Halloween recap: campus ghost stories

By Aaron Fountain

Dr. Debbie Garrick is the Associate Vice President of University Development Alumni Relations and Executive Director of the Winthrop University Alumni Association, famously known as the “residential historian.”  

She has dozens of stories about Winthrop campus that will intrigue any listener.  

Many ghost stories exist around campus, but Garrick gave a testimonial on three ghostly occurrences -- one about a young woman who is said to haunt Margaret Nance, one about an entity in Byrnes and a third about Tillman’s namesake. 

The Margaret Nance ghost

A young woman named Shelly (other sources state that she is unidentified) lived in Margaret Nance in the early 1900s.  She was engaged to a soldier, who was shortly going to be deployed overseas to Europe to take arms against Germany.  

After his deployment, he left Shelly impregnated.  Her pregnancy was an appalling fact to her friends and university faculty members, and she was subsequently asked to leave campus and all her belongings behind.  

She was promised that her steamer trunk would be sent to her at the nearby train station.  

Traveling a few blocks down the road, Shelly reached the train station and had two letters in her possession.  One was from her parents, but the other came from her boyfriend’s sister.  While reading the letter from her soon to be sister-in-law, Shelly read the chilling statement: her boyfriend had been killed in action.  Devastated and taken aback by this depriving story stripping her from her only love, Shelly made a chilling decision.  She leaped onto an oncoming train.  

It is reported that Shelly has come back to Nance searching for her streamer trunk.  She is said to be roaming in the halls at night.  Residents of Nance can be on the lookout for Shelly; she just might make a visit to your room on her inevitable search for her trunk.   

 The Organ in Byrnes

Byrnes Auditorium is the home of one of the finest instrument on campus: the D.B Johnson Memorial Organ.  This beautiful instrument is hard for any student to get a single second of practice time on it.  

One time, a young lady’s roommate was said to have been granted access to the organ.  Her roommate went off to play the instrument for one day, but never returned.  

Hours passed and eventually the young lady notice that her roommate was missing class.  Her curiosity drove her to go to Byrnes to see where her roommate was.  When she arrived at Byrnes, see approach a terrifying sight: her roommate was pressed down on the organ with an unidentified man behind her, pinning her down.  Her roommate was continually playing the fabulous organ but couldn’t move.  When the young lady would try to get her roommate lifted up from the organ, the man would push her right back down.  Scared and confused, the young lady left the scene and never returned. 

This story was told to Debbie Garrick by a Winthrop Alumni, when asked about any ghost stories on campus.  This story was reported as an actual experience by the alumnus.   

 The laughter inside Tillman

Tillman is the oldest structure on campus.  

Built my prisoners from a South Carolina penitentiary, it is said to be home of many ghostly encounters.  It is reported that D.B. Johnson and Ben Tillman have been seen roaming the halls.  

In the 1980s a graduate assistant was transferring paperwork in the basement.  While walking to his destination he encountered a man holding tools.  Wondering if the man was lost he asked where he was going.  The man didn’t respond, and walked away through a wall.  

Garrick said she has had her own ghostly encounter in Tillman: 

She used to have an office on the third floor of Tillman. During Convocation one year, she heard laughter outside of her office.  It sounded like a group of college girls out in the hallway. When she opened the door to the third floor there was nobody around.  The laughter vanished.  

Garrick said this and similar events have happened to her multiple times.