A photographer walked the halls of Carnall Hall at the University of Arkansas in the 1990s, wandering from room to room, just before the 1906 girls dormitory closed. She heard footsteps above, but assumed someone else was in the building. Wrong!
When she ran out of film, she stopped in the library. "Bam!" Two books that had been in the center of the table were on the floor.
Shelle Stormoe of the Arkansas Heritage Preservation Program spoke Thursday to gifted and talented students at Helen Tyson Middle School. She shared stories about schools -- colleges and universities -- in Arkansas that seem to hold a haunt in detention.
As the restoration of the building continued in the early 2000s, workmen offered reports of a strange apparition. "They saw a floating gown with no head or feet," Stormoe said, lowering her voice as if the spirit could hear it. "It walked out of the wall, then across the hall and into the other wall."
Stormoe explained ghost stories fall in the genre of folklore, with a haunting at the center of the plot. "A ghost story is the type of folklore passed by word of mouth, and it's passed for a very long time," she said. "And what a great background we have in Arkansas.
"And it assumes you believe in ghosts."
"No ghost story can be proven true or false," Stormoe said. "But that isn't the point. Ghost stories are meant to share an experience. You'll have to make up your own mind whether or not ghosts are real."
Other haunts make their homes in the remains of the Cane Hill College.
Cane Hill in west Washington County was settled in 1828 by a group from Maumelle. Cane Hill was an arrival station for the Trail of Tears, but the new settlers pushed the Indians out.
"Cane Hill had the first public school in Northwest Arkansas, the first library, the first Sunday school and the first college," Stormoe said.
The school opened in 1835 -- one year before statehood -- with grades kindergarten through eighth.
"It was a good place for an ambitious student," Stormoe said. "Attendance had been erratic, with students having to wait until another teacher showed up."
In 1850, the school became a high school, and in 1858, the college offered bachelor of arts degrees. In 1861, all of the students were men, but most left to fight on one side or the other during the Civil War. In 1875, bachelor's degrees were awarded to women.
In 1885, a new college opened in Fayetteville, to which Cane Hill lost many students. A fire destroyed the main building, and in 1891, the school closed its doors.
The haunted activity in Cane Hill seems to come from the earliest settlers, Stormoe said.
Nancy Wright Abbot, her husband and nine children lived in a cabin, Stormoe said. On June 15, 1839, the family awoke to the sounds of men and horses in their yard. The men were asking for a place to stay.
"They heard a ruckus, and thought Native Americans had come to rob them," Stormoe related. "She wouldn't open the door, but Mr. Wright was much more trusting. They stabbed him with a Bowie knife, and murdered four children. Nancy Wright escaped with five children.
The Cane Hill Indian Regulator Co., a vigilante group but the only law around, rounded up and hanged Cherokee men without evidence or a trial. But years later, two men in Indian Territory admitted to the murder on their deathbeds.
When driving through Cane Hill, cars often stall, Stormoe reported. "The cars will roll backward like somebody was pulling it, like somebody was trying to keep them there."
To continue the story, a woman took a friend home about 1 a.m., and rode through town to her own home. On the porch of a business next to the road, the lady saw a man hanging with is head cocked to the side and his shoes about three feet off the ground.
She thought the man had committed suicide. She turned around to help, and was about to touch his leg, and nothing was there. The man had disappeared.
NW News on 11/06/2014