Haunted Sorority Houses & Dark Campus Legends | The Ghosts of University of Georgia (Ep 389)

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This is where the first murder on campus took place.

Oh.

Hannah's fiance's body was buried beneath the steps of the house that is now the Thai Muse sority house. Yeah. Very spooky.

Hey.

Hi.

What's up?

How's it going? Oh, yeah. You can't talk back. Sorry. This is Two Girls, my ghost.

Two girls, [sighs] one ghost. We are your ghostesses. That is Karen. Hi.

I'm Sabrina. I'm trying a new drink today. And I kind of like

Oh my god, I didn't even notice.

I know.

What' you get? Like a Is this like a refresher type thing?

It's a Glamberry. I hate these stickers so much. I usually take them off before I come in here. Oh,

it's one of my like weird It's going to bother me. Anyway, but yeah, it's um

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it's like one of those energy drinks.

Were you just inspired today or did you see it somewhere? Was it recommended?

Well, I just wasn't in the mood for coffee.

It's hard to stray from the past and I mixed it up.

University of Georgia

Yeah,

it's uh officially September if you are listening to this when it comes out. And it's that time of year where school's back in session.

And so the kids are returning to their schools with their friends. And some of the children are moving away to haunted colleges.

Little do they know, their dorm room is going to torment them for the whole first year

or maybe their entire campus. Okay. [laughter] So, end of summer means

literally happened to us freshman year. Both of our rooms

went ghost hunting.

Mhm.

The end of summer means it's back to school. And if you're in college, maybe it's movein weekend. Maybe you're a freshman. Maybe you're filled with that mix of anxiety and excitement, the fear and cheer because you're going to have new roommates, new beginnings, new school, new rules, or maybe no rules for the first time in your life. And perhaps

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you're heading to campus one week early for one of the oldest traditions in history, Greek life, rush week. Or maybe you're a seasoned college student heading back to campus after a summer, so you've built your community. You can't wait to live it up again. And maybe, just maybe, you're moving back into the sorority house. Or maybe you're moving into the sorority house for the very first time.

Is this a haunted Greek row?

It's a whole haunted campus, but there's a lot of Greek life.

Oh my gosh.

Haunted sorities incoming.

This is exciting.

I almost pulled out my Theta sweatshirt for this episode, but it's in [laughter] a bin, like in the back of a closet, and I did not do it. Yeah, I don't think I own mine anymore because I was like, what's the realistically what are the chances that I have a daughter and then that daughter joins Alpha

Fee for me to give them that sweatshirt?

I kept one sweatshirt from Theta and then I kept my sweetheart sweatshirt from Sigma Kai.

I just kept the pin like the tiny little pin from

Oh, yeah. See, I don't know where that was like that's that's the one trinket

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[laughter] that if should this ever happen that will be passed on. So, if you're moving into the sority house, hopefully they told you about the ghosts. So, today we are going to talk about one of the most haunted colleges, the University of Georgia. Go Bulldogs.

I also saw go dogs online, so I don't know. Maybe we're Dawg. Um,

I don't know. But the fact that this is like a Georgia campus and like Greek life in Georgia makes this feel even more intense. Oh, our experience with Greek life was like not really that authentic at all.

I actually really liked ours because we So, we started LMU. You have your whole first semester. You don't rush until your second semester freshman year, which is nice cuz like you and I became friends.

Most of our friend group, it was all mixed,

right? And then we joined different sororities, but we were able to stay friends and [clears throat] like it wasn't so exclusive where you only ever socialized with your sorority. But we also didn't have a Greek row. So, it's like there's no house to move into.

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There's

We made our own little houses.

Yeah. People just like rented houses.

Yeah.

Six or seven people in like one house scattered all over Westchester in Los Angeles.

Well, just wait until you see these houses. They're insane. They're some of the most

flabbergasted just going to like the USC UCLA ones when we would like take little field trips.

The the decoration and like interior design is insane.

[sighs and gasps]

But I just like watching the rush videos when they're all doing they're like clapping in the doorway and all chance and it's a little scary, but it's also very like that's the cult that I would join.

We did join.

We did. Yeah, [laughter] that's true.

Okay, so the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia is one of the most quintessential southern college towns in America. Streets lined with old oak trees, historic buildings, football on Sundays. Like everyone in town is dedicated to the Sunday football games. Although I think it's Saturdays, right, at college.

God,

I think it's Anyway, I'm a fraud.

We also didn't have a football team. So,

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no. So, that means we're undefeated. [laughter]

That's what we said in my high school, too. And also, in this quintessential southern college town, there are plenty of ghosts.

Not very surprised given its location.

Oh, and we're going to talk about some of the history.

Yeah.

Although, the last bit probably wasn't mentioned in orientation. As you walk through the front doors of the sority houses, they won't tell you they're haunted. Like ghost staring at you through the window, haunted. Or body buried beneath the front steps haunted. Or maybe piano plays by itself haunted. Or also, oh yeah, someone was murdered here. Haunted.

Oh my gosh. Piano fine, but like you walk up the front steps like your class or something.

Yeah. Yep. So today we're going to talk about the hauntings at the University of Georgia and not just the sorority houses but the entire campus itself. There are over 240 years of history here. And sometimes history has a way of bleeding into the present in the form of ghosts.

Ghosts.

Ghosts.

history of the University of Georgia

And just to as context, there are so

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many buildings on this campus. Actually, I wanted to look up how many students are here. 43,888 students. That's massive. That's like the size. That's the population of Vermont.

Yeah, that's in That's crazy.

That's crazy. That's so many people.

So many people. So, this campus is massive. And obviously, we're not going to talk about all of it, but I

I wonder if it's always been huge.

I mean, it probably

cuz so many of them started as like boys only or whatever.

I mean, all of them basically.

Our too.

Yeah. Except for like the women only schools like Welsley and whatnot. But anyway,

there are a lot of hauntings to cover in this episode. We're talking urban legends, mysterious bricked up buildings and pathways, murders, revenge, a haunted Greek row, and so much more. But before we get to all of those hauntings, we're going to talk about the history of the University of Georgia and why it's so haunted as context. This history certainly predates when I'm going to start it in this episode, but we're not going to go to the beginning of time. We're going to start with January 27th, 1785. The American Revolution has just ended.

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The United States of America was more of like a percolating thought. It was cooking and Burr was having duels in the street heading to New Jersey and not for the bagels.

Oh, I want a bagel now. You make me hungry.

They're so fluffy. I've never tasted one. Just get to look at them.

That's so sad for you.

Yeah, I know. The New Jersey bagels look so much better than the New York or anything else.

They're similar to New York.

Wow. Hot take from you. I feel like everyone

No, New York pizza. New York and New Jersey pizza and food. I feel like they're the same.

But they look so different. The bagels. Where are you getting bagels in New York? Where are you seeing bagels in New York?

You're seeing the wrong ones,

Brian. We go to bagel shops.

I don't get to eat anything, but I personally believe they're very similar. Okay, but it's here in this uncertain time post American Revolution where a man named Abraham Baldwin, who was a Connecticut born Yale graduate and Georgia state legislator, decided, I'm going to make some moves. He believed a true democracy could not function

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without an educated citizenry, which I agree. I think that's a very smart take. And the people of his state and his country he believed should be educated. So with that, he drafted a charter and presented it to the Georgia assembly. And on January 27th, 1785, the University of Georgia became the first state chartered public university in all of America.

Wow.

And fun fact, Abraham Baldwin later signed the uh US Constitution.

Good for him.

He followed Jan John Hancock.

Jan Jancock. [laughter]

But no one can really follow John Hancock. That's you know he

Well, I do feel bad that like no one like if you told me his name I would never know that he was one of the signatures.

I know

he was in the room where it happened though.

He was okay. So 1785 UG exists although at the time it was called Franklin College after Benjamin Franklin.

And despite being chartered in 1785, there was no physical campus until 1801. In 1801, 633 acres of land were purchased along the Okone River. I probably said that wrong. and was

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donated to the university as a campus. So, the very first onampus classes began in September of 1801. God,

I like that is a period of time that if time travel was

a thing,

a thing, I would want to go back like the first week that that opens and just like

see the excitement, see what it's like.

Are people like buzzing with excitement and it's like awkward and cool or is it just do they understand how awesome it is?

That's a good question. We'll have to get a time machine and find out. Yeah.

And this is also still such a long time ago. Like 1801. That's a long time ago.

Super long.

And

America's barely been

Yeah. A thing. [clears throat]

We're still babies. 250 years.

Yeah. But 400 years this year for Salem.

God, I love Salem. So that means some of the buildings on campus have been standing for some 200 plus years. They've stood witness to the Civil War, generations of students coming and going. And also, it's very important to note that these buildings were in large part built on the labor of enslaved

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people.

Mhm.

And actually, this is a wild story and I feel like it's not talked about very often when you like look up what's going on. And then also some sources say the wrong date. So, it like kind of pisses me off. But in November of 2015, during a campus construction project to expand Baldwin Hill Hall, the remains of 105 people were discovered beneath the campus grounds.

Wow. They did DNA analysis and confirmed that the vast majority of remains were of African descent and had most likely been enslaved and then just buried beneath the campus, unmarked, buried with little care and little compassion. It's so upsetting, but at the same time, like given the amount of land that was given

and what was going on and how horrific everything was, like I'm not surprised.

No, it's not surprising. It's just upsetting.

It's just upsetting. And the first instinct of the school itself was not to like, oh, let's commemorate the people here. They were basically like, let's just ignore it and move on. It took years of student activism and public pressure to actually acknowledge and

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memorialize the souls that had been buried there.

That's crazy.

Years. Yeah. So already we can see heavy dark history.

Yeah.

And then there was a civil war in 1861. Athens was a confederate stronghold, the south, and the city supplied men, uniforms, and weapons. And then that year, so the university fall semester started with 113 students enrolled. So not always that big.

But by 1863, so many of the students and faculty members had been called to the front lines that the school closed entirely and then was handed over to the Confederate soldiers as like a base camp. That's kind of a wild like I understand anyone can be called, but like for some reason I just thought of academic campuses as kind of being safe.

Well, I always think of um Across the Universe. Did you ever watch that movie with all the Beatles

universe?

Yes.

And how I mean that was during World War II, I think.

Probably. I don't really remember.

Um, and the like ways that these like men and boys are trying to like get out of being called to the front lines, but

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even if they're in college, they still get called.

They're like handmade, too.

Same. Same.

It's also like based right here, too. And it's

Yeah. Okay. So, the campus shuts down. It's handed over to the Confederate soldiers. soldiers and refugees move into the campus. They actually turned the chapel that still stands today into an army hospital where wounded and dying Confederate soldiers were taken and treated. And there I couldn't find an exact number of documented deaths. I guess there weren't a ton here. And then in 1864, the chapel was converted into a prison where 431 Union soldiers were captured and held. Then Union forces swept through the campus towards the end of the war, camped on the college grounds, and apparently some of them used the chapel's front columns for target practice. I tried to look up photos to see if there's any like bullet marks and whatnot that they've documented, but I couldn't find any.

But yeah, this building still stands. Post Civil War, the campus reopened in 1866, but over a 100 students, remember it was

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113 students enrolled.

Yeah. Over a 100 students and alumni had died. So it was very very different when the university reopened. Yeah.

Oh, that's so terrible.

So not like a hundred of the 113.

Yeah.

But still a significant number. Then there were students who left to go fight in world wars and never returned. All to say there's been a lot of murders, suicides, tragedies.

So

and quite a lot of injustice that took place on the land.

I wonder if like dorm rooms were like did people board there or Okay. So yeah.

Yeah. So all of this history and the hauntings attributed to this history has classified the University of Georgia as one of the most haunted campuses in America. So let's talk about some specific hauntings.

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the staircase to nowhere: Joe Brown Hall

The first and arguably most haunted or most well-known haunted building on campus is called Joe Brown Hall. Almost everyone agrees that this building gives them the creeps. And there's a reason

Joe Brown is haunting it.

No, Joe Brown um I don't think was a

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great guy.

I would make the assumption that almost every person that they're named after

is not. Yeah.

When they're that old and in the Confederate.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We can I'm going to assume that.

Mhm. Okay. So, Joe Joe Brown Hall was built in 1932 named after the 42nd governor of Georgia who I wrote his political stance. No bueno. Mino likey. I did write that too. He was around during the Civil War. This building was constructed and named after him in 1932. Many years after they lost the Civil War, so interesting choice. But anyway, it was constructed as a men's dormatory. And for decades, that's what it was. Male students lived, studied, slept here. And then a tragedy struck in the fall of 1971. I'll tell you the legend first as like it's kind of shared on campus, and then I'll tell you the real story.

Okay? The legend says that Thanksgiving of 1971, everyone packed up to go home for the holiday except for one student. One boy who was planning to stay on campus. Unfortunately, this boy died by

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suicide in his dorm and his body wasn't discovered for some time. Again, according to legend, when he was discovered, his body was so badly decomposed that the smell was impossible to get out. Oh [sighs and gasps] god. Residents started complaining of the smell for weeks and for months. It never got better. It got so bad that the janitors literally sealed up this one wing of the dorm. Meaning there are stairs that go to nowhere within this building.

Wow.

This staircase does the smell ever correct itself?

I mean, no one goes in that hallway anymore,

right?

So, I don't know. This staircase is now referred to as the stairs to nowhere. And naturally, many people have reported eerie sensations and hauntings in this space and building. And so many people hear of this legend when they're on campus. Like you would have added this to our little ghost hunting tour cuz the legend says that if you go up this if you find the stairs first of all go up and knock three times on this portrait cuz literally this is the wall. It's like a portrait of a hallway on

it kind of is backes

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very

in a way.

But it's like why not just like leave it as a blank wall? Why add to this? Why to make it look like it's a hallway? I don't know. Maybe they they're trying to add to the legend.

But so the legend says if you walk up there, knock three times on that portrait, three knocks will respond.

I wonder how many people do this cuz like knowing how many students are on this campus,

a lot popular mine every night.

What if you live in that building? That would be annoying.

That would

But popular paranormal shows have even investigated the stairwell. There's a student named Emma West who went looking for the stairway to nowhere during her freshman year. And when she found it, she immediately had chills of her entire body and felt a presence. People have also claimed that if you knock at the door, it's a hollow knock, meaning that like there's like a big hallway on the other side.

Yeah.

But maybe there's such an eerie feeling because the student's tragic end has been turned into an urban legend and a drunken dare like playful adventure. But the truth is, a young man really did

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spend his final moments on the other side of this wall. And he did the other side. It might not even be haunted. like the hauntings might just exist right there at the door that everyone's knocking in on because of the energy that people are putting forward there.

And this is the thing is like during the legend in every iteration of the legend I found, not once is a student's name mentioned. Like I literally had to go searching for it.

But yeah, I get it though cuz of like privacy and stuff. Like I feel like

Yeah,

at LMU it was the same thing. It was like I knew I was living in the dorm room where someone had passed away,

but I did I wasn't able to like find the article or the name. It was just confirmed by the housing.

Right. Okay. Well, in this case, he had a name. His name was Stanley Park Hadock. He was actually 26 years old and was discovered on March 1st, 1972. So, not after Thanksgiving break, as the legend says. This discovery was reported in the Athens Banner Herald on March 2nd, 1972 and also in the school paper, The Red and Black on March 9th, 1972.

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The article was titled Stanley was a quiet fellow. And according to these articles, a janitor found Stanley's body after investigating a foul odor on the first floor, and the cause of death is still unknown. It was thought to be suicide, but has never actually been confirmed. M

the UG police commented that the body was severely decomposed and described it as a bizarre death.

It's hard. I mean, anything could happen, you know, brain aneurysm,

right? Yeah.

Like some undetected congenital heart defect. Like there's so many things.

He was found wearing just a shirt and there was a bag of unopened donuts from the local bakery next to his body. So then it was added in these articles that the wing was in fact boarded up because the smell could not be removed.

Wow. That's wild. Yeah.

And [clears throat] so sad.

Well, that also makes me think even more so that it was like a freak accident where it's like there's confusion from him as to what went down maybe and that's why like the space is maintaining some energy.

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Yeah,

I know. I'm curious if anyone has access to get to the other side of that wall.

Mhm. But yeah, it's a tragic story and I really do hope Stanley has found some peace or if he does haunt the dorm, it's because he wants to and he enjoys messing with freshman students who are like learning about this legend and he's like, "Yeah, I'm going to haunt you."

Yeah, that actually would be really fun.

That's what I would do. At the end of the day, Joe Brown Hall is believed to be the most documented paranormal location on campus, although there are so many others. So many others like Wadd

Waddel Hall and first murder on campus

Wedell Hall. I hope to not say that word again, but I probably will. [laughter] This is where the first murder on campus took place.

Oh,

the first. So, this hall was built in 1821. You like how I'm avoiding saying the name? Yeah.

And is the second oldest building on campus. It served as a lab, a dorm, and is now the office of special events. But what makes it so haunted is that it is the location of the first murder ever recorded on campus.

Dang. Well, I sure hope it happened 200 some years ago and not recently.

I think it's been over a hundred years.

Okay. So as the story goes again I

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couldn't find hard evidence of this but this is how the story goes. After World War I a young soldier returned home and his friends who wanted to help him get back into like normaly were like hey come stay at our dorm hang out here and I guess before he left for the war he had a fiance. So they're like spend some time with your fiance. They had to tell him that.

But he'd been gone for a long time and his fiance, she shows up and she's like, "Hey,

she's like this."

So I found someone else.

Oh, I thought she was going to be like wicked pregnant or something. [laughter]

He had fallen in love with someone else while

Okay. And

a She should have written a dear John letter.

Well, something like that.

We don't like this young soldier because he when he found out murdered her

and then he died by suicide all within the walls of what? Wedell High Hall. This is a college. This is University of Georgia. Wedell Hall. And this tragedy obviously has left a like a haunting stain on the land. It's been more than a

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hundred years, but people still report unexplained strange activity. They'll hear sounds, loud, heavy footsteps, orbs of light. They'll feel like someone's watching them.

But most people agree it's just residual energy, but even then it's like very, very thick energy. Okay, here's another

Demosthenian Hall

really hard one to say.

Demos Theonian Hall. Another very old and very haunted building was built in 1824 and is home to the Demosian Literary Society.

How many more times do you have to say that?

I I heard for you. You're It sounds like you're saying it right, but I'm like, "Oh, man."

I think that's it.

It's a mouthful.

Did we have any buildings on campus that were really hard to say?

I don't think so.

We had U-Haul.

Yeah, University Hall. Uh-oh. Which the elevators were? I've never once seen

escalators, you mean?

Oh, yeah. The escalators. Never once were all four escalators working. And then a couple years ago when Nikita got married and I like stayed there for a week to watch her dog in between cuz it was an Indian wedding so there were many events and I like stayed there for a few days.

We recorded from her house.

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We did. We did. And Roly was like humping the blanket.

Yeah. So [laughter] I was I was watch

but yeah. No, I like walked

to the uh campus and U-Haul's escalators were still broken. And I was like, "Oh my god, this is like

that building reminds me of the back rooms in mall world because it was literally designed to be like a mall. It's massive."

Like I think if you took all the furniture out, it would be a very liinal space.

Well, the um like Steve Jobs movie was filmed there. So

Oh, look at us.

Look at us. If you're curious what it looks like, it's

look it up. LMU U-Haul. There was a period of time where when we were on like our sority was on like judicial review or something like that. We had like a disciplinary action that before we went on our buses to our parties and events, we had to all be on campus for like an hour before we left to prevent pregaming.

Oh, I think we had to do that, too. And they like stuck in that little theater space in

U-Haul. Yeah. [laughter]

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Yeah. But we would all still like bring water bottles full of alcohol and just drink there. Yeah,

it's college.

Anyway, okay, back to Demothenian Hall. [laughter] It was built in 1824 and like I said it was home to the Demosian Literary Society which is one of the oldest and most prestigious organizations in the University of Georgia's history. This building was actually added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1971 and is haunted by a man named Robert Tombs. And I love this story. This might be one of my favorite stories. Robert Tombs is one of the most famous alumni to UG. He arrived at the school in the 1820s and he very quickly made a name for himself. He was even chosen as a class graduation speaker, which was one of the highest honors a student could receive. He was brilliant, charismatic, ambitious, everyone loved him. He was on track to excellence. But just like a week before graduating, Robert Tombs was expelled

because he had gambled. He was gambling. He got caught. The scandal.

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Just gambling or like was he running an underground gambling ring?

I don't know. Look at this man. He looks like he's doing some salacious [ __ ] That guy looks like he'd cheat in a card game.

Yeah, [laughter] he's counting cards. That's actually why he got expelled.

He was playing against the campus president.

I'm sure he was.

Yeah. So, sometime kind of right before graduation, he was expelled. But here's the thing about Tombs. He was like, "Well, I don't like that decision, so I'm going to come back to campus and still give my speech." But he couldn't do it at graduation. So, he goes and he stands beneath a massive oak tree on the property of Demothenian Hall and he gives his speech to whoever will listen. People gather, people listen to him, people cheer for him. Yeah, he gives a speech. I said, I love this story. I don't love tombs. He went on to become a very controversial Confederate government official.

Okay.

But I do love this story because legend says that at the very moment he died on December 15th, 1885. The moment he took his last breath, miles and miles and miles away from this oak tree on the

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University of Georgia's campus where he gave his graduation speech despite being expelled. As he took his final breath, a strike of lightning hit the oak tree and destroyed it.

Okay. One, what the [ __ ] That's so spooky and weird and like fantastic in a way. But two, the tree lover in me is devastated that this old massive oak tree just got destroyed

from his It's like why are you hurting the oak tree? The oak tree gave you platform.

I think he just wanted to have one final speech goodbye. I don't know.

Or like make it clear that it was him.

So since then various members of the literary society, which still exists, which I think is so cool. I want to be a part of literary society.

Yeah. They have been reporting encounters with his ghost. People have heard pacing on the second floor, doors opening and closing on their own. More recently, there was a member who was with like others. It was like a group of like three or four literary society members. They were up on the second floor walking down the hall when all of a sudden all of the doors to the hallway

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slowly start to open simultaneously

and they pause and they're like, "What the hell is happening?" And within like a second, all of the doors slam shut very loudly.

So spooky. And they reported that they saw a man walk through one of the doors as the doors like got slammed shut. And they believe it was Robert Tombs.

Robert.

And there's now a plaque still hanging out

outside where the tree once stood.

I mean, he clearly like enjoyed his time there because he was asked to give a speech. I'm sure he was popular around campus. He ran a gambling ring.

Yeah.

Or at least I'm saying he

if he's in this literary society, he loves the dramatics, which so like that makes sense that he would strike a tree.

Yeah. upon dying. Anyway, there are some

various other hauntings

various other hauntings. I'll give you like a couple small ones and then we're going to get into the sorities.

Okay, so a student named William Samuel Lloyd was living in Candler Hall in 1905 and went back to his dorm with his friends. Sadly, stupidly, they were in the dorm. He takes out his pistol and he's like playing around with it and he actually fired it into his lower abdomen

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and died in his dorm room. The building is no longer a dorm, but for many years when it was, students reported this overwhelming sensation that someone was hovering over them while they slept, like watching them sleep.

I don't like the hovering over cuz it makes me almost think of like the depictions of like the old Christmas depictions of ghosts where they're literally hovering like they're floating up, not just leaning over you.

Yeah. The faculty who work in this building today report hearing pacing. The elevator will go up and down on its own. And people kind of agree that it feels like it's Willy's spirit being restless just lingering in the building.

It's not at all, but like it reminds me just enough of my favorite ghost story from LMU, which isn't a ghost story at all.

But they thought that in I can't remember the name of the building, but it's the white one. It's in the like quad area.

Sunken Gardens.

Yeah, it's right by Sunken Gardens.

Wait, I want to see

what is that building called? I don't know. I had so many classes there.

Interactive campus map. Let's look.

It's the one across from the cafeteria.

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Wow. I had my stage combat final right there.

St. Robert's Hall.

Yeah, St. Rob's. But in St. Rob's, it's like it's a building with just a it's a long ass hallway, a few floors

and it's just like this easy tiled hallway or whatever.

There was a year that everyone thought that it was it was I think a couple years before we started there. Everyone thought that there was a ghost on campus because the security cameras kept capturing like a whoo of someone in the middle of the night going by the cameras in this

what it would be like a blur of someone going by and they were like oh my god middle of the night every once in a while there's a there's like a spectral man going by and then finally one of the security guards

was there when it happened

and it was a local man with rollerblades who after hours when like the building was shut down, no kids had classes, no one was in the building.

He would just rip it down these like slick hallways on his roller.

Honestly [laughter] love that for him. But like that's where

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you choose to do it on the campus.

Go to U-Haul.

Yeah, U-Haul would be the perfect place.

U-haul's always closed. Like I feel like they lock that [ __ ] up. St. Rob's was old and open.

Yeah, those doors didn't lock.

No, you could break in through any window in case [laughter] anyone wanted to know. Most of them are broken.

Are you speaking from experience? Well, I just it's something I observed as someone who's you watched people break the rules. [laughter]

You would never do it yourself.

Whenever I break out of my yoga class, I crawl through the window.

Okay. So, this is another story I really love because it's a cremaginally old man. So, there's a story of a faculty member who lived in what is called the Lustrat House. I think this building still exists. He lived there in 1903. Well, the campus decided to like literally pick up this building and move it over 100 feet or so in order to make more room for the new fireproof library that they were planning to build. But this professor, Charles Morris, he was like, "Well, no, I'm not moving out." And they're like, "Well, you have to." And he's I'm not doing it. He refused to like pack up his things.

He's like a squatter.

He literally was just like, "Well, he

31:00

was like, "This is my home. Like, I'm not moving."

Yeah. Tie himself.

And they're like, "Buddy, we'll give you a temporary housing. Like, it'll be okay." He's just like, "No." And like he he can move back in after they move it, right? Yeah.

It's just about moving the actual space.

He just would not move. He didn't want to pack up his stuff. He didn't want to do any of it. He died not too long after this. And he has remained a permanent fixture of the building. He's like, I'm still not leaving.

He's so stubborn. I love that for him.

And he's still just as bitter and stubborn as he was in life. People see him in the windows. Like he will be wa like he watches. If you were to break into the doors of this building, he would alert the authorities. [laughter]

He stares at people through the windows. He's often spotted in a rocking chair by the fireplace and keeps an eye on thing. So, anytime people try to like move things around or change up things in this building, he gets more active.

Wow.

He's still

He wants it to be the way it was his house. It was his home.

I know.

It's like keep my room the way that I had it.

Okay. Okay. And then of course, we can't talk about haunted campus without

32:00

talking about a haunted theater.

It's the number one place

anywhere and everywhere.

What is a theater without a ghost?

That's why you have the ghost light.

Exactly. Oh my god. Wait, I briefly texted texted you about this and it will by the time this comes out, hopefully it will have come to fruition. My friend from high school, from my theater days, shout out to Peter, he works for Broadway doing like marketing and stuff and he's on the marketing team for the Paranormal Activity Broadway show. Yes. And he's like, "We're literally building stuff for like with you and Karin in mind." Like Two Girls One Ghost things in mind.

How?

At the like event, the like opening night event where they're

I want to know what it is. Inspired by.

I don't know. But he's like, "We can't pay for travel, but like you're invited." And I was like, "I'm going to be there."

Like I'm the inspiration. You should invite me. Saying that's so cool. I'm so curious what like trickery and ghostly things they're going to have going on for opening opening night.

Be so fun. I have seen like a couple little blips of

I hear it's so scary and so good.

33:00

Yes. And just like set design and how they do it like that. It's horrifying.

Yeah. Okay. So, Haunted Theater. James O. James was an actor.

James O.

James O. James.

James. O. James.

Oh my gosh. That is quite the name. [laughter] James O. James was an actor who has long lingered in this building. He specifically shows up in the play bill. Hey, what do you mean? Like the team will print the play bills and then they'll like go to like check on them in the morning. And James O James' name is in the play bill. [laughter]

He's like, "Don't forget about me. I'm the star of the show."

I will get my credits to join Saga. Like you cannot stop.

Do not stop me. No one has put it there. And then yeah, on the day of opening night, they'll open the play bill and there his name is James Osame.

That is hilarious. In more recent years, he has been quiet, but there are people who everyone in the theater program knows not to say his name backstage. It's kind of like the um Shakespeare McBTH thing.

Wait, why can't you say his name? What?

Because apparently,

doesn't he want the stardom? It would

34:00

seem like he wants the attention given that he's printing his name in the playbook.

It's probably an iteration of the McBTH legend. Whereas, if you say McBth backstage, you

recently relearned.

Yeah.

After forgetting that we had done a whole thing on it. So now they've actually decided to start printing his name in the play bills as a good gesture to him, hoping that he won't curse the show.

Oh, they're like, "How many hints do I need to give you before you realize that like I need credit in every production?" Cuz I'm doing a lot backstage.

You might not know what I'm doing. But like,

please give me my credit.

Yeah.

And now they do.

What does he credit himself as? I'm

I don't know. I tried to find pictures of James O. James in the play bills, but I couldn't find specific ones. So if you go to University of Georgia, I was also surprised. I looked our in our inbox. If there's 45,000 students that go here, no one's emailed us from that school.

Are you guys like signing NDAs or something? What's going on?

Yeah. What is up? Why are you hiding your secrets from us?

Yeah. Stop hiding.

Someone tell us about James O. James.

Okay. But what email us? We know you're

35:00

capable of printing.

Use the computer. But what really drew me in for this episode were the hauntings on Greek Row, which at University of Georgia is called Mill. I want to say Millage Avenue or Millywalk. Oh, the Millywalk.

The Millywalk.

Oh, man. I just know a sunny Saturday Oh,

afternoon is so freaking fun there.

Yes. I'm imagining House Bunny when they're doing like the car wash outside. [laughter]

One of my favorite movies.

I wish we had like an exchange program at LMU with Greek life where like we could have just gone for like a week or something and slept over

like a slumber party at a different at a sorority house.

Experience what it's like to be in a Greek row.

Are we too old for that? Can we be the house bunnies? We'll be the house mom.

We would be the house mothers.

Jenny. [laughter]

We be the moms that are in charge of the curfews or whatever.

But I'm a cool mom.

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haunted sororities

this is my favorite part for so many reasons. one, we were both in

37:00

sororities, which we talked about. I did write how ours was different. We didn't have a Greek row.

No.

But I remember going to LMU because, well, one, it was LA and I wanted to go to LA, but I had just watched the show Greek right before going to college. And I So, like after watching that, I was like, I want to be in a sority so bad. I want a school that has

choosing schools too that had Greek life.

Well, my mom was like, you have to go to a Jesuit school. And

she a Jesuit.

Well, she just wanted like the Jesuit education, like the education of a whole person. Okay.

And LMU was the only Jesuit school that has Greek life and I wanted to go to LA. So everything

in LA or just

I think in general.

Wow.

Yeah.

That's kind of crazy. I didn't know that.

Yeah. At least when we were applying to colleges, it was I don't know if that's changed, but Yeah.

Wow. So fascinating. Yeah.

No, I I had no plans to do Greek life at all. It wasn't a consideration, but then everyone first semester like all of our friends decided to rush, so I was like, "Okay, I guess I will too cuz I'm not going to be left out."

Yeah. Well, the one thing we missed out, but I think is a good thing, like we talked about, is that we didn't have to

38:00

like go back or go to school a week before and just immediately get thrown into the chaos of Greek recruitment and sorority rush. But that's what it's like in the South especially, and at these big schools, it's chaos. You show up the week before knowing nobody at all, and you go through recruitment. Mill Avenue is stunning. There are dozens of grand mansions set back behind sweeping front lawns. Think white columns, ornate iron railings, ancient magnolia trees. It feels like a time machine. It is the heart of Greek life at UG, lined with sorority and fraternity houses that have been home to students of many generations. And I'm sure many, if not all of them are haunted, but I'm going to tell you about two sorority houses, each with their own tragic tales.

Also, I wanted to talk about the history of the women at UG. So, for 133 years, University of Georgia was an allmale university.

Yeah. Women weren't officially admitted into the school until 1918. And then even then it was extremely difficult to get admitted. And then if admitted,

39:00

women were only allowed to enroll in home economics or education majors. And they also had different stricter rules. They had an 11 p.m. curfew. They needed to get permission to leave the campus or ride to town in a car. And every day was regulated. Actually, in a twist of things, a woman named Mary Lynen was the first woman to actually earn any degree from the University of Georgia. She earned a master's in 1914, but women weren't allowed to be admitted into the school until 1918.

How'd she do it?

I don't know. She also helped organize FI MU sorority, which is the first sorority at the University of Georgia in 1924 before she died of pneumonia. And FUW is where we're going to start our story.

I wish I knew like the hand signals. I want to throw them up.

I know. No.

Well, did I tell you when I joined Theta, I thought they were all doing mustaches, but they were doing [laughter]

So, there's quite a few photos.

You can default to your

Yeah, the kite.

Yeah, the kite.

What are you a

alpha fee? And then the teddy bear.

Um, okay. Fo is located at 250 South

40:00

Mill Avenue. And it is a stunning historic home with intricate black cast iron railings, sweeping double curved front staircase, all in a very southern looking home. It's just like it's so wild to me that it just looks like someone's house. Like a giant mansion.

Yes, it is. Here, I'll show you. And there's a couple pictures of the interior. Damn,

it's like pristine. Even the lighting light fixtures are beautiful. Okay,

so this house was built in 1858 by Colonel Thomas Napier Hamilton, who apparently was Georgia's very first millionaire. And he saw that the very first bathtub in the city would be added into his home. I I already appreciate this guy.

You love a bathtub.

Love a bathtub.

Unfortunately though, the colonel died before the house was ever completed. So, his widow Sarah Hamilton saw the completion of the home and then moved in heartbroken.

God, I just feel like this is a story that happens so often in history. It's like

so many

man builds mansion,

dies,

dies, and now widow and all of their

41:00

children and has to like wait for it to be finished and live there. But what I like though about this is that from the very beginning, this house has been for the girls.

For the girls, baby.

Sarah moved in with her daughters. Um, and the home stayed in the family for some time before being sold and passed through various other families. The history of the home is so significant. It was designated a historic landmark in 1991. Can you imagine being in college, living in a home that's like a historic landmark? It's like I'm sure people don't think about this because you're so young when you're in college, but like now I'd feel the pressure to make sure nothing

that's what house mom does.

Whatever goes wrong in the house like don't don't like

don't break anything.

Don't break anything.

Don't breathe.

Right. Okay. But the history here is actually really really upsetting. So like I said, the colonel built this house, but apparently he also built a house right next door because he had two daughters. So his plan was that one of the daughters would inherit this house and the other daughter would inherit the other house and they would be able to live next door to each other.

Oh, I love that. What beautiful That's a wonderful thought, Dad.

Rumor also says that he connected these

42:00

houses via tunnel.

Oh, hell yes.

Which is our dream.

He like took their like four-year-old drawing of like we're going to live next to each other and we're going to be connected by a tunnel and our houses are going to be polka dots.

He was like, "Oh, I'll make it reality for you girls."

That's my dream. Our dream about it. I love it.

But that's never been confirmed. So Sarah Hamilton raised her children and eventually Anna, although some articles called her Hannah, when she grew up, she decided to move in next door. She was engaged. She was set to be married soon, so she was ready to start her own life and like this was the time to move into the other house.

Tragically though, one afternoon,

sorry, I like can't pay attention at all cuz now my brain has completely gone to us.

Polka dot house with underground tunnels. with the tunnel connecting us. And I would just like picture is this like old ancient chamber now with like the stones and it's all archway and it's lit by only candle light and whenever we record we just go down there and that's our we record

in the chamber.

Yes.

Why do I Well, now I'm picturing like where they torture people in dungeons.

But that's kind of our

Yeah. And I'm like kind of upset now

43:00

that it's that

we don't have that that's not what we have.

There is still time. We can make it happen.

Take a tunnel bust to Salem. Okay, pivoting to the tragedy here. Sadly and tragically, one afternoon, apparently Anna or Hannah's fiance was brutally murdered by his own family. And I was trying to find all the details here. They're really, really vague. It's hard to validate, but it is said that Anna's fiance's body was buried beneath the steps of the house that is now the Thai Muse sority house. By who? It's not clear.

Yeah. The purpose.

Why? Not clear. We're not certain. Unless it's like in a romantic way where it's like every time I come home I'm

I want to keep him here. Yeah.

Yeah. Like

I don't know. It's so

you're my home and I come home to you and like you lead me and I I don't know.

It's also a little creepy because then you're also like walking on his grave over and over and over again

which is supposed to be bad omen to do

and like moving on with your life.

Well, Anna never did unfortunately. She um moved back into this house that her dad had built for her family and

44:00

apparently was driven mad by the grief and horror and she basically lived like holed up in this house until she passed away. But it is said that she has never left. Those who now live in the sorority house of Fu, they report hearing knocking in empty rooms. They'll hear sobbing in hallways.

People have seen some really strange things. One sorority sister got locked out of the house and was like trying to get in and she watched the lock turn by unseen hands opening up for her which is great a great haunting but she was very like I'm sorry but how did that happen? Hello.

A lot of people in the sority house have tried to communicate with Anna by using a Ouija board but I couldn't find specific stories and that's why I'm like

I would do that too. That's where I would email the Ouija board.

Yeah. Oh my god sister.

She's so Yeah, sisters. You got to contact your original sister. Yeah,

but like it makes me feel bad for her because she clearly is so heartbroken, but like

Yeah.

I also She's in the perfect place to have a little fun.

Well, and every report has seemed to say

45:00

that the spirit is very helpful to the girls who live in the house now.

That's good.

Yeah. Like she likes being with the

Alpha Gamma Delta

girls.

Okay, so just down the road there is another sority house that is equally as haunted with an equally as devastating backstory. This is the Alpha Gamma Delta House. And this one looks like that. Damn. It is located at 530 South Mill Avenue and it is stunning. It is 7,000 square feet with ionic columns, ornate garlands, stained glass windows, Tiffany beveled doors. It is even featured or it was featured.

How are 18-year-olds living in nicer?

Wait until you see the photos. It was featured in Cosmo's top 20 most beautiful sorority houses. I'll put the link in the show notes, but I'm going to add a couple photos in the actual video. Look at this. Oh my god,

it is stunning.

I dream a tree.

Yeah, it's so well decorated.

That is so beautiful.

It's gorgeous. I can't even imagine the dues to be a part of the sority house.

Oh yeah, that's true. I forgot about

46:00

those.

Okay, this house was officially called the Thomas Kerther's house, but everyone in Athens calls it the wedding cake house.

M I can kind of see that.

Well, it was it looks like a wedding cake and then it was gifted as an engagement gift. Oh, was it kind of looks like the White House, too.

It does look like

the pillars, the levels, the white fluffiness to it all.

So, it was built in 1896 by William Winstead Thomas, who was a businessman, architect, and civic leader in Athens. And he actually designed the official map of Athens in 1874.

Dang.

He was one of the most prominent men in Athens, and he designed this home as an engagement gift for his daughter. It was a wedding present.

All these guys back in the day just building houses to their daughters. My dad just left. [laughter]

Doesn't always happen for us today.

My dad just keeps having kids and doesn't have enough money to buy us all houses. Sad.

Sad.

Okay. But even more sad, on the wedding day, this woman's fiance never showed. She waited and waited. Hours passed and

47:00

it became clear he was not coming.

Or so she thought. Tragically, after waiting for hours, this young girl went to the attic of the home and died by suicide. [sighs] Not an hour later, her fianceé arrived, but he had been delayed. He was never planning to abandon her.

This is so sad. And this is also I feel like this story comes up so often with old hauntings where it's like

I know

someone doesn't show and there's just extreme heartbreak and the other person ends up dying very quickly after.

But like it makes me I feel like this is the first time I've ever thought like well what is actually happening in the community and society that would make someone do that when they're stood up from a wedding? Like why is it so impossible to be alone?

I don't know. I'm still trying to figure that out right now.

Also thinking about the time like how long did they actually know each other?

Probably didn't. [laughter] [clears throat]

This is the first time meeting.

No, it's very it's very sad and tragic and I can't even imagine losing your daughter like that. But

kind of reminds me of the Bordon

48:00

sisters, too, where it's just like, you know, they have this reputation of being murderers and all of this stuff when really half of it was just because they were 30 and single. been single. Yeah. Society has historically been terrible to women. Surprise, surprise, surprise.

Um, okay. So, William Winstead Thomas, who was the father who built this house, died in 1904 and his widow leased the house before eventually selling it to another family. Then in 1913, it was purchased by James Yansy Kerther's, which is like where the Thomas Katherther's house came from.

Um, when he died, his widow held the property until 1939 when Alpha Gamma Delta purchased it from her directly. So this house passed through a lot of powerful families in Athens over those four decades. And through it all, whatever heartbreaking energy that was left in the attic stayed there lingering for years to come, even till today. So in 1939, Alpha Gamma Delta sority moved in. And almost immediately, the women of the sorority began to notice things. Doors opening and closing on their own, faucets turning on by themselves, lights flickering for no reason, and the sound

49:00

of a chair being dragged across the floor in the attic.

Spooky. But it also like reminds me of like the moments before death.

Yeah.

The antique piano in the parlor plays by itself.

Oh, I like that.

Yeah. I like

What does it play?

I'm not sure. Sometimes when people walk past the house late at night, they'll look up the attic window and which no one lives in the attic, but they'll see a woman standing looking out

in the attic window. Probably this woman. The girls of Alpha Gamma Delta have given the spirit the name Suzy. Although I found in one article that her real name was Isabelle,

so I don't know where Suzie came from, but she's not considered a scary ghost. And in fact, she's a helpful ghost. And the room that she lived in is actually now called the engagement suite. And legend says that every single girl who lives in this room gets engaged before she graduates from University of Georgia.

That's wild.

Yeah. And like not that that's what every woman wants, but some of the students here want that.

Yeah. It's also the south and it's a

50:00

huge school. So, I'm sure there's plenty of people that are looking for that. I would give me that one.

Yeah. No.

Whoa. But yeah, that's kind of cuz at first I was like, "Oh gosh, it feels like kind of a mocking thing to

No, she remind her of all of that."

No, I think that the idea is that Susie makes it happen. Like she wants everyone to get the happy ending that she didn't have. There was an Alpha Gamma Delta member named Kayn who said her friend woke up in the middle of the night and thought and thought she saw Suzie standing there just like staring.

There are also like dozens of other firsthand encounters, but I couldn't find a ton, but overall they do seem positive.

Yeah.

So, those are the two haunted sorities like the most haunted on campus. The point here is that the University of Georgia has plenty of hauntings and they don't actually shy away from it, which was surprising to me.

Also even more surprising that we don't have any emails in our inbox,

right? There are multiple organizations on campus that lean into it. The Student Alumni Association has an annual ghost tour on North Campus every October.

Oh, I love that.

It's called Nightmare on Broad Street

51:00

and it's been running for the last 10 years and led by students in costume and they'll like take you through the ghost stories.

Then there

every campus should have that.

I agree.

They're all haunted.

Absolutely.

Then the university's own historians lead a walking tour during Halloween season 2. It's harder to book, but it's very like historical and like factual, whereas the student one is probably a little bit more urban legend add to myths. And the Athens Haunted History Walking Tour also hosts a 2-hour walking tour at Athens, like the whole city at large, but it does go through campus and it covers some of the hauntings there. It runs all year round, but then during September and October, it runs every night. Tours start at 8:00 p.m. and it costs $24 per person.

Dang.

Yeah. So, there's plenty.

There's so many to choose from. to choose from.

I would do all of them.

We got to get stories from everyone because that's also the thing was when you go on different ghost tours, the tour guides are all different. They have their own personal stories. You got

You get the right one, they're going to share photos on their own phone from like some of the

Yes.

tours they've done in the past. That's

52:00

always cool.

Yeah. But yeah, that's the very haunted University of Georgia.

Dang. So haunted.

So many different types of hauntings.

Such a huge university, too.

Go dogs.

Go dogs.

Woof woof. And not to not to hope anything tragic or horrific happens to anyone. I certainly don't hope that. But like the stories you're telling are from 100 plus years ago makes me curious in like 200 more years of this university being around where it's like oh there's someone

hauntings will come next.

Nicole and she's obsessed with Kesha or whatever you know [clears throat] like

okay Nicole stop trying to be

you play Kesha. This one girl's face will come in the mirror.

That is a hunting I will I will follow through with on the other side.

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listener story

Okay, so we don't have a university of Georgia, but we have a story from a haunted college and it's called the ghost of Willamina.

Willamina.

Willamina.

I kind of love that name.

I know. I love it, too. It also just reminds me of the modeling agency in New

54:00

York City.

What's that? It's called Willamina.

Yeah. Isn't that like one of the big ones?

I don't know. I don't know anything about

Wasn't it like Willamina modeling agency?

Is that from Next Top Model?

I think that's exactly where it is. I feel like that's why it's the only name I know.

So funny.

So it has to be from that show.

Wait, I need to look it up. Will Mina Models. Oh yeah.

Yeah.

Never heard of it.

Oh well, I guess I watch Netflix when I was younger.

Okay. Hey, witchy babes. My name is Emily. My husband James and I are huge fans. We listen and watch the podcast almost every day together. Love that. We met in college where this story takes place at a small Christian private school in the suburbs of St. Paul, Minnesota. I was initially attracted to the campus because of its beautiful grounds and its historic buildings. The college itself is made of five large main buildings. They're all situated in a circle and then there's a large green field in the middle where you can find all the students playing frisbee, having picnics, doing homework.

The quad. the quad for LMU

Son Gardens. Same thing.

I remember specifically one time because

55:00

did you know that there was like there were cameras around LMU? Just like a couple.

Yeah, of course.

They got their eyes on us.

Well, it was like [laughter and clears throat] you could live stream from the campus like they were like live stream cameras. So like if you were on LMU's website, you could like and one of them was sunken gardens. And so like my parents would check every once in a while and be like my mom and she'd be like, "Oh, it looks like it's overcast." Or, "Oh my god, what a great sunny day." Or whatever. Doesn't that feel questionable to have access to? Right now I want to see.

Yeah, but they're really far away. It's like it's like there's so many of them all around the world where it's like you can watch a popular beach pier or whatever and it's not like close up. You're not like watching people's faces go by. It's like a bird's eye aerial.

Now I want to see if they still have it.

But I remember one time texting my mom being like, "I'm in Sunken Gardens tanning." And then she was like, "Oh yeah, I see you." Like she pulled it up to see.

Wave. Say hi to mom. Okay, so another reason I love the school is that it's situated on a lake with an island. Oh my god, that sounds so pretty.

That does sound very pretty. When I took

56:00

my initial tour, we walked to the far end of campus a long path that led to a bridge. Across the bridge was this island where there is a small swimming beach, sand volleyball net, and a bonfire pit.

Wa! Maybe I want to go back to college and go here. This sounds so nice.

If you could do it again.

Also on the island was a large hill. And at the very top of that hill was a small chapel. Kind of eerie, but also beautiful, aged with the elements of nature and adorned with cobweb stained glass windows. I started to imagine making friends and hanging out here in the fall. In time, the island would give many more uh different memories.

I later learned that this chapel on the hill was a tomb and it once carried the remains of a woman named Willilamina Kba. During my freshman year, I got an on-ampus job sorting mail. During slow shifts, I had a lot of philosophical conversations with my manager, Joey, who had worked on the campus for decades. One day, I asked Joey if he believed in ghosts, and he replied, "You haven't heard of Willamina yet?" Joey? He then

57:00

proceeded to tell me the lore of the campus ghost. Willilamina was an ays who lived in the late 1800s and died sometime in the 1930s. She helped fund the construction of the small shrine chapel that sits on the island's hill. She drowned in Lake Michigan at the age of 62. And the chapel came to be her final resting place where her remains were buried in 1933 per her wishes.

Oh, I love that. Her name is still inscribed in the inside walls of the crypt. Fast forward to 1970 when my college bought the property. They exumed her body and moved her remains to a different location. That's not what she wanted.

That would piss her off.

Apparently, ever since there have been very creepy sightings and weird encounters all over campus

cuz she's pissed.

Yeah. Enter all who say [ __ ] around and find out. I mean, seriously, [clears throat] you think you can just dig up a woman in a crypt with her name on it and think nothing will happen? I would haunt that place, too.

I will say like the one thing about me is don't disrupt my sleep and I feel

58:00

like that also goes to my death.

You know what? I don't wish being a ghost upon you. I wish being like a like a zombie. I feel like that would be cool. Okay.

Because you get the moment like the the moment of fear where like someone disrupts you and you get the full like breaking.

Okay. But am I like a eat your brains type of zombie or can I be like a vampire zombie?

No, you're like a vampire zombie.

Okay, I'm on board for that.

Yeah.

Like don't wake the dead.

Don't wake the dead.

It's very Widow's Bay.

I just really love that show.

It's so good.

Okay. After Joey finished telling me the story, I asked him how many people knew about Willamina. and he said most of the staff members and professor and professors on campus have either heard of Willamina or have their own stories to share about her. So I decided from that day forward I'm going to start interviewing people to compile witness accounts.

So awesome.

We love you.

Joey was very quick to inform me that there was already a mini documentary online of someone who beat me to it. And she does share the link. It's a video. It's on Vimeo from 2010. uh love. Being

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that there was already documentation of the ghost Willilamina, I wanted to experience something for myself and that I did. My husband and I were part of the same friend group who, to our surprise, were more than willing to tag along. Good friends.

Yes. We were all so fascinated by this new information. A campus ghost. So, we decided to meet near the path to the island late one night, probably around midnight. There were 10 of us who showed up and we were all aware of Willilamina's story, the lore of her spirit, and we were also aware that there were a lot of sightings of her on or near the island. In the dark of night, we used our phone flashlights and we walked across the bridge and up the hill to the spooky little chapel. The moon was bright, tension was high, and we didn't really know what to expect. One of our friends, Tyler, started using his phone to record and take photos. After standing around and enticing something or someone to make their presence known, we very quickly got spooked and started running back to the bridge.

Just like before something happening,

1:00:00

like when you're playing hide-and-seek and you're waiting for someone to find you and you get like giddy and nervous and excited,

you can't do it anymore.

As we were walking back to the parking lot, someone jokingly suggested that we should go inside of the main chapel called Nazareth Hall to explore. And you know,

the chapel's not even named after Willamina.

I guess that's so cruel. rude. So, yeah, keep the spooky vibes going or whatever. Something to note about the campus is that the five main buildings are interconnected through underground tunnels. Did you ever go through the tunnels at LMU?

Which ones? The ones that we were actually like allowed to do on a guided tour or the ones that you have to do the like the fraternity ones that they did?

No, I never did it either.

The crawl space

they did like I remember Sig Makai did a pledge activity called Shaw Shank Redemption and they would late at night find the tunnels and like crawl through them.

Crawl through it. It's It's like a There's ground like grass and dirt above you and giant spiders.

Yeah,

that one I did not do. I just did like the actual guided like you're underneath some of the buildings

which those apparently our senior year you could do that and like write your

1:01:00

name on the wall and I didn't do one. No, I don't know why.

Oh

yeah. I'm sad.

Oh, that's a bummer. Cuz there were b Well, there were a bunch of different tours that you could sign up for

and I didn't do

You didn't do any?

I think I maybe did like one or two but like No, I didn't really do them.

Oh,

I don't know what I was doing. I don't know what you're doing.

Getting drunk. I don't know. [laughter]

I did them. I Well, also I feel like the knowing you could write like a note was incentive for me to sign up for that cuz then I wrote a note to my brother cuz I knew he was going to LA.

Oh, that's cute.

So that when he four years later, he would

he would see it.

See it.

That's so cute.

And he did.

Very cute.

Okay. So, the five main buildings are interconnected through underground tunnels.

Mhm.

I only learned about the tunnels after my first semester, but I didn't use them unless I had to. Wait. Wo. They were expensive.

You actually use them, which probably nice if it's cold.

Yeah, that's pretty sick.

Yeah.

So, I didn't use them unless I had to because they gave me the heebie-jebies. And when I said had to, it's because, well, Minnesota winters could be quite brutal. And those tunnels definitely came in handy when you needed to get to

1:02:00

class and not freeze your ass off. The tunnels lead to the basement of each building. And in those basements were some offices, some classrooms, a theater department, storage closets, and now the basement of Nazareth Hall was known to be a hot spot for activity. Naz was the original building, and it was built on this land more than a century ago. People have reported hearing footsteps, seeing apparitions, never really feeling alone, if you know what I mean.

Mhm.

And as we're walking around in darkness, a few of us stumble across an art studio held for painting and pottery classes. It was at this point in the group that we started to kind of spread out into little groups. In the back of the art studio was a door that led to some random stairwell with spiral stairs going up and it led to a wooden door. Immediately upon entering the room at the bottom of the staircase, the air became cold, like a sea of breath in the air cold. It was obvious that this stairwell had been abandoned a long time ago. There were spiderw webs everywhere, broken glass here and there, graffiti on the walls. I felt a wave of chills

1:03:00

through every inch of my body and we all wondered what was behind that door at the top of the staircase.

It sounds like the stairwell to nowhere,

right? My husband James and our friend Steve were brave enough to start to ascend and see if the door could be opened.

I'm getting such severe chills.

I felt a wave of chills touch every inch of my body.

That's what's happening to me right now. I waited at the bottom, though at this point I'm wishing I hadn't because I really started to get the grapes. Once at the top, James tried to open the door. It was locked. Steve tried. Locked. And at this point, they turned around in defeat and started coming down when suddenly three huge bangs come from the other side of the door. We all froze. "Who's there?" yelled Steve in the direction of the door. And then again, three loud bangs. a loud female whale, but not really so human.

Kind of reminds me of um what's the Airbnb movie?

1:04:00

Oh, Barbarian.

Barbarian with like the tunnels.

I tried to figure out how to do that as a Halloween costume, but the prosthetics alone was

Yeah.

I feel like you kind of almost did it with a Gollum.

Yeah, it was kind of nude.

Or uh Yeah, you were Gollum.

Yeah.

I almost said, "Wait, no, you were Smeaggle." Same thing.

Same [laughter] thing.

Um Okay. None of us had ever run so fast in our lives. And we ran across the green fields, across a few parking lots. We did not stop until we were all back in the safety of our dorms. And I did not get any sleep that night or for days afterwards. The next morning, Tyler showed us some photos he'd taken that night on the island. And in one of them, you could see a fuzzy white orb that no one could explain away. It was genuinely the scariest thing James and I have ever experienced. And since then, I think we're maybe trauma bonded. [laughter] Lol. Many years later and we still sometimes reminisce about college and that one fateful night when we met the spirit of Willilamina Francis Kba. See you on the other side. M

Well, I'm not surprised that Willilamina is haunting that campus.

1:05:00

No,

I would too if I were Willamina.

Oh, absolutely.

Pissed the heck off. The one request to be buried at the chapel and your body's literally exumed and moved, relocated. Well, it is another thing that's interesting about the afterlife because if you think about like people getting the proper burials that they want for themselves or like within their culture or whatever, you would think, okay, their spirits at peace,

but then you know 100 years later, someone could come across that site and disrupt it and it's like where do the spirits go? Are some of them already reincarnated? Some of them not care or are some of them like I have been awoken,

right? I don't know.

I don't know either. Creepy. So many college campuses. So many haunted dorm rooms,

so many uh bits of lore. So please email us if you have a story. Anything goes. So it doesn't just have to be from college, but if you have encounters with the paranormal.

Yeah. And also if you went to University of Georgia, we want to hear from you because 45,000 students. I guarantee there's at least one of you who attended that school or worked there who's

1:06:00

listening to this podcast right now. So

yeah. or if you know someone who went there, send this episode to them and then have them let us know what happened.

Our emails to girls podcastmails.com. You can find it in the show notes, you can find it on social media, you can find it on our website.

And also, if you want episodes one week early and ad free, plus bonus content, plus witch class and book club, plus we do every week we have campfire stories where you can come and share your ghost story with us live on Zoom. You can do that on Patreon. It's so much fun over there. It's a great little community. Also, please tell your friends and your family about our podcast and strangers or any like find an excuse to be weird and tell them about our podcast because it that's how we grow and that's how we find find new victims

because if people are doing it on the Paranormal Activity Broadway,

you can be doing it.

You should be doing it too

on the subway. [laughter]

On your way to taste test New York versus New Jersey bagels.

As you're ordering a Jersey bike sandwich, tell the sandwich maker about Two Girls Mango.

Yeah, there's literally no reason not

1:07:00

to. I'm promoting it on dating apps so you guys can do it. [laughter] If I don't find a boyfriend or a husband, at least I'm telling everyone about two girls.

It's gorilla marketing. [laughter] And thank you to Jamie Ryan who edits and produces our podcast.

We love you all very, very much.

And we will see you on the other side. Go dogs. [laughter]

Very spooky.