Conniving Curiosities: Conspiracies on Campus

Peculiar events and unanswered questions often bring about conspiracy theories, an attempt to impose reason to the oddities of the world. Accordingly, students across Loyola’s campuses shared the sinister speculations they believe.

“Avril Lavigne is dead,” Maggie Kristan, a third-year advertising and public relations major, said. 

Kristan said she first heard of the conspiracy theory in a video by YouTuber Shane Dawson in which he discussed the idea Lavigne died by suicide in 2003, and was replaced by a body double named Melissa Vandella.

“To keep making more money, they just replaced her,” Kristan said. “It looks similar enough to where you’re like, ‘Oh, that’s Avril Lavigne,’ but it’s not really her.”

The theory was further amplified by Lavigne’s five year hiatus from 2013 to 2019 due to her battle with Lyme disease.

While Lavigne has been asked about the conspiracy theory in the media, the singer has never explicitly denied these claims, according to Entertainment Weekly.

Kristan, however, said she would react differently.

“If people were saying I died and was replaced, I think I’d come out and be like, ‘Hey, stop saying that about me, I’m real,’” Kristan said.

Other student conspiracy theories center around shady practices from large corporations. 

“I’m convinced Apple has every version of the iPhone in the vault up until, like iPhone 50,” Ben Watkins, a senior communications major, said.“There’s also that theory that they slow down old phones when they come out with new ones.” 

The latter theory was proven semi-true in 2017 when Apple confirmed the company deliberately slowed down earlier versions of iPhones — not to encourage sales of newer phones, but because of the diminishing battery lives of older phones, according to the BBC.

Some theories hit closer to home on Loyola’s Lake Shore Campus.

“Regis is definitely haunted,” Micah Rogers, a former resident of Regis Hall who graduated in Spring 2024, said. “I feel like a lot of places at Lake Shore are. The buildings are all so old, it would be weird if there weren’t any ghosts in there.” 

Regis Hall has allegedly haunted other students as well. Maria Sanchez, a fourth year education major, said her experience living in the dorm was supernatural.

“Things would fall out of nowhere in the bathroom or from our desks,” Sanchez said. “Sometimes I’d turn around thinking my roommate got up to talk to me because I’d feel like someone was breathing on me, but I would turn around and she’d just be reading or something.”

This wasn’t the only paranormal experience Sanchez said she had while living on campus.

“My first dorm, Messina, I always heard a baby crying,” Sanchez said. “My suitemates would be like, ‘What the fuck? I’ve never heard a baby.’ It was so scary.” 

Sanchez said the eeriness of the dorm often made her uncomfortable.

“I’d get a heavy, sort of uneasy feeling in the hallway all of the sudden, and get the urge to run back to my room,” Sanchez said.

While some conspiracies spark discourse from nay-sayers and non-believers for their outlandishness, other theories have just enough merit behind them to make one question everything they believe to be true.