You may not have heard this, but my alma mater, The University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, is a hotbed of paranormal activity. It seems like half of the buildings on campus are haunted. Most of these ghosts are pretty benign; there is one that rides the elevator in the library, and another than walks on the track at dusk. There are a few that are malevolent, though; a room in one of the dorms has been locked and is no longer used to house students because they simply couldn’t do anything with the ghost who lives there (but that’s a whole story of its own).
My ghost was of the former variety. The dorm I lived in, McCrady, is haunted by the ghost of a girl who appears to be a former student. She wears jeans and a purple shirt, and wears her brown hair in a ponytail. Her interactions with students were usually less appropriately called “interactions” than “sightings”.
My meeting with the McCrady ghost was definitely just a sighting. I was a wee young freshman, trotting off to class, using the shortcut that went through the McCrady basement, out the back door, and across a little footbridge to Gailor, the English and foreign languages building. There is a moment when you’re going down the stairs into the basement (which is affectionately known as the Bat Cave, in case you were wondering) when you can see into the laundry room, before a turn in the staircase makes it invisible again. As I came down the stairs, I saw a girl doing her laundry in the laundry room. Not exactly an unusual sight in a college dormitory.
When I got to the bottom of the stairs and walked by the laundry room, the girl was gone. I thought this was strange, since I didn’t see any way that she could’ve left without me seeing her, but I shrugged it off and went on my way.
It was only later, when someone older and wiser (a sophomore) described the McCrady Ghost to me, and I realized that must’ve been who I saw. It certainly explained why she was able to vanish in such an unnatural way.
As a ghost story, it’s not terribly exciting, is it? Some (myself included) would argue that that is the best kind of paranormal interaction to have, if you must have one. However, I heard about a much more eventful interaction with the McCrady Ghost a couple of years later, from a friend who was living in the dorm at the time.
This friend, whom we’ll call Emma, had called it an early night one Saturday and was happily snoozing in her bed, when she woke to someone standing over her. As you can imagine, this was a bit unsettling.
“Um… Can I help you?” Emma managed.
“You’re in my bed,” the girl standing over her said.
“What?” Emma was confused, as she was in an unaltered state and entirely certain that the bed she was sleeping in was, in fact, her own.
“You’re in my bed,” the girl insisted.
“What’s your room number?” Emma asked, quickly seeing the problem that must’ve developed from a rowdy weekend. The girl told her the number. “Sweetie, that’s down the hall,” Emma said. “Come on, I’ll take you there.”
Emma walked the girl down the hall to her room, took her inside and made sure she was settled before going back to her own room and back to sleep.
The next day, Emma was walking by and noticed the door to the girl’s room was open. She stopped and spoke to the girl who was inside. “Is your roommate ok?” she asked. “She was pretty messed up last night, she came into my room by accident and I had to bring her back.”
The girl in the room gave her an odd look. “What are you talking about? My roommate is out of town this weekend, I’m the only person in here.”
And the McCrady ghost was never seen again! Was she just looking for kindness? Did Emma’s assisting her to her room settle some restless need that was causing her to walk the halls of McCrady? I suppose we’ll never know.
Actually, I found out, to my great disappointment, that the last paragraph of that story isn’t true. Though we didn’t hear reports of the McCrady ghost for a while, I found out a couple of years ago that a then-current student had walked up to McCrady at night and saw the ghost standing in the window, staring at him as she combed her long, dark hair. Said student was not ashamed to admit that he turned tail and ran as fast as he could away from that creepy chick.
So, while I’m sorry that the McCrady Ghost didn’t actually find the peace that she was seeking, there is a heartwarming, nostalgic feeling in knowing that she is still lurking around in that old dorm.
I probably won’t go looking for her, though.
