The Iron Butterfly: Ghost Stories of Ruby Cheek
Ruby Moss Cheek was a beloved Centre alumni known for her compassion, drive, and generous soul. In 1929, Cheek graduated from the college. While on the College’s campus, Ruby Moss Cheek was known for her invaluable involvement and high academic achievement. In the 1929 yearbook, the editor writes, “She has been a distinct asset to the college; not only because of her high academic standing, but because of the enviable place she has won for herself in the Music Department”.1 Ruby Moss Cheek served as a Chairman on the Music Committee in 1923 and 1925. She was passionate about music and the college which in turn led to her part-time position as a music instructor for over forty years. In 1932, she became an Instructor of Music on the Centre faculty. Her love for the college was recognized by those around her, noting that her life was “wrapped up” in the betterment of the college and “the furtherance of its best interest”.2 She devoted her time as a professor and showed genuine interest in the students since she was a Centre graduate herself. Ruby and her husband, Samuel Cheek, lived in a beautiful white house, which is now the Ruby Cheek House, located just on the periphery of present day campus. Ruby Moss Cheek left her house to the college which she outlined in her will. She wanted her students who loved the college as much as she did to reside inside the walls that she once lived, and when she passed away in her home on August 1, 1994, the college would now pass on the legacy of Ruby Cheek for years of students to come.
While Ruby was known for her gentle soul, she was also known as one to discipline and act as a role model for the students and staff. Her generosity emanated off of her, but she was also dignified and prided herself on community responsibility, some called her the “iron butterfly”. There is no denying that Ruby was a sweet and charismatic woman, but she also knew how to discipline her students if they were acting out of line. Ruby is not like most ghosts, she is not devious or malevolent like some ghosts on Centre’s campus, she is a spirit that exists out of love for her students and her campus. However, if one mistreats Ruby or her house, she is still willing to reprimand them, even from beyond the grave.
Lily Roark ‘20, felt the love that Ruby had for the college when residing in the Ruby Cheek House her junior year. One night while parked outside the house, Roark and her friend were listening to music and noticed the flickering light on the back porch which had always been there. Jokingly, Roark and her friend tried to communicate with Ruby by asking her to disclose her music preferences by flickering the light once if she liked the music, and twice if she did not. Roark watched as she turned on modern day music and the light would distinctly flicker two times. Roark emphasized that “it was just really odd” and they both had chills run down their spins. Eerily, Roark went to put on classical music, she was shocked to see the dull orange light flicker exactly one time.
As Roark navigated her experience, she told her friends and fellow Ruby Cheek House residents about the strange and unsettling encounter. Roark was frustrated by the response of the rowdy football boys that laughed and snickered at her like she was crazy to think her experience was true. Loudly, one of her friends' voice echoes across the room “I don't believe in Ruby, I'm not scared of no ghosts, especially an old fat bitch of one”.3 What happened next would leave the residents of Ruby Cheek rattled. The long fluorescent lights in the living room began to turn off and on, snaking back and forth from one end of the light to the next. The TV that once had the football game on, “went black. And it's like smoke started coming out the back of it...I know this sounds absurd”.4 Chaos broke out within the living room, Roark recalls the boys running out of the room because of how afraid they were. Roark afterwards is quick to note, “we insult the woman who owns this house. And this happens”.5 While it can not be confirmed whether the paranormal exists, based on Roark’s experiences it may suggest that the spirit of Ruby does live in this house, and since she had a deep care for it, she would of course be angered if someone disrespected her and the home she lived in on top of maintaining a role of instructing students to act in line.
Roark has what she calls her “Danville grandparents” who she meets for dinner occasionally. She was still shaken up by her experiences in the Ruby Cheek House and felt the urge to tell Mary Beth Garriott, her Danville grandma, about them. Garriott revealed that she was friends with Ruby Moss Cheek, who was a kind and generous woman and a music instructor at Centre. Roark immediately thought “when we played the classical music, that's the only thing she liked. And I hadn't even told Mary Beth about any of this stuff yet”.6 She then told Garriott about her experiences, and she was not surprised by these occurrences. Garriott admitted that she did not believe in ghosts, but if she had to “believe in one, especially from your [Roark] stories, I would believe that Ruby would be looking over that house, because in her will, it was so important to her to have that be with good people”.7 When looking at Ruby’s involvement on campus, testimonies, and stories, it is evident that she loved Centre College. Roark’s story reaffirms that Ruby wanted students to respect the college as she once did, and if anyone were to disrespect it, Ruby would make her discontent known by reprimanding the students who still occupy the campus.
Roark is not the only person to experience the paranormal presence in Ruby Cheek. Katie Jenkins interviewed Nate Bentley who currently lives in Ruby Cheek. Bentley and his roommate had hung up cardboard cutouts of beer cases, but ran into an issue after hanging them up. Sporadically, each cardboard cutout will fall off the wall. Bentley noted that he would feel the duct tape after they had fallen off and they were completely sticky. Bentley’s roommate had heard ghost stories about Ruby and the two boys wanted to try and communicate with her. “We picked a random case, it was a case of Busch Light hanging up on the wall and we said, “Ruby, if you don't like this beer wall, knock this case down””.8 Although Bentley did not see it himself, after some time away from his room he came back to find the Busch Light cutout no longer on the wall, it was on the floor, duct tape still sticky as if it is ready to be hung.
Both Roark and Bentley suggest, even with little knowledge of Ruby herself, that their experiences were unnerving, but never scary. Bentley affirmed his belief that Ruby was a friendly ghost, and that she wants people to respect her home. Roark also mentions that when she felt the presence of Ruby, she felt “comfortable and safe”. Interestingly, both students who lived in this house and had a paranormal experience address that Ruby is trying to protect her home, and from research, it is known that Ruby deeply cared for her house and who would reside in it in the future.
Ruby Cheek engages with Centre College as a haunted place because it creates a sense of community. Ruby spent her life dedicated to the students of Centre College and enriching the arts and by creating relationships with her students that lasted beyond class and even beyond graduation. Both while she was alive and now deceased, Ruby has always been known for engaging with, correcting, and admiring Centre students. Students tell the story of Ruby, as both a beloved professor at Centre and the ghost that still roams the halls of Ruby Cheek. But more importantly, Ruby’s legacy has created a community with expectations to respect and cherish ghosts on Centre’s campus. Although students tell stories of Ruby, she continues to hold a space on Centre’s campus through the donation of her home, which allows her to continue to guide and mold students into better versions of themselves. For those like Roark and Bentley, the community of those who have felt her spirit believe the reason behind her paranormal behavior was her trying to protect her home and the loving and everlasting community of Centre College.
A figure like Ruby Cheek fits into the experience at Centre. The relationship between professors and students is one of genuine concern, care, and compassion for the students, but there is a level of discipline that the professors invoke when students are not upholding the high expectations of the college. When examining these relationships, it is evident that students are allowed to make mistakes because the faculty gives students the space to fail because in turn they will support their students no matter what. Ruby illustrates these tendencies as well by giving current students the opportunity to make a mistake and will reprimand them for it even though it comes out of comfort and love. Current students associate Ruby as a professor and authority figure, so when these strange things happen to them they are not startled by it, they almost expect it since there is such a close bond between the students and professors at Centre that does not break when students need to be disciplined because it is built on solid foundations, which Ruby exemplifies. These ghost stories reveal the way in which we create these intricate relationships that define Centre.
The walls of the elegant white building that once housed a cherished Centre professor hold years of Centre College history. While there is a common understanding that the dead, spirits, and the paranormal are evil and scary, there is an unwavering consensus that the spirit of Ruby Cheek is nothing but friendly. The white house embodies a community that Ruby Cheek helped build and has been everlasting. The relationships that Ruby and other faculty create with students and the students create with professors is what characterizes the Centre community through their continuous comfort, support which lays the solid foundation for punishment when students misbehave.
-Abi Bosworth
Sources
- “Old Centre 1929 Women's Department,” Centre College Digital Archives, accessed February 1, 2021, https://centre.omeka.net/items/show/1235.
- “1966 Ruby Moss Cheek 1930,” Centre Alumni, http://alumni.centre.edu/s/285/bp20/interior.aspx?sid=285&gid=1&pgid=659.
- Lily Roark, interview by Abi Bosworth, January 14, 2021.
- Lily Roark, interview by Abi Bosworth, January 14, 2021.
- Lily Roark, interview by Abi Bosworth, January 14, 2021.
- Lily Roark, interview by Abi Bosworth, January 14, 2021.
- Lily Roark, interview by Abi Bosworth, January 14, 2021.
- Nate Bentley, interviewed by Katie Jenkins, January 18, 2021.