At least two of our houses at Auburn University (Alabama) had unexplained occurrences. The house on Ann St. was by far the worst. A large, two story house, the rear of the great room was a wall of windows that overlooked the pool we had. Over the years many brothers have been sitting in the great room watching TV when they heard a woman's scream coming from the pool. They would of course rush out but find nobody there, even as the screams continued, then abruptly stop. The house was old and we never knew of any drownings that took place at the house, but who knows. The bigger problem with the house was upstairs in the residence area. Very respected, level headed brothers not known for making up wild stories or even exaggerating reported a string of bizarre occurrences. The most chilling was the brother who was asleep in his room very late one night who heard his door creek open. He opened his eyes and saw a hand and forearm reach in and lock his door from the inside then close the door behind it. Thinking a brother was messing with him (boy, that would never happen!), he leaped out of bed and opened the door, looked down the hall and saw nothing. Not a sound, not a bit of motion and he had opened the door is a short enough time that any brother would have been seen running back to his room. Another room in the house was empty and locked with a key only a few officers had. Oftentimes loud music would be heard coming from the room, then when the door was opened, the music would abruptly stop. One of the creepiest occurrences happened to a small group of brothers at the start of Christmas break. Finals and graduation were over, campus was abandoned and they were staying at the house one last night before flying home the next morning. They were watching a movie downstairs in the great room (with the big windows behind you, creepy) when they heard footsteps upstairs. Everyone was accounted for,
downstairs. Figuring some local kids had snuck in, the brothers thoroughly searched the house and found nothing, then went back to watching the movie. No sooner had they sat down than they heard more footsteps and running upstairs. Tired of this game and still thinking it was local kids, they called the Auburn Police Department which sent out a couple of officers who searched the house with the brothers and again found nothing. The brothers, who by now were a little unnerved, went back to the great room. Finally, after the police left the footsteps were heard again, this time the big metal firedoor upstairs slammed shut and the steps were heard coming down the metal stairs. Before the footsteps got to the bottom of the stairs, the brothers ran from the house and didn't return till morning to get their things. No sign of any intruder was ever found, nothing was taken. We later moved into a house on Lakeshore Dr. where the occurrences continued, the most eerie of which happened to one of my pledge brothers. One night over Thanksgiving break he was staying in the house alone. Before going to bed for the night he locked all the doors/windows and shut all the blinds. He was awoken the next morning by the rising sun, every blind in the house was wide open, all of the doors were still locked. My wife hated that house and refused to be alone in a room in it.
While not on Auburn's campus, a brother and I saw what we think was one of the ghosts of Sloss Furnaces. Sloss is a steel mill that operated from the 1800s to 1971 and has been preserved as a museum/landmark of the American Industrial Revolution. An oral history project at the University of West Alabama records part of the history of the ghosts of Sloss at
http://facstaff.uwa.edu/ab/sloss.htm. An estimated 50 people died at Sloss during its operation. My brother and I went to Sloss and went down into the tunnel that runs under the railroad tracks where coal, iron ore and limestone was dumped from rail cars and then feed into the furnaces by a conveyor belt. This brick lined tunnel is dark and creepy. An old shuttle car is still in the tunnel and we walked toward it to get a better look. As we approached it, a white, translucent figure of a man materialized out of the darkness beyond the car and begin to silently approach (note that I
didn't say walk) us. We scrambled up the ladder and out of that tunnel so fast that we actually leapt off the top rung of the ladder. I have never been so scared in my life!
Pratt Hall at Huntington College in nearby Montgomery, Ala has a ghost that is so well known that it appears on the school's website
http://www.huntingdon.edu/traditions/redlady.html I've judged a debate tournament on that floor of Pratt Hall and got a definite uneasy feeling. Note that the places where she is sighted are now the sorority chapter rooms!
Great stories! I'm going to go turn on all the lights in my house and lock my door now......
