Haunted Halls of Ivy: Ghosts of Southern Colleges and Universities

If you're touring Flagler College in historic St. Augustine, look for an old man in a straw hat who wanders away from your group. He is Henry Flagler, railroad magnate, co-owner of Standard Oil, and perhaps the man most responsible for the Florida boom. He built the spectacular, 540-room, Moorish Revival palace that now houses his namesake college. And he died back in 1913. The glow around the door of the unoccupied room on the third floor is the spirit of Henry Flagler's second wife. The phantom footsteps on the marble stairs to the mezzanine are the wraith of his third wife. The woman in black beckoning from the fourth floor is the ghost of his mistress, said to be imprisoned there. Haunted Halls of Ivy contains thirty-nine supernatural tales from colleges and universities throughout the South. Some of the region's oldest, largest, and most famous institutions are represented here, as are smaller, well-respected schools. This isn't the dull, archetypal stuff you had to learn in Professor Staff's Paranormal Events 101 class back at State Tech U.

At Virginia Military Institute, you'll see the statue of Stonewall Jackson that turns its bronze head in disgust every time a cadet is drummed out of the corps. sIn the shadow of the University of Texas Tower, you'll encounter the spectres of the victims killed on the day in 1966 when Charles Whitman went hunting for humans. At Transylvania University in Kentucky, you'll learn the curse of the mad professor known in his day as "the Daniel Boone of American science." At Belmont University in Tennessee, you'll visit the mansion haunted by the woman who could out-Scarlett any Southern belle, real or fictional. At the University of Virginia, you'll hear the footsteps of the professor shot dead back in the days when students openly assaulted their instructors, even at Thomas Jefferson's "Academical Village." Indeed, by the time you turn the final page of this book, you'll have had a grand time getting your graduate-level education in the haunts of Southern colleges from Virginia to Texas.