Ghostly Tenants in Horky House

Ghostly Tenants in Horky House

Centre College (Danville, Ky. : 1918- )—Anecdotes
Centre College (Danville, Ky. : 1918- )—Buildings
Centre College (Danville, Ky. : 1918- )—History
Centre College (Danville, Ky. : 1918- )—Students
Ghosts—Kentucky—Danville
Haunted places—Kentucky—Danville
Haunted universities and colleges—Kentucky—Danville

This oral history addresses the hauntings of the Floyd Sisters in Centre College's Horky House

Baughman, Pam

2021_01_15

Aponte, Ella

All Rights Reserved

MP4

English

Oral history (literary work)

Aponte, Ella

Baughman, Pam

Horky House, Centre College, Danville , KY

Ghosts at Centre Interview
Interviewer: Ella Aponte
Interviewee: Pam Baughman
Interview Conducted on January 15th, 2021










Ella Aponte 0:01
My name is Ella Aponte and today I am interviewing Pam Baughman, who is a Centre alum, Associate Dean and Director of Admission. I'm here today with Pam Baughman. Today's January 15, 2021. We are recording this interview over video chat, and today we will be discussing Pam's experiences during her time here at Centre College. Thank you for joining me today.

Pam Baughman 0:25
Thank you appreciate being invited to join you.

Ella Aponte 0:29
So if we could just start by you explaining what your history is at Centre and kind of what you do in a typical day.

Pam Baughman 0:39
Okay, great. So, I come from a Centre family, I had an older sister who attended Centre, and so I was a younger sibling that came here in 1989. So that may feel like I don't know, ghost story time to you all and your generation, but I graduated in 1993. During my time as a Centre student, I spent a lot of my extracurricular time helping the admission office with tours and hosting students. And so, when I graduated, I was on my way to pursue a graduate program and then I started questioning whether that was exactly the program I wanted to do. In the meantime, a position in the admission office opened and they called me and said, "Hey, we'd love for you to apply" and I thought, okay, I'll do this a couple years, and just while I'm kind of refocusing on my graduate school plan, and 27 years later, I'm still here. And I've worked that entire duration in the admission office, and I've evolved sort of from a counseling role to the role I'm in now, which I do work closely with students, there's a small segment with whom I work, but my overall job is trying to take all the puzzle pieces of all the efforts that we do, and kind of help them fit together so that we as an overall operation are kind of functioning very well. And all our initiatives are kind of collaborative and coming together. So, I mentor a lot of our younger counselors, as they're getting started in their career in higher education, and also doing a lot for admission decisions, financial aid, scholarships, all of those good things.

Ella Aponte 2:25
Awesome! So you've definitely had a lot of time here on Centre's campus, so in your time, your many years here, have you experienced anything strange or unexplainable? It doesn't have to be anything major, but just something that didn't quite make sense or was a little creepy?

Pam Baughman 2:44
Yes. And so, the current office I'm in is Boles Hall, and we moved over here, about five or six years ago now. Maybe it's that long. But the office where I started, and where I worked for the duration of my career was in the Horky House. And there is sort of a legend that the Horky sisters, I don't know how far back they go, were educators, and ended up living there together. I don't know if they had technically passed away in the home. But I was told when I joined the staff, that The Sisters, people would call them "The Sisters" kind of haunt the building. And so, it's kind of a running joke. And you know, we would Haha, this and Haha, that. But there were nights when I would be the only one in the building working by myself. And I would hear door shut, I would hear footsteps. And you kind of get up and you go looking to see if somebody came in or went out. And you realized you're still the only one there. And there was one night where I was working on a mailing and it kind of just involves some mindless labeling and kind of organizing of a large batch of publications. So, I was down in the lobby and I had been up in my office, which was on the second floor and I had my computer was open and you know, I'd left my purse and some other things up there with the light on and the door open. And then was down in the lobby trying to organize this mailing and thought I heard somebody upstairs and so I went up there and my door was shut. I was the only one in the building, I think. So, there were moments kind of where I would kind of look around and you think, Oh, is this place really haunted? And you'd kind of say, Well, if they were maybe harmful spirits, maybe something would have happened to me by now? But so, I just kind of would kind of roll with it and think it's just The Sisters. We would just say it's The Sisters.

Ella Aponte 4:50
So, did these experiences happen the entire time you worked in Horky House up until you move to Boles hall?

Pam Baughman 4:58
That's a good question. Um, we got a little busier. So, I think the time that I worked there, we kept adding to our staff. So, we kept adding, we had to split some offices. And we had to do that. So there seemed to be more activity. So, there were more people in the building at different times of the day. prior to moving over to Boles, just because of our travel schedules were a little bit more robust, we had more of us. So, I don't recall being by myself as much, and maybe hearing those noises. But there were quite a few times throughout my time over there that I would think I would hear footsteps or doors shut. And then I finally got to the point where I was like, and it's just The Sisters, I'm going to let it go.

Ella Aponte 5:44
Yeah, thank you for sharing that have these experiences that you've had shaped how you think about your work, or maybe what you think about Centre, when you're thinking back on these experiences that you've had and how they made you feel during that time?

Pam Baughman 5:59
I think it just reinforced that just every space and every person have a history. And even though Horky House meant something to me, and I experienced in it in one way, for my whole time there, someone else experienced that as a home a residential setting. So, it kind of made me think about it differently. Because it was an office space for me, where previously had been a home for other people before center kind of acquired the property. So, I guess that would be my greatest takeaway from it is just a constant reminder that not just people, but places have history, you know, buildings kind of have their own story to tell.

Ella Aponte 6:44
That's actually a big theme of what we're talking about in our class right now, how place really impacts what people believe and what happens throughout history. And you mentioned that The Sisters, this was their home, so it held a different significance to them. So, what types of places are important to you and why are those places important to you? And do you think that might have an effect on people in the future who might inhabit those spaces?

Pam Baughman 6:44
That's a really good question. You know I think childhood homes always kind of evoke a feeling, smells, memories, things like that. You know you drive by your elementary school; I just think those things that kind of tie milestones always have a lot of significance. You know, your first formative memories as a child probably involve where you were and what you remember of that. Where you played, or where you read, you know maybe the chores you did, things like that to better your household. But I think for me Old Centre has remained. I have been here for a lot of construction and renovation and advancement, but Old Centre is Old Centre. It’s like at the heart of it and has remained. It’s been renovated interiorly I guess you could say, but it's still really ever present I guess, the building that I had, the hardest time when we renovated was actually Sutcliffe because when I went to school here, the way you entered was just a one floor and then it kind of expanded to more levels as you move through the building. And when we first renovated it, and it went to three stories. Like immediately up, I felt like this building is blocking the sun, it's blocking everything out. And that one was the hardest one for me, that kind of evolved in a way that felt less tied to the old experience I had. But, you know, the library still feels very much the same to me. The Campus Center is brand new, so but I expected that to be brand new, um, just because, you know, we leveled the old building and replaced it with something, you know, very, very different.

Ella Aponte 9:25
Yes, definitely. I think it's really interesting how, like you mentioned all the renovations kind of change the Centre experience as you go through the years. Like I'm sure your Centre experience was very different from someone four years after you were 10 years after you and it's kind of amazing how just the layout of the campus and the structuring of the buildings have so much effect on that.

Pam Baughman 9:48
Yeah, absolutely.

Ella Aponte 9:51
So, what do you think of ghost stories and just ghosts in general? What is your opinion on that whole area of history or social experience?

Pam Baughman 10:04
That's a, that's a really good question. I have told my husband, that we were having this conversation. And he was like, he's like, he just kind of looked at me said, "What do you think about ghosts?" And I was like, you know, so I thought about it a little bit this morning. I think it's arrogant of us to think that we know everything that happens in a global, spiritual, universal kind of experience. I guess. So, to me, I believe that anything's possible, I guess, you know, we could be a very small aspect of a much larger kind of system of some kind. So, I want to hope that there's a way for a spiritual kind of continuation of sorts of people who have lived fulfilling lives and impacted others and been tied to others and things like that. And I do have one story that I think, this is a personal story, more so than a senator story, but I was very close with my grandmother and my grandmother had passed away. She gotten a clean, clean bill of health on a Monday and had an aneurysm on a Thursday, that same week, and passed away unexpectedly. And it was a shock for us. I had kept, for a while, the bulletin of her funeral service, tucked in the corner of a mirror on my dresser. And it was there was a wooden kind of frame to it and it was tucked down really, like I mean, really snug in the corner. I mean, you would have had to slide it out to get it out of the corner of the mirror. I'd had, I was really wrestling with the fact I didn't get to see her before she passed away. My oldest child was two, we'd seen her on his second birthday and a month later, she passed away. And, and I just, I just had this really unsettled feeling. And then kind of one night I just, I woke up the next morning, I had a dream about her and I kind of woke up at peace. I don't know, it was like, I just I had lost a little of this anxiety feeling or the sickness in my stomach or that pit kind of that you get when you have when you're a little upset and I, I woke up and I kid you not that bulletin that was tucked in my window was laying on the side of my bed down, like where I would put my feet.

Ella Aponte 12:44
Wow!

Pam Baughman 12:45
And I mean, I we had a ceiling fan, but it had never blown it out. It had never and I felt like the timing of that, it was almost like I felt like she was saying to me, "it's okay. It's, you're going to be okay, I am okay. Let's just kind of let this now move on. And you gotta you got to get rid of that. That unsettled feeling you have", but there was kind of a piece that washed over me. So, I don't know, I think sometimes there are ways where there are messages.

Ella Aponte 13:20
That's amazing. I think a lot of times with the idea of ghosts or spirits and all these things, it's meant to make people afraid. So, it's refreshing to hear a story where it actually brought you peace and kind of washed away some negative feelings that was kind of a different perspective that I hadn't heard before.

Pam Baughman 13:39
Yeah, and I guess I didn't really think about it much coming into play in this conversation just until this is kind of evolving, but my mom who goes often to the cemetery where my grandparents are buried, she goes and she cleans up and she takes her hand tremors and she's a perfectionist she likes no weeds, but my grandmother was an avid kind of a she loved nature she loved being out in nature she was very skilled on knowing all the different kinds of birds and but she loved bluebirds more than anything just there was blue birds that would visit her deck and my mom will tell me every once in a while that she's sitting out there working on this every once while Bluebird will come and sit on the marker, and my mom finds a lot of comfort in that. Whether, whether you're reading into it and you want it to be something comforting or not. If you walk away feeling comforted and you know, I mean there's no harm in that.

Ella Aponte 14:41
Right. Yeah, belief is another big theme we're talking about in this class how you can sometimes kind of will yourself to believe something and then you like see things or whether it's those things are actually happening and causing you to believe it. It's kind of hard to tell like which way it goes. Have you come to find out that a lot of people, um, maybe at Centre or even in your personal life kind of shared the same ideas as you? Or have you found that most people are a little more skeptical of the supernatural?

Pam Baughman 15:19
Well, all the people that I worked with, I mean, we all kind of laughed about The Sisters. And I think there are a number of people that will tell you, "I heard door shut", "I heard footsteps", or had something I think I had one colleague who had a drawer in her desk, that it wasn't one that like naturally would just kind of open you know, sometimes they're a little off kilter. This was when she, you know, she had to actually pull and push in, it was actually hard to maneuver. And she was very, very kind of, you know, obsessive compulsive about her desk, everything had it space and nobody I knew I did never wanted to disrupt sort of her flow of where her materials were. And every once in a while, she'd find her desk drawer open when nobody else was there. And she'd come in, she'd beat us all in in the morning, and then it would be open. And she was like, I don't know why this darn desk just keeps opening, but we would joke, and she'd say, "Must be The Sisters they were looking for, you know, paperclips" or, you know, we just kind of had a running joke. So, I think there was always a little kind of possibility among our staff. I don't know if I would go as far to say everybody else, we had a shared belief in it. But I think we always held out the possibility that there was a little something a little energy or something going on maybe? I don't know that. I could say more broadly that people experience it the same way. Because I don't know that it's a topic that's discussed much.

Ella Aponte 16:47
Mm hmm.

Pam Baughman 16:50
I mean, I know with my mom, we've had conversations about some of those things. And some of its intuition, I guess, anticipating things, but you know, whether my mom was reading into the visit from the bluebirds or not, you know, um, you know, we would talk about some things like that, that you find comforting, but I don't know that I could go as far as say it’s maybe shared belief.

Ella Aponte 17:13
Mm hmm. I think it's definitely more a part of Centre's culture than it is anywhere else. I know, before I came here, I hadn't really thought about, I mean, I would love to watch scary movies, and all of those kinds of things, but I've never really thought about like true ghost stories and things that were happening to people. And here it seems like I hear about it all the time. So, I think it's kind of interesting. I think because Centre's campus is so old, how history kind of influences the presence of ghosts and ghost stories and things like that.

Pam Baughman 17:46
Have you just with your project that you're doing? Are there other people you get the opportunity to interview like Wayne King?

Ella Aponte 17:55
I think someone from my class is interviewing Wayne King! We all pick one person and we're doing interviews in reading into a ghost story at Centre and kind of analyzing the history behind it and all of that and I think someone gets the chance to interview him.

Pam Baughman 18:11
I think I think Wayne is a wealth of all the legends, the stories, I think he's kind of heard it all. Now I lived in Breck Hall when I was a student here. I lived on the first floor at one point, and I lived on the second floor. I never lived on the third floor. But I had friends who lived on the third floor that they claim they heard all kinds of stuff in the attic, and that there were ghosts in the attic. I mean, have you heard that? That there?

Ella Aponte 18:41
I have, I've heard a few stories about Breck Hall.

Pam Baughman 18:45
Yes. So, I mean, I don't. I don't personally remember; I don't think I was close enough to where I would have maybe noticed. Because there was always a level above of activity of just students. But that one is one that is known to have its own history. For sure.

Ella Aponte 19:05
Yes, for sure. Well, thank you so much. Oh, are you thinking of other things? Yeah, of course.

Pam Baughman 19:12
Well, I just wondered, have you been able, I hope someone will talk about maybe history in Old Centre. I mean, just because we had the history of the building itself and serving, you know, as a hospital during the Civil War, I think, lends itself to the possibility that there could be some stories.

Ella Aponte 19:30
I definitely agree. Well, thank you so much for joining me on this interview today and if you're interested in seeing the interview and the project after it's completed, it will be added into the archives at the Grace Doherty Library, so everybody will be able to see it and read about it and everything, but thank you again!

Pam Baughman 19:53
Thank you. This was fun, and I wish your class well. This seems like a pretty fun project.

Ella Aponte 20:00
For sure. Thank you!

Pam Baughman 20:01
Thanks, Ella.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai
END OF INTERVIEW

MP4

20:02