranormal activity,” Tupper said.

When Tupper purchased the home from one of his Syracuse neighbors, the one thing that stood out to him was a letter people who had lived there in the 1980s sent to the house. The past tenants wanted to tell the current owners that they had found an old video of a house party hosted there in the 80s.

A letter from 2015 renters gives current house residents tips on how to “survive.” However, the letter doesn’t mention any of the ghostly activity the roommates have noticed. Eli Schwartz | Staff Photographer

Another time in early September, Berg was going downstairs when she thought she saw blonde hair behind her. When she turned around, she expected to see roommate Brianna Michaelis — but there was no one.

Michaelis said when the roommates walk up and down the stairs, it’s usually loud because the wood in the house is old. Sometimes when no one else was home and the girls were downstairs, they heard people walking upstairs, the fridge door opening and closing, or utensils rustling in drawers, Michaelis said.

After two weeks of noises, Berg, Chiara Navazio and another one of the roommates sat on the floor with a piece of paper for a Ouija board. Nobody else was home.

At first, nothing happened. But then, Navazio said they suddenly heard footsteps thundering down the stairs. The Ring camera on their door captured their reaction as the roommates ran out of the house.

This was when Berg’s sentiment toward ghosts took a turn.

“But from that point on I was like, ‘There’s literally ghosts in this house,’” Berg said. “And I don’t believe in ghosts.”

After their Ouija board experience, Michaelis researched their home’s history and the past tenants who lived, or rather died, there.

“I’ve always had a hunch of something, because this house is clearly old and I wanted to know the history of it,” Michaelis said.

A Syracuse Herald Journal obituary preserved by the Local History/Genealogy Department at Onondaga County Public Libraries from July 15, 1975, states that a woman was 76 years old when she died in the home the day prior. She lived in Syracuse for 61 years, according to the obituary.

Tupper said students started to really “take over” the Eastside neighborhood in the 1980s. Before then, families and workers were living in the homes, including elderly people.

“A house 90 years old, it’s safe to say somebody back 80 years ago may have died in the house, and that’s the fuel you need to grow a ghost story,” Tupper said.

Michaelis said the house’s age would explain the flickering lights and all the noises they were hearing. Tupper said many of the houses in this neighborhood are around 70, 80 or 90 years old.

Michaelis noted that when she was alone in the house for fall break, she heard nothing.

While Navazio said it’s easy for the roommates to blame strange noises on a ghost, they’ve also considered the possibility of intruders or squatters. However, they haven’t found anything besides potential squirrel nests in crawl spaces by the attic near Navazio’s room.

Still, the roommates aren’t ruling out the possibility of the woman’s spirit residing with them.

“Now it’s a girl house and it’s cute, so I think she likes that,” Michaelis said.

In August, before the fall semester started, roommate Megan Carr posted a TikTok of firefighters at their house after a carbon monoxide alarm went off. A group of SU alumni who lived in the house for two years before graduating last spring commented that they recognized the house and its reputation for unusual activity.

During SU alum Austin Barach’s senior year, he said he kept a list of strange happenings, like bats flying around and squirrels in the walls. While his roommates don’t think the house was necessarily haunted, they said there were many weird occurrences over the two years they lived there.

Alumni and former tenant James O’Connor said every year when people leave the house, they write a note or message to future tenants: a tradition that goes back around 10 years. A framed note on the wall directly to the left when entering the house lists out a survival guide for future tenants, but it doesn’t mention paranormal activity. It’s dated back to 2015.

The current roommates theorize that the spirit didn’t enjoy the past tenants’ company, but is happy now that there are girls living in the house, so she’s come out of hiding. After all, it is her house, Michaelis said.

As for Tupper, he’s not too sure about ghost activity.

“You can put me in the hardcore skeptic category of all these kinds of things,” Tupper said.

The roommates acknowledged that nothing bad has happened, and Navazio said the house’s energy doesn’t feel sinister.

“It’s just creepy that we can hear, but none of us think that she has bad intentions,” Navazio said.

Published on October 30, 2025 at 1:04 am
Contact Mia: mjones58@syr.edu