A prominent memory from my freshman year at St. Thomas took place a while after Welcome Week. During a student club meeting, an upperclassman told myself and several other first-year students that the dorm she lived in — Grace Hall — was haunted. According to her, a priest had entered Grace, killed 12 nuns and buried their bodies down in the grotto.
She told me that if you walked down into the grotto on the evening of a full moon, you would see 12 crosses. As you walked out, you would see 13, the last cross being the priest’s. My friends and I later ventured into the grotto on the evening of a full moon and found varying numbers of crosses on each pass of the path.
I later learned that the grotto houses a prayer garden with the Stations of the Cross and that nuns have never lived in Grace. Still, the idea of living in an isolated building that was over a century old was unappealing to me… at least until housing selection took place, and Grace was one of the only options still available.
I have lived in Grace Hall for a little over a year, and have discovered that it is the best place to live on campus. This fact stands due to three reasons: Grace’s layout, location and community.
Grace’s layout is unlike any other on UST’s campus and is one of the main reasons for its superiority. A suite consists of four medium-sized rooms, with two rooms on either side of a bathroom. If residents share a “double,” each resident receives one room of their own, and if a resident opts for a single, they get two rooms to themselves. Either way, residents get their own space, even if they have a roommate, and pay one of the lowest housing rates, according to St. Thomas’s 2025-2026 Residence Life Rates.
In addition to individual rooms, Grace also offers a spacious study room on each floor and a sprawling community space throughout the basement. The basement, colloquially called the “Gracement” by residents and staff, also hosts a variety of amenities such as a TV with five streaming services, a Wii with various games, board games, a kitchen and lots of study space. All in all, the space that Grace offers ensures that residents can easily perform the necessary functions of living and having fun!
Grace’s location on campus is also unique. It is the only residence hall located on South Campus.
Are you a sports fan? The soccer fields are about 20 feet from Grace’s entrance, and the Lee and Penny Anderson Arena is even closer. If you would rather play sports, there is a large patch of green space right behind Grace.
Are you more of a bookworm? Even better. The Archbishop John Ireland Memorial Library is just a hop, skip and a jump from Grace, and it is arguably the quietest study space on campus.
The only necessity that requires a bit of a walk is on-campus dining — the Anderson Student Center lies 0.6 miles away from Grace, but this distance only constitutes a 10-minute walk.
The most prominent aspect of what makes Grace the best place to live is the building’s unique sense of community among residents. Since the hall is isolated, students who live there know each other since they are the only ones who see each other on the “Grek” (Grace trek) across South Campus.
Grace residents are notorious for hanging out in the Gracement, since individual rooms can get stuffy. Additionally, Grace is home to many traditions that residents enjoy, such as Grace Spaghetti Dinners. These dinners, which were initiated by Grace RA Benjamin Johnston, encouraged residents to engage with each other over a delicious meal. Spaghetti Dinners often had a high resident turnout and encouraged conversations late into the evening.
Grace Hall’s superiority is indubitable. What is still up to debate, however, is whether Grace is haunted.
“Many people believe that Grace Hall is haunted,” wrote Grace Hall Community Director Miriam Gamble. “It may be a legend, or it may be true. I think it might be true. Some of the noises don’t seem to be tied to anything in the building and lead me to think that there might be some supernatural stuff going on. But the ghost in Grace, if they exist, seems to be very nice and doesn’t interrupt any daily life functions.”
Rose Hissom can be reached at hiss5977@stthomas.edu.
