Sitting at the edge of Duke's East Campus, Southgate Dormitory is one of the University's oldest and most imposing residence halls. Constructed in 1921, Southgate was originally designed as a women's residence. The building's entire first floor is common space, and the stillness of its antiquated parlors give off a creepy vibe, serving as a reminder of the nearly century's worth of students who have walked the halls of Southgate.
Unlike the majority of older living spaces on East Campus, Southgate has a nearly-symmetrical layout in terms of room size, providing every corner with an eerie uniformity. Aside from the long, wide hallways and blind corners, the building's pasty white walls give the building a stunning emptiness and often drive students to liken the 92-year-old space to an insane asylum. The bars on the windows and doors in the stairwell only add to the effect.
But one of Southgate's creepiest features has to be the machine shop that adjoins the building. Accessible from a door in the back, the machine shop sits idly in the nighttime, with nothing but the red light of an exit sign piercing the darkness. Combine this with the abundance of heavy machinery, hammers and saws lying around, and you have the perfect backdrop for any slasher movie. What could easily serve as a productive academic space for ambitious Duke engineers during the day could become a lair of shadowy terror when the sun sets.
Southgate may be many things, but it is certainly versatile in its potential horror movie settings.
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