Who Ya Gonna Call?

In "Ramblings of a Final Summer," I talked often about the ghostly occurences that happened in the Charlotte house where Ma and my two sisters reside. It just happened. No one conjured anything up. Well yesterday, I purposefully went out looking for it.

For the Halloween issue of "The Western Carolinian," I asked my boss if I could "bust" the myth of ghosts in Harrill Hall. Boss let me run wild with it, so I did. Barney, from the Ice Cream Book Club (without books), and I headed over to Harrill late last night in search of a rumored female ghost famous for knocking on doors, appearing as a shadow, and making the elevators act strangely. From 10:00 p.m. to 12:30 a.m., Barney and I staked out Harrill Hall. First we went around the haunted 5th floor and asked around to see if anyone had noticed anything "supernatural." Then, we took to the elevators. Rumor has it that the elevators would open on random floors, particularly the 1st and the 5th, even though they had not been called. While in the elevator, we questioned the students.

"Have you noticed anything strange while living here in Harrill?" we'd ask.

"Besides two girls sitting on the floor of the elevator," the majority of them answered.

Quite a few reported knocking on their doors, the elevator acting strange, and one RA (resident assistant) said he saw the ghost herself one night before the students arrived for the fall semester. He said he had been petrified!

As Barney and I coasted up and down the elevator, we noticed it would drop off kids then after a moment's hesitation, travel back down or up to the 6th floor where it would stop without opening its doors. Was it the call floor?

Then once, we plummeted down to the 1st floor where the doors opened but no one had called the elevator. We looked at each other, the doors, each other... what was going on?

We switched elevators. Elevator 2 was less exciting.

After an hour of riding the elevators, we returned to our post in the 5th floor lobby to watch for ghostly activity. Apparently late at night, the shadow will appear if the hall is quiet. Well, it was far from quiet! Barney and I had attracted much attention from our little game in the elevator and we had a flock of people conversing with us as we settled in to wait for "Erin," our ghost. It was great social time but not a very "ghost friendly" environment. However, with enough information for my article, Barney and I called off the hunt and she returned to her dorm and I returned to Morgan.

I'm going to call that the rumor is true. With so many firsthand accounts from students we met in the elevator plus the actual elevator activity Barney and I experienced, there's no doubt... something is haunting Harrill Hall.