Behind the doors of Fiske Hall is a dark history. As fevers, coughs and body aches raged across the world, taking over a fourth of the United States, hospitals became full of victims from the Spanish Flu.

According to the university’s website, in 1918, the flu ran so rampant that Wichita State’s Fiske Hall doubled as an infirmary.

Fiske Hall is the oldest surviving structure on campus. Construction started in 1904, and dedicated in 1906, the structure has served many purposes. According to wichita.edu, Fiske Hall was the men’s dormitory at times, home to the ROTC, the Music Department, various offices and international programs. It is now home to the History and Philosophy Department.

Despite all of the seemingly normal things that have happened in Fiske, many can’t get the image of death out of their heads once they hear of its past life as an infirmary.

“Oh my gosh, how creepy,” senior Jordan Bradbury said in response. “I’m glad I’ve never gone in there.”

With the Spanish Flu’s characteristic of targeting healthy 21-29 year olds’s immune systems as well as its high mortality rate, the use of Fiske Hall as an infirmary carried logic because it was on campus where many young people reside.

“It’s hard to believe there was that much sickness that a whole building was needed,” Bradbury said.

Flu.gov estimates that there were 50 million deaths worldwide, and of those, nearly 675,000 were in the United States.

Reported by History.com, the History Channel’s website, the pandemic originated in Kansas’s Fort Riley, specifically at Camp Funston, and was then spread because of the dispersion of troops during WWI. Through the deployment of the troops, Spain was hit the hardest with a death toll of 8 million, which is why the sickness is now known as the Spanish Influenza.