Lees-McRae College in Banner Elk is over a century old, and has seen a lot of people pass through its old stone buildings. But one young woman seems to have stuck around a lot longer than average. Emily, as the campus ghost is affectionately known, is said to be the spirit of Emily Draughn, who died of tuberculosis at the age of 12 in the 1930s. She died in what was Grace Memorial Hospital and is now Tate Dormitory, a four-story building near the campus entrance. Emily is known as a “positive spirit,” though she is prone to reportedly playing pranks. Serena Wright, a junior who lives in the dorm, said her television turns off and on by itself. “It does that until I tell her to stop,” Wright said. “It’s not scary. She’s a good ghost.” |
Wright had a friend who lived on the first floor last year. The friend’s phone would ring every hour but no one would be on the other end of the line.
The students have heard a different version of how Emily met her demise. The fourth floor, where Emily was said to have died, was originally a maternity ward.
Wright said, “I heard she jumped out of the window on the fourth floor. That was the psychiatric ward.”
Tonia Paul, who lives on the third floor of the dorm, said, “I heard she killed herself. She jumped out the window.”
Paul said a girl who lived in the dorm returned from Christmas break one year to find scribbling on her wall. Her furniture and belongings had been moved around in the room.
Paul hasn’t experienced any chilling encounters herself, and said she hopes to avoid Emily. “That stuff scares me,” she said.
Tiffany Solesbee, a sophomore who lives in Tate, said her television comes on by itself once in a while. She said people have reported hearing footsteps overhead in the fourth floor and once she saw a mysterious shape standing in a doorway when she was coming back to the dorm.
On Halloween, some dorm residents plan to gather in a room called “The Attic” and tell ghost stories. Solesbee doesn’t plan on attending. “That kind of freaks me out,” she said.
Emily is also said to haunt Carson Library on campus. Sherry Johnson, who has worked in the periodical section for six years, said Emily’s manifestations are usually power surges or the elevator going up and down by itself. Other encounters occur in the Stirling Room, which is a locked room housing the Appalachian collection and a number of exhibits.
“Two girl students went to do research last year,” Johnson said. “One said she didn’t believe in Emily. They started hearing noises, like old radiator pipes heating up. The noise kept getting louder, and you could only hear it in the room. She wouldn’t go back in there after that.”
Ramona Hayes, who has worked at the library for 20 years, said she had no first-hand encounters with the playful ghost, though she’d heard several accounts from students.
One work-study student in charge of the Stirling Room was shelving books alone when he saw someone in the room. He described her as a woman in a black dress holding flowers. When he told her the room was restricted, she vanished, and in his haste to get out of the room he cut his hand.
Donese Presswood has worked as assistant librarian for 32 years, mostly on the night shift. “I don’t believe in her,” Presswood said, though a former library director apparently had some encounters but would never speak of them.
In Presswood’s version of the story, the fourth floor of Grace Hospital housed the hospital’s morgue. Emily even has a gravestone near the Banner Elk Presbyterian Church that bears the inscription “She is not dead but sleeping.”
Most agree that Emily is a benign spirit and is not out to scare anyone. She has even found a place in campus lore as the object of light-hearted blame.
“When things disappear off my desk, I always blame Emily,” Hayes said. Presswood said when library staffers complain about the heat not working, the maintenance workers say that cold spots are associated with ghosts so it’s all Emily’s fault.
The story of Emily is one of those collected in a new book released from a Winston-Salem publisher. Daniel W. Barefoot’s “Haunted Halls of Ivy” collects ghost stories from Southern colleges and universities.
Other North Carolina spirits of higher learning can be found at UNC-Chapel Hill, where the Paul Green Theater is said to house one of the newest ghosts on the 209-year-old university. Guests at the nearby Carolina Inn have also reported pranks with doors and windows, as well as mysterious piano music.
UNC’s oldest ghost story involves a pair of rivals for a young woman’s affection in 1831.
According to Barefoot, Peter Dromgoole was killed in a duel and his love Fanny pined away and died shortly afterward. Their spirits are said to roam a forest near the old part of campus.
Chowan College in Murfreesboro has a Civil War-era ghost. A woman’s fiance died during the war and she died soon after that. The “Brown Lady” then began appearing, passing people in the halls or walking across the snow without leaving tracks. The phantom is described as a “mistlike figure clad in a brown dress,” according to Barefoot.
Appalachian State University has had its share of rumors concerning spiritual activities, particularly at East Dormitory. However, as with most cases of alleged spiritual activity, no solid proof has been unearthed. And, as the saying goes, the dead never tell.
• Scott Nicholson may be contacted at nicholson@wataugademocrat.com.