If someone tells you to meet them on the 13th floor of the Holmes Student Center, they’re pulling your leg.

If you’ve ever used the HSC elevator, you may have noticed the buttons skip the number 13. The rumor is true; the HSC does not have a 13th floor.

The hotel section of the student center was not an original part of the building. According to the HSC fact sheet, the building was first occupied in 1962, while, according to an NIU pamphlet titled “Guest Rooms,” the hotel expansion was completed in 1968.

Diamond Sawyer, a senior public health major, said she heard the rumor of the nonexistent 13th floor, but didn’t know if it was true.

To explain the absence of a 13th floor, Mitch Kielb, HSC director, said it was a common practice for buildings constructed during the ‘50s and ‘60s to omit the 13th floor because it was believed to be unlucky.

“It is silly,” Sawyer said. “Because it says that people believe that the superstition is true.”

Kielb said there has never been an official 13th floor in the HSC. Though the Clara Spelling Skyroom is considered to be on the 16th floor, Kielb said the building only has 15 actual floors.

To further the floor confusion in the HSC, the non-hotel section of the HSC’s floors are designated with both a ground and main floor.

“Most of our entrances, you come in between a level,” Kielb said.

Kielb said naming the two floors “main” and “ground” is to relate the two floors to the terrain surrounding the HSC.