The Brutal Murder of Sigrid Stevenson Lead to a Ghost Story That Haunts a College Campus

According to a 2022 report from Home Advisor, New Jersey is one of the most haunted states in America. The company that's known for connecting homeowners with home improvement service professionals "researched the number of homes for sale in each state and the number of homes where there have been reports of death, homicide, apparition sightings, and paranormal activity," to reach this conclusion.

It's hard to imagine the Garden State being known for anything beyond the fact that one simply cannot exit easily off its turnpike and yet, the dead have found life in the state that boasts liberty and prosperity. While these ghosts are flying under the radar, one haunting has plagued the state since 1977. It involves the strange death of a young woman at Trenton State College. What happened to Sigrid Stevenson? Here's what we know.

According to The New York Times, on the evening of Sept. 4, 1977, a campus security officer was making his rounds when he decided to take a look inside Calvin Kendall Hall. He noticed a bike was chained up outside of the building and while something like that is the norm today, it was an unusual occurrence for a Sunday night. Also, classes weren't scheduled to begin for another four days.

Upon entering the auditorium, the guard was met with a gruesome sight. The bloodied body of a woman was beneath a white canvas tarpaulin that was usually used to cover the nearby piano. It was later determined the victim was 25-year-old Sigrid Stevenson, who was a graduate student at the college. The Weird New Jersey Travel Guide reports that Stevenson was naked and had been bludgeoned to death. No one saw a thing and to this day, not a soul has come forward with any information.

In 2002, a burgeoning filmmaker by the name of Scott Napolitano took a ghost tour through his new college campus, per the Times of Trenton. Napolitano was a freshman at The College of New Jersey (formerly Trenton State College) and was immediately drawn to Stevenson's story. He would eventually make a short film about it, and he learned a lot about the young woman in the process of researching for the film.

Stevenson was from Livermore, Calif. but moved to Princeton, N.J. where her father was a professor at the Ivy League school. She was an avid piano player and was studying for her Master’s Degree in Music at Trenton State College. That summer, Stevenson had hitchhiked to Canada before returning to New Jersey where she was staying with a professor.

Not much is known about Stevenson's life, but her death remains the talk of the school thanks to all of the paranormal activity surrounding it. Students claim to have seen things like a roll of paper towels floating from one side of an auditorium bathroom to the trash can. Others say they've heard footsteps and have felt the presence of someone standing behind them.

Napolitano learned a little about who Stevenson was after speaking with people who knew her. Many of them said she was very much her own person but all of them said she "lived to play the piano." Perhaps that's why she still haunts the auditorium.