Halloween, Monaghan Mansion to Haunted Music Building at Gonzaga

Oct 19, 2011
Teresa Knudsen

Monaghan Mansion, Music Building at GU - Pacific Northwest Arts

Gonzaga University, a Jesuit institution, was founded in 1887. Students and staff report a haunted music building and an exorcism that might not have worked

Spokane, Washington, grew from a little town originally called Spokane Falls. The falls of the Spokane River previously oversaw Native American tribes holding powwows and fishing for salmon for tens of thousands of years. When Jesuit priests arrived in the area, they founded Gonzaga in 1887.

With the coming of the railroads and the discovery and development of silver mines in nearby Idaho, the little town of Spokane attracted entrepreneurs who built the large mansions near the river. In Browne's Addition, two well-known homes--the Campbell House and Patsy Clark's mansion--have sparked stories of spirits still lingering. One of the most famous haunted mansions is the one built by James Monaghan in 1898.

The Monaghan Mansion Origins

The Spokane magazine "Nostalgia" printed an article on James Monaghan. Born in Ireland in 1839, Monaghan traveled to America and arrived in the Spokane area just after the 1858 battle between Colonel George Wright's 1000 U.S. Army troops and a confederation of Spokane, Coeur d'Alene, Palouse and other tribes defending their lands. Monaghan amassed a fortune from his businesses, lost it during an 1892 market panic, but regained it.

However his life contained the tragic deaths of his wife in 1895 and his eldest son John Robert, who was killed in 1899 in Samoa, as he was trying to help a fallen comrade.

James Monaghan himself is credited with great kindness toward the unfortunate in Spokane, housing 30 orphans and serving as one of the founders of Spokane. The city honored his son John Robert with a statue still standing at the corner of Spokane Falls Boulevard and Monroe Street. According to this article, James Monaghan died at home attended by friends and family in 1916.

Security Guard's Tale from 1960s to early 1970s of the Monaghan Mansion

A security guard from the university tells the tale of lights turning on, doors being unlocked and a moving blackboard. As reported on Unexplained Mysteries, a poster tells his story of working as a security guard at the university. He mentions the rumors of an exorcism being performed by the Jesuits with the goal of ridding the Music Building and the university of a presence in the end of the 1960s into the 1970s.

According to the guard, he worked with a partner he calls "Paul" for the purposes of the post. Both former military men regularly turned off the lights, closed windows, and locked the building at midnight. But their supervisor said the building was found open with the lights on.

One night as they were closing the upstairs attic, a blackboard on wheels snuck up noiselessly behind the guard. He accused Paul of playing practical jokes, but Paul was 30 feet away. The old wooden floor squeaked whenever people walked on it, but the blackboard mysteriously and quietly appeared to move by itself. Despite the feeling of unease, the two military vets tried to experiment to see if the blackboard had accidentally rolled on its own. But the squeaky wheels and loud floor convinced the vets that the blackboard had somehow moved above the floor on its own.

Apparently, the building became calmer after this, with fewer stories and no more experiences for the two vets to report. But they felt shaken by the experience of the floating blackboard in the Music Building.

The 1974 to 1975 Hauntings

The website HauntedHouses.com includes an article "Monaghan Hall." The photo shows "Gonzaga University Founded 1887" with the Bing Crosby home in the near background. The double steeples of Saint Aloysius church in the distance are near the Monaghan mansion, now used at the music building.

The article reports details of the haunting occuring from 1974 to 1975. Music students gave nervous reports of hearing footsteps. in the building. Father Walter Leedale tried to calm the students' fears by offering to stay overnight in his office in the building. However, Father Leedale instead had a bad experience while unlocking a classroom door, which was "...flung open by a hostile, unseen presence."

Other unsettling events followed. The housekeeper heard organ music and saw organ keys playing by themselves. Father Leedale heard a flute playing the same tune, without a flute or flutist in sight. Most unnerving were the sounds of growling from an empty basement storage area.

In response, Father Leeland and the chairman of the music department David Brenner accompanied two security guards to make an inspection of the building. They got more than they bargained for. On the third floor, they reported a "hostile, oppressive, unseen presence that obviously wasn't planning on leaving any time soon." The guards reported feeling strangled, Brenner felt paralyzed, and Leedale felt a hostile presence.

Leeland, with a cross, and Brenner, with holy water, arranged an exorcism on February 24, 1975, for a period of four days and repeating six prayers. They were joined by other Gonzaga area people who wanted to help. The exorcism was stressful, with Leeland's cross being banged at his neck by the unseen presence. The effort was reportedly successful, with the mansion cleared of the presence at the end of the four days.

Carpe Noctum website reports that Monaghan Hall was not cleared. The site includes the seemingly incorrect information that James Monaghan was murdered in the home, and the possibly correct information that the ghostly music is the same as that played at Monaghan's funeral.

The Pacific Northwest Inlander Researcher's Story

As reported in the Gonzaga Online Bulletin, the local Spokane weekly, the Pacific Northwest Inlander, agreed for researchers to write a 1994 story about the building for the Halloween issue. The story followed the researchers' interviews with Father Leedale and the story of James Monaghan, his family, and his son John Robert.

Another Spokane area researcher in another article on the topic wrote that she abruptly stopped the research when she went to the Cheney Cowles Museum for additional photos. There she was chilled when she found a photo of John Robert's casket in the Monaghan home. The casket, elaborately draped in black, also was decorated with crucifixes, but they were all upside down.

Speculation includes the information that the upside-down cross is a symbol of the marytrdom of Saint Peter, who was going to be crucified. He felt unworthy to die as Christ did, and begged to die on an upside-down cross. In an article "Historic Symbols that Mean Opposite of What You Think," Philip Moon describes the situation and includes a photo of the Pope with an upside-down cross.

Father Leedale was quoted in the article about his experiences. "Honest to God, I don't know what it was, but I can say that Christians believe there are evil forces in the world, and that we, as Christians, pray to God to protect us from them, or for the strength to deal with them."

Whether or not the mansion is cleared, the stories give an aura of mystery to the home of one of Spokane's founders.