Ruby Cheek Doesn't Like Busch Light

Ruby Cheek Doesn't Like Busch Light

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 is an oral history interview about paranormal activity in the Ruby Cheek House on the Centre College campus.

Bentley, Nate

2021_01_18

Jenkins, Katie

All Rights Reserved

MP4

English

Oral History (literary work)

Jenkins, Katie

Bentley, Nate

Ruby Cheek House, Centre College, Danville, KY

Katie Jenkins
0:02
Okay, my name is Katie Jenkins and today I'm interviewing Nate Bentley, who is currently a junior at Center College. Today is January 7, or January 18 2020. We're recording this interview over zoom because Nate is on campus while I'm in Louisville, Kentucky. Today we will be discussing Nate's experiences during the 2020 fall semester.

Nate Bentley
0:24
Awesome. Good to be on here. I'm nervous. [Laughter- Katie] Feel like I'm on a show right now.

Katie Jenkins
0:32
No need to be nervous. Um, Let's start out with why did you choose to attend Centre?

Nate Bentley
0:40
Well, I did an overnight at Centre my senior year in high school. And I just loved the campus. I mean, I loved the feel that I got when I was on campus. I love the people on campus. Everyone that I met was awesome. Very nice, very educated, just good people. And yeah, I just felt at home at Centre. So, I decided to make this place my permanent home. Well, not permanent home, but four years.
Katie Jenkins
1:07
Awesome. I would say a lot of people would say the same. Where do you live on Centre's campus?

Nate Bentley
1:16
I live in Ruby Cheek Hall. It's kind of over near Speedway. It's on the corner of Main Street and Fifth Street. It's a good building.

Katie Jenkins
1:26
Can you describe this space? Like the building itself?

Nate Bentley
1:32
Yeah, sure. So like I said, it's like on the corner, right across the street from Speedway, kind of at the end of campus. It's right beside Stuart Hall, if anyone knows where that is. It's a two story dorm room building and it has suites and just single two person rooms in it. And it's uh, it's not a huge building. I mean, it's no like pearl or north side. But it's a homey building and a good building to live in.

Katie Jenkins
2:04
Was this your first choice for resi- residency? Or?

Nate Bentley
2:09
Well, I mean, not exactly. So my first choice was actually a north side. I wanted to get one of the north side like big eight person suites they have on the first floor. Me and a bunch of friends all wanted to just get one of those, but they were all filled up. And I think with COVID like everyone being out, or well everyone being on campus right now. It's just, it's made the rooming situation difficult. So, I had to settle for Ruby cheek, but I've loved the building, so far. I mean, it's awesome. It's a good building.

Katie Jenkins
2:43
Um, what does a typical day look like for you?

Nate Bentley
2:48
Um, well, I wake up, usually I have early morning classes. I like to get my day started early. I'll go to Cowan for breakfast, usually around eight or nine in the morning, depending on what time my first class is. Then I'll go through a day of classes. Um, and then I'll get some homework done after classes and spend the rest of the day either playing soccer, hanging out with friends. In the fall, I did the ASP program a little bit. And last spring too. So that's a good program. I don't know just the usual.

Katie Jenkins
3:21
Um, how often do you spend time in your room?

Nate Bentley
3:27
On an average day, probably like, two to three hours. Three hours, it depends on how much homework I have to get done. Sometimes, like, I'll kick my roommate out, so I can just get a little work done or vice versa. He'll kick me out to get some studying done. So we're in here a decent bit.

Katie Jenkins
3:49
Nice. Okay, so let's move into our paranormal experiences. What strange or unexplained experiences have you had on Centre's campus?

Nate Bentley
4:02
Well, before this year, my junior year, none. I had never experienced anything paranormal on Centre's campus. But, this year, living in Ruby Cheek Hall, I've had a few experiences. I mean, would you like me to share those experiences with you right now?

Katie Jenkins
4:19
If you'd like to, yes. [Laughter]

Nate Bentley
4:21
Okay. Yeah, I'll tell you about them. I'll tell the whole, the whole world about them, I guess. So the first experience happened probably late September or early October, that kind of area. It was like 1:30/2:00 in the morning, and I was getting ready to fall asleep. I was laying in my bed. My eyes were closed. My roommate was already asleep. And then just like through my closed eyes, I could kind of see, like, a light, like a bright light. You know how, like, when you're, like, asleep in the morning, and like, someone will turn the light on, like, you just get woken up by the light. Well like, there's a super bright light in like the corner of my room. So, I opened my eyes and looked over there, and it was my roommates laptop. Or well, his monitor, like his big monitor had just completely turned on, on its own. And instead of being on, like, the home screen where you log in, it was just completely white. This is a completely white monitor, kind of creepy, honestly. And like, it just stayed that way for, probably, five or so minutes. Before just shutting off completely on its own. It didn't make any sounds or anything. It's just- it was just that white screen for, like, five minutes. And I mean, I kind of thought like, that's a little strange, but like, I didn't, like, think paranormal at first, you know, because I'm not really, I wouldn't say I'm a big like believer in the paranormal and whatnot. But I mean, it was a little bit unsettling, at like two in the morning. And then the next real experience happened a couple weeks later. So my roommate and I, we had a bunch of cases, like, beer cases laying around the room. Not laying around the room, just like, off in the corner somewhere. And we decided, you know what, we need to make a beer wall, like, we just have all this, like, garbage laying around in a room to put on the wall for a bit. Like, kind of a dumb idea, but you know, whatever. So, we hung them up on the wall and we made a pretty cool wall over here on this left wall. I don't know if you can see it on zoom, but we made a beer wall. I'll show you the wall. It's completely empty now. Over there, on that wall. And we just hung cases up, and it was a good beer wall. But, about two or three days in, cases would just start falling down randomly every single day, like, in the middle of the night, during the day, like, and there's no real reason they should have been falling down because we had this really sticky duct tape that we had found. And we duct taped each case super well. Stuck it hard on the wall, and whenever the cases would fall off, the duct tape on them would still be really sticky. So like it's not like they were like loosening up and falling off the wall or anything like there's, for some reason, just completely falling off the wall. And I mean, we didn't think paranormal, at first. But after some time, we had been hearing stories about how Ruby Cheek is allegedly haunted by the ghost of Ruby Cheek who was a professor here at Centre, back in the day. And apparently she still roams the halls of this building. And me and my roommate heard this story. And we thought, huh, that's interesting. So we did a little experiment with our beer wall. 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. It sounds kind of silly like saying it out loud, but that's what we did. And nothing happened with the case we, we waited for about a minute or two. It didn't knock down in front of our eyes like we hoped it would. So we went and left and got some food we went to like the hub. This was, uh, in the afternoon. We went and got some lunch at the hub. And we come back. Busch Light case is laying on the ground. It's completely knocked off. So we thought to ourselves. Hmm, that's a little bit suspicious that this random case, like just we picked one. That was the one that got knocked off, you know? I don't know. Interesting. And what's that?

Katie Jenkins
8:33
Do you believe it was Ruby?

Nate Bentley
8:36
Um, yeah, I do, honestly. So I'm not a big Well, at least I wasn't, like, I didn't really believe much in the paranormal and all that stuff. Like, yes, I've heard ghost stories my whole life, but like, I've never experienced anything. And to me, it just seemed kind of like, just people were just like stretching the truth. And I don't know, I didn't really believe all the ghost stories very much. But after like living in this building a little bit and just, I mean, the building itself is just, it's a homey building. But it's also pretty unsettling too like, I'll come back at night. And there'll be just like, [Interruption] random noises all over the building like seeming to come from thin air honestly, like bangs and pops and knocks and just everything like, it's I mean, it's it can give a creepy vibe off sometimes. So I don't know. I like to think that it really was Ruby. Knocking our wall off the or knocking our beer wall off. I don't know. I don't know. Honestly.

Katie Jenkins
9:38
Do you think with the monitor situation that was also Ruby after the beer wall incident?

Nate Bentley
9:46
Yeah, okay. Yeah. So when the monitor situation happened, I really didn't think ghosts or paranormal, at first. But I mean looking back on it now, like, I don't see any reason why my roommate's monitor, would just randomly turn on at two o'clock in the morning, it had never done that before, ever. And I mean, we'd been living in here for about two months before that had hap- that happened. And it was just, like, a completely white screen. Like, I don't know, like when a monitor turns on, like, it'll go to like your login page, or like a background image or something, like, this screen was completely white. And it didn't like do anything, except just turn off like, a few minutes later. So that just doesn't seem like I'm not like, I'm not like a technology expert or something. But that doesn't really seem like something like a monitor would do. I don't know. So, yeah, part of me thinks that was Ruby too either just like, trying to get our attention or just like, announcing her presence at two o'clock in the morning. For some reason? I don't know. But yeah, that doesn't seem normal to me.

Katie Jenkins
10:56
Did your life go back to normal after this experience? Or like, do you act a certain way now that you're in Ruby, in your room or anything?

Nate Bentley
11:06
Yeah, well, I like to think that my life's been pretty normal. Ever since any of this has happened. Like when I so, growing up, like I watched these ghost TV shows of like, people who lived in these haunted houses, and they like, they couldn't live their lives because their house was haunted. Like they just couldn't, like stay in the house any longer. Like, I don't feel like that in here. Really? Like, I mean, it's just kind of like, like it- Ruby's not out to hurt me or anything. She's not doing anything malicious over here. Like, she's just having a little bit of fun. Honestly, it seems like to me and yeah, yeah, I mean, I'm just gonna go along with it. Like, it's kind of cool. Honestly, like, I enjoy it. I enjoy seeing the stuff that she's been doing to our room, subtly. But yeah, no my life still pretty normal.

Katie Jenkins
11:59
So you believe she's a friendly ghost or a friendly spirit?

Nate Bentley
12:04
Yeah, I do. I mean, I don't really know what qualifies as like a friendly ghost or a friendly spirit, in the first place. But Ruby definitely, definitely fits the description of a friendly ghost, in my opinion. I mean, she was a professor here at Centre College. And apparently, everyone really liked her. And they even named this building in her honor. And I think that she just like, I don't know. She wants everyone to respect her building and not like, mess with it, I guess. And that's probably why she ripped down the beer wall, because it was just, I guess disrespectful to her building. And Ruby, I apologize for that. I'm very sorry. Um, but yeah, yeah, I think Ruby's a friendly ghost.

Katie Jenkins
12:52
Okay, um, how have these experiences shaped how you think about your day to day life?

Nate Bentley
12:59
Well, most of the time, I don't really think much about Ruby in the incidences around here. But, when I do think back to it, I don't know, like it, it makes me like think I'm not a super religious person, but seeing and believing that Ruby is in this building, makes me just wonder if there really is like, an afterlife or something does happen beyond your death. And obviously, Ruby has passed on from this world, but maybe she, for some crazy reason, is still here. And I don't know, it just makes me think sometimes, you know, it makes me think about if there's more to life than what we see. I don't know. Before we go here, I do want to share another story that I forgot to mention, when we were talking about the Ruby experiences and stuff. So, this actually happened, like, pretty recently, honestly. And this could be, I don't know, this could be Ruby, it could be something else. But, so I have a small, little miniature speaker. It can fit in your hand, very small speaker. And lately, I've just been playing some music in my room, some loud music. I'll turn the speaker up full volume, because it was only me in the building for a while. I moved in early because of my class. And I was the only one, really, in this building. And I was just bumping music in my room and my speaker was sitting on my desk, and out of nowhere, like, it just fell off completely. And I thought to myself, I thought that's kind of strange. Like why did my speaker randomly fall off my desk. It wasn't even on the edge either. It was like, probably six inches back. And I put it back up there. And I was playing really loud, like hip hop rap music, and the speaker, five minutes later, the speaker just like fell off again, out of nowhere. So, I completely just turned the music off and stopped playing my music. But I don't know if that was my speaker just having like, in a moment where it just defied all laws of gravity or if it was Ruby Cheek, telling me Hey, your music's too loud. This, I don't like this music, turn it off, which is also a possibility, I guess. I don't know. I mean, it's just something. Could be, you never know.

Katie Jenkins
15:35
So how have these experiences shaped how you think about Centre College's campus?

Nate Bentley
15:42
Well, it actually makes me respect Centre College's campus a lot more. So I, like, obviously, like one of the reasons I came here, to Centre, was because of the campus. But after all these Ruby incidents that have been going on, it just makes the campus that much cooler to me, honestly, I mean, it gives the buildings some sort of life, it gives them a story. It makes them more interesting. So yeah, I've developed a new respect for the campus. From, from Ruby cheek.

Katie Jenkins
16:15
Awesome.

Katie Jenkins
16:15
Um,

Katie Jenkins
16:16
What places are important to you? And why?

Nate Bentley
16:21
What places?

Katie Jenkins
16:22
Mm hmm.

Nate Bentley
16:24
Well, for one thing, this building is important to me. I mean, it's what I call my home here on Centre College's campus. It's where my friends are around here. It's where my roommate is, it's where I do my work. It's where I've made my presence here. I've put all my belongings here. So this place is really important to me. Are you talking about just at Centre College or just in general?

Katie Jenkins
16:50
It could be anywhere.

Nate Bentley
16:53
Okay, another place, it's really important to me, it well, this isn't a haunted place or anything. But it's Hilton Head in South Carolina. I mean, I went there every single year growing up. I mean, that was just my favorite beach to go to. It was always a treat when my parents would bring us to Hilton Head. And then last summer, I got the gift of being able to work there for the summer and spend my whole summer there. And I mean, it's just a beautiful beach. Beautiful place to live. Great people. That's one of my all time favorite spots in the world. Is that island. Yeah, I love it. So that's really important to me too.

Katie Jenkins
17:31
Awesome. Can't say I've ever visited. I'll have to.

Nate Bentley
17:34
Oh, you got to visit, you got to visit.

Katie Jenkins
17:37
And final question. What do you think of ghosts and ghost stories?

Nate Bentley
17:44
Yeah, so I'm gonna be honest, before this year, and living in Ruby Cheek, I kind of thought ghost stories were just a bunch of BS, honestly, like I didn't, I didn't really believe in them because I'm the kind of person where I have to see it to believe it. I have to experience it and I've never experienced a ghost story before. I had never, never had a paranormal experience or never really done anything like that. But after living here, I have a lot of respect for ghost stories actually, like I mean, I listen to them more. I don't want to say I didn't listen to them in the first place. But like, I listened to them and like, I actually can put myself in that position and like, believe what I'm hearing and I don't know, it just it's- it-, it brings a new- What's the word I'm looking for? It brings a new, like, interest into the world because I don't know, it's just a part of the world that is not really studied, much like the paranormal side of things not really, like known about people are constantly asking questions about it. And I think it's something that needs to be looked into more a lot in the future, if we ever get the chance to do that. Because, yeah, it's interesting stuff, and I have a lot of respect for it now.

Katie Jenkins
19:06
Awesome. Well, those are all the questions I have for you. Thank you so much for interviewing with me.

Nate Bentley
19:13
Thank you for having me, Katie. Been a good interview. [Laughter - Katie]

END OF INTERVIEW

MP4

19:18