Dedicated in 1975, the Brutalist architecture of Faner Hall cuts across the central part of the SUC campus like a wall. Named after former SIUC English instructor and department chair Robert Faner, who taught at the university for 37 years and died of a heart attack in his office in a building located where Faner Hall now stands, and now the hub of the College of Liberal Arts, the design is unlike any other building on campus. In fact, there is an urban legend that, after the SUC student riots of May of 1970, Faner Hall was designed so that if rioters took over any part of the building, that section could be sealed off from the rest of the structure. Of course, anyone walking through the building will find, though it might take a couple of tries, it can be navigated from end to end, although, according to another legend, at least one student never made it out.
Described by those who have seen her as a young woman carrying a backpack with shoulder length brown hair, wearing a green top and jeans. Generally when she appears, it is in the eventing. She will pass by in the hallway and turn one of the building's myriad corners. When the person she passed turns the corner, they see an empty hallway before them. Students in the building at night have reported hearing footsteps behind them but when they turn around, they see only a deserted corridor.
On a Haunted Carbondale tour a few years ago, an adjunct professor with an office in Faner told her encounter with Faner's ghost. Several evenings while she was in the office, someone had knocked on her office door but never came in when asked and, when the professor opened the door, no one was there. On one occasion, instead of waiting, she opened the door almost immediately to see a young woman in a green top and jeans turning the corridor at the end of the hallway. Following the figure, she called to her but got no response and, when she turned the corner, saw only the empty hall.
