My Ghost Story

I attended Harding College in Search, Arkansas my freshman and sophomore years, beginning in 1966, majoring in music. The head of the music department, Dr. Moore would occasionally confide in his music theory class some of his rather unusual convictions, namely his belief in ghosts and UFO’s. He claimed first hand encounters with both.

One day he told us about a ghost that inhabited the very building in which we were sitting. Being of skeptical mind, I dismissed both. As I remember the story, a girl jumped or fell from third story of the dormitory of a Woman’s college that was later purchased to become Harding College. She fell over the stair well and was killed when she struck the ground floor. I think we were told that she committed suicide, but I don’t remember the details of stories told fifty years ago. Anyway, as the story goes, that dormitory was eventually demolished and bricks from that building were salvaged and reused to construct the music building in use while I attended Harding. The prevailing opinion was that with the bricks came the ghost of that unfortunate girl.

I had heard the stories, but I dismissed them as flights of overactive imaginations. Since my roommate had keys to the music building, I would sometimes go late at night to practice. One night I was there alone, as usual. Since I was studying clarinet privately and had to play a solo as an exam, I decided to also record myself playing the piano accompaniment and then play the clarinet along with my own recording. I had my Wollensak reel to reel recorder all set up and was playing the grand piano in the main room on the first floor in the center of the building. There were some other classrooms, offices and studios on the first floor. The second floor was given over to practice rooms in addition to one classroom. There was a set of stairs at either end of the building leading up to the second floor. Other music students had claimed to hear a piano playing from a practice room on the second floor and some thought that they had seen the ghost of the girl who had died in the dormitory of the earlier college. These events always took place at night when the building was closed and locked. I thought that it was nonsense. But while I was playing downstairs, I heard footsteps upstairs. I stopped, listened and continued playing, dismissing the sound as the creaking of the old building. But then the sound footsteps began traversing the hallway that extended the length of the building. They began pretty much at one end, near the stairs and slowly proceeded toward the stairs at the other end. They were clear and deliberate and I could easily hear the progress and direction of the steps. I heard no music except for what I was playing. I did not see the ghost nor hear anything but the footsteps, but as the sound of the footfalls began descending the steps, I hastily grabbed my music, clarinet and tape recorder, and fled the building. That put an end to my late night practicing and recording sessions and I became a reluctant believer.

If you want to more about the ghost, check out the links below:

http://www.prairieghosts.com/harding.html

http://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2007/oct/07/ghost-stories-white-county-galloway-gerti-20071007/