Midnight Snack for a Ghost

Breckinridge Hall fire, March 2, 1908

On the first floor of Breckinridge Hall at Centre College, midway through her sophomore year, student Beth Morgan woke up to the sound of a mysterious rustling in her dorm room. “Like a bag of chips being…opened,” Morgan described in an interview. After waking her boyfriend, they both conducted a thorough search of the room. The door was locked, and there was no evidence that anything had been disturbed, either by accident or on purpose. Morgan also mentioned, “later, we wondered if it could have been, you know, like, a mouse or something. But…like I said, I lived in Breck for three years and never saw a mouse [and] never saw any signs of a mouse.”[i] To this day, Morgan admits she still has no idea what caused the odd noises.

This is not the only mysterious tale associated with Breckinridge Hall, affectionately known as Breck on campus. In fact, there have been dozens of incidents through the years, and it is widely acknowledged by Centre students, and employees alike that Breck is haunted. One Breck ghost even has a name: Peter. Peter is credited with the majority of mischief that goes on in the dormitory. While Breck is certainly not the only haunted place on campus, it features heavily in Centre’s haunted history. But what about Breck makes it a prime source of mysterious goings on? What makes a place become haunted?

Many haunted places throughout America tend to be older. Is it simply a long history that lends a place the tag of haunted? If so, Breck certainly meets this requirement. First built in 1892, Breckinridge Hall is one of the oldest buildings on Centre’s campus. It has almost always functioned as a dormitory, first for the Danville Theological Seminary and then as a general student residence, but it has also housed offices, classrooms, and even “cadets from the Army Air Corps 20th College Training Detachment”[ii] during the second World War. If the length of a place’s history is responsible for its haunting, then Breck is haunted indeed. But if age is all that is required for paranormal happenings, why do some buildings with even longer backstories have far fewer ghost stories attached to them? For example, Old Centre is not only the oldest building on campus, it is one of the oldest continually used college buildings in America. Yet, it has next to no paranormal stories at all. It seems history is not the only requirement for a haunted place.

Then maybe a place must also have a history of tragedy or incident to become haunted. Breck Hall was involved in a somewhat serious fire on March 2, 1908, which caused at least $40,000 in damage. In the Calendar section of the Cardinal and Blue 1908, the first March entry reads, “Breckinridge Hall burns, causing great damage by fire and water.”[iii]

A newspaper clipping from the time says the “roof of the building and the third floor were consumed and the lower floors badly damaged.”[iv] Although the building sustained injuries, no students were injured or killed in the fire. While a particularly traumatic episode for students who were forced to evacuate or suffer the loss of belongings, Old Centre’s history is still quite a bit darker. It was used as a hospital during the Civil War, where many men were either irreparably injured or died. So violence is probably not how a place becomes haunted.

Breck’s haunting may come down to the notoriety of its most famous ghost. Peter has been involved in a number of incidents in the building, ranging from mildly odd to downright terrifying. One alumni recalls a summer in which “the window, the large window on the third floor, it just completely shatters.”[v] Peter is described by most to be generally mischievous rather than malicious. I decided during the course of my research to set some special time aside for Peter, in which I could figure out how much of his legend was based in fact.

The legend of Peter states he was a student who jumped out a window, although it is unclear exactly why. Some say it was a suicide, while others maintain it was an accidental death from attempting to escape the fire. The yearbook coverage of the 1908 Breck fire makes no mention of any deaths or injuries, but a newspaper article from the time reveals “two [students]… had narrow escapes, being compelled to slide down a rope from the third floor, having been cut off by the flames in the hall.”[vi] While neither student was named Peter, and neither suffered any serious injury, it is interesting to note the commonality of students making a hasty exit from a window. As mentioned before, the trauma resulting from having to evacuate out a window to escape a devastating fire could also contribute to haunted feelings regarding the incident’s aftermath or fear that it could happen again. Peter could represent a manifestation of such fears.

An interview with Wayne King, the recently retired director of facilities on campus, asserted the more tragic possible backstory about Peter. King stated, “a student had committed suicide in that [Breck] room almost 50 years to the day that we started having these problems.”[vii] King had earlier admitted Breck was one of the more problem places when it came to paranormal activity on campus. King’s story took place sometime in the 70’s, so I began my search with the yearbooks between 1921 and 1929.

After combing through hundreds of pages, I finally discovered an “In Memorium” for a student called Robert Dale Holmes in 1928. It is also worth noting this was the first yearbook in which Breck’s photo was absent from the campus photos. But further searching into newspaper articles of the time revealed that Dale Holmes did not commit suicide in Breck, but rather was hit by a car in a suspected murder attempt. Dale Holmes was walking down the sidewalk with a friend, when a car driven by three African American males swerved off the road and hit both of them, causing injuries that later led to Dale Holmes’s death in the hospital hours later. This was a fascinating avenue of research, as the articles documenting the incident and the subsequent trial embodied other haunting issues at the time, such as racial tensions and the tragedy of young, unnatural death. Peter could have arisen as a response to these tensions, or even as a way to remember someone who was clearly well liked on campus. Dale Holmes’s parents later created the Robert Dale Holmes Memorial Prize in remembrance of him. This award is still given to students today.

A case can be made, then, that it is many factors that go into making a place prime for ghostly encounters. Breck seems to have a perfect ghostly cocktail with its long, interesting history and iconic ghost. Breck is also fraught with emotional importance, more so than almost any other building on campus. Students have lived there as long as the building has existed. It represents a place to rest, meet friends, and relax. This gives it a special energy and importance that other, older buildings do not have.

Is there then, a formula for a haunted place? There could be, but during my research into the paranormal happenings of Breck, I recognized another plausible explanation for the incidents. Perhaps Breck is really haunted. It seems silly to discount so many detailed and specific accounts from many different students and employees over the years. Stories range from large to small scale, creepy to terrifying, but always embody a sense of the unexplainable. As Beth Morgan puts it, “I don't… discard…people's stories when they say something like this happened to them…I also just really enjoy trying to figure out…what could have been here, you know, what was here before? What's the story of this place?”[viii] Breck certainly has many stories to tell. Perhaps the reason there are so many ghost stories inside Breckinridge Hall is simply because that’s where the ghosts are.

-Olivia Russell