The Ghost of Stuart Hall
Stuart Hall has a long, rich history. Standing tall on the north side of Centre’s campus, Stuart Hall was built in 1915. Originally, it stood as a private residence until 1949. It soon became the residential house for the oldest fraternity on Centre’s campus, Beta Theta Pi, from 1949 until 1962. Eventually, Centre moved its fraternity houses to “Greek Row” on the south side of campus, and the Beta fraternity house was sold and bought by Preston-Pruitt Funeral Home. It stood as a funeral home for thirty years, from 1962 until 1992. Thereafter, Centre rebought the house at 517 W Main Street and turned it into the Centre Shoppes, a coffee shop and the college’s bookstore. The Shoppes remained until the year 2005, when Centre turned Stuart Hall into an upperclassmen dormitory, housing approximately twenty-three students each school year.
Given its rich history, Stuart not only houses undergraduate students, but it is also home to several paranormal experiences, which begin between the years of 1992 and 2005 when this building housed the Centre Shoppes. In a 2013 interview, Dorothy (Dottie) Pearl Kirkland discusses these events. Kirkland recounts a few unexplained events that occurred during her time working in Stuart Hall. In her first story, Dottie was sweeping the upstairs floors of Stuart, when a woman came rushing in asking why she was “making so much noise.”[i] She comments that it sounded like “heavy boxes were being moved and dropped” [ii] from down below. Confused, Dottie went to see where the commotion was coming from and found “no boxes, no heavy items” in sight.[iii] Similarly, Ms. Dottie would hear unexplained “footsteps and stompings upstairs.”[iv] Again, she would find no one present; “everything was still.”[v]
Strangely enough, when Ms. Dottie would arrive at the bookstore in the mornings, she would find books “lying on the hallway.... placed all in the middle of the floor.”[vi] There was always “one book that would fall open in the same place.”[vii] Furthermore, Ms. Dottie recounts an active TV in the living room, turning on by itself, and even a doorknob to the women’s bathroom that would shake on its own.
Having heard similar stories told by an alum, I interviewed Adam Johnson ‘20 about his experiences living in Stuart Hall from 2019-2020. There are three main stories that Johnson had to share with me, all of which are not explained by any other reasons.
The first story that Johnson shared was that of their “big, heavy, industrial door”[viii] in the living room area, that separated their suite from the rest of the building. There was “a deadbolt lock and just a normal twist lock”[ix] on this door, used when Stuart was a funeral home to securely store the bodies. He and his other roommates placed a large cement block in the doorway to prevent the heavy door from slamming shut and to allow air to flow between rooms; “it was a piece of cement, like a chunk of cement… a sizable piece and it was heavy.”[x] Adam and his suitemates were sitting in their living room, watching TV one day, when the door slightly opened, the cement rolled out of the way, and the door slammed immediately. “No one had touched it for… probably an hour and a half,”[xi] nor had there been any previous problems with the door. The cement was sizable and heavy; however, this event may have been explained “by the wind,”[xii] or so they thought.
The second experience occurred a few months later. Johnson and his suitemates had posters hung all around the room. Johnson mentions then that “all of a sudden, on multiple posters, at the same time, tacks fell out of the wall… and the posters started to fall and swing.”[xiii] Again, the roommates were in the living room watching TV; “no one had messed with them, nobody bumped the tacks.”[xiv] Just as before, there was no single explanation for why this was occurring.
Lastly and most importantly, Johnson had his own unique experience, alone in his room. Johnson sets the scene:
Adam was sitting on his computer, minding his own business, when he began to hear something; “I think okay...someone's home, someone turned the TV on out in the living room or something.”[xv] However, he did not hear any voices, just the rustling about in the other room. He put his computer down to get up and look around for the noise when he looked up and saw that his TV had turned on. “Again, the remote was on the other side of the room. We had not turned the TV on all year, [and] I was the only one there… It just turned on by itself. I thought it was weird.”[xvi] Johnson got up and went to turn the TV off with the remote, however, found that the remote control was not working. So, like anyone would, he went and found new batteries to replace the previous ones. However, this did not fix the remote and the TV would still not turn off. Instead, he hit the power button on the TV, and the television would still not shut off. Finally, he just unplugged the television. Johnson stated that after this event, the TV remained unplugged the rest of the year. “I wasn't going to mess with it.”[xvii]
Johnson recalls that the College attempted to convert this space into a residence hall, however, its deep, rooted past shines through in every room: a mantle from the private residence, walls with hooks for bookshelves, and even ramps for caskets to be rolled down. It is clear that the paranormal stories in Stuart Hall align. The walls that Johnson’s posters fell from are the same walls that housed Ms. Dottie’s falling books. Similarly, both had a television that turned on under its own power. This is quite exceptional. These details are worth noting and recognizing that there is something very similar happening within the walls of Stuart Hall.
Although not as strong of evidence, students from the class of 2020 and suitemates of Adam took to the Ouija board to communicate with the ghost of Stuart. Making a homemade Ouija board from cardboard, the boys wrote out the alphabet as well as numbers zero to nine. The ghost then communicated with them that he was a member of the Centre baseball team in the 1980s. Similarly, in doing research, I found that the ghost may be named “Demarcus,” however, it cannot be confirmed that the two details are connected in any way.
There are important details of Stuart Hall’s past that people have used to discuss the meanings of paranormal activity within its walls. In connection with the history of Stuart, Wayne King, a former facilities manager of the college, remembers one of his best friends being set up in the Preston-Pruitt Funeral Home as one of the last people to be honored in this space before it was transformed into the Shoppes. Having this “space” be occupied by the dead previously, the connection to the supernatural does not seem out of the ordinary. However, with no name to our ghosts and no outlying stories, it is hard to know who may be occupying this space. This could be the 1980s baseball player from the Ouija Board; however, it could also be any number of these people that were taken to Stuart when it was a funeral home.
Place is a unique characteristic associated with ghosts. Places connect us to the past. The paranormal activity within particular places provides us with the memory and connections of someone who previously lived there or experiences that provide lessons. With place comes belief systems that form out of emotion and experience. The history of Stuart Hall and Centre overlap when Centre uses these buildings of varied histories and incorporates them into their campus community. We can see that the paranormal activity increases when this space becomes part of Centre’s story. Stuart Hall reminds us that with richness and excitement, there are difficulties. To tell the story of Centre College, we must address every incantation of its past. These stories create a fearful and anxious environment in many of the spaces on campus, however, they are important to the history of Centre and should be shared. Paranormal stories are a part of the lived experience of people who have been students, who are students, and supernatural beings that still remain on campus. We should not shy away from Centre’s history; these stories aid in the development of the Centre community as a whole.
-Ellie Jury
Bibliography
Bell, Michael Mayerfeld. "The Ghosts of Place." Theory and Society 26, no. 6 (1997): 813-36. Accessed February 1, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/657936.
Centre College Ghost Stories - Stuart Hall. (n.d.). Retrieved January 24, 2021, from https://centreghosts.omeka.net/exhibits/show/ghoststories/stuart
Hodges, Ben, and Donald Taylor. Oral History Interview. Transcript. All Oral History Transcripts HIS 470 CT 2021, 2021.
Jury, Ellie, and Adam Johnson. HIS 470 Oral History Interview. Transcript. All Oral History Transcripts HIS 470 CT 2021, 2021.
Kim, Jennifer. “ARH 384—Art and Authority: The Power of Images – 517 W Main Street,” 2015. https://sites.google.com/a/centre.edu/kimcampus/
Kim, Jennifer. “ARH 384—Art and Authority: The Power of Images – Centre Shoppes,” 2015. https://sites.google.com/a/centre.edu/kimcampus/centre-shoppes.
Kim, J. “ARH 384—Art and Authority: The Power of Images – Ghost Stories,” 2015. https://sites.google.com/a/centre.edu/kimcampus/ghost-stories
Kim, Jennifer. “ARH 384—Art and Authority: The Power of Images – Preston-Pruitt Funeral Home,” 2015. https://sites.google.com/a/centre.edu/kimcampus/preston-pruitt-funeral-home.
Kim, J. “ARH 384--Art and Authority: The Power of Images – Stuart Hall,” 2015. https://sites.google.com/a/centre.edu/kimcampus/stuart-hall
Photograph. Centre College -- Colleges That Change Lives. CTCL.org. Accessed February 1, 2021. https://ctcl.org/centre-college/.
Pugh, Alana, and Lucas Mozingo. Ghosts at Centre College. Transcipt. All Oral History Transcripts HIS 470 CT 2021, 2021.
Hodges, Ben and Donald (Don) Taylor. Oral History Interview. Transcript. All Oral History Transcripts HIS 470 CT 2021, 2021.
Endnotes
[i] Centre College Ghost Stories - Stuart Hall
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] Ibid.
[iv] Ibid.
[v] Ibid.
[vi] Ibid.
[vii] Ibid.
[viii] Jury & Johnson, HIS 470 Oral History Interview 2021
[ix] Ibid.
[x] Ibid.
[xi] Ibid.
[xii] Ibid.
[xiii] Ibid.
[xiv] Ibid.
[xv] Ibid.
[xvi] Ibid.
[xvii] Ibid.