The Curtis Administration Building and Cooper Hall are really one building. Cooper Hall is one of ten buildings on the Limestone College campus listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It was originally constructed around 1835 as the Limestone Springs Hotel and is the oldest building on campus.
When Limestone College was established about ten years later in 1845, the old Limestone Springs Hotel became Cooper Hall, a residence hall.
Some say it is also the most haunted building on campus, but that statement is often argued, as the Winnie Davis Hall of History has its own ghost stories, but I never saw those ghosts as that building was closed during my time at Limestone.
Today's story takes place around 1870 after the War Between the States, during the time Cooper Hall was a residence hall. Back then Limestone was an all girls Christian high school. The young ladies would arrive on campus with their servants to care for them. It wouldn't be proper for a lady of that age or station in life to be left unattended. Her reputation could be ruined!
I learned all these things and more while I was working in that admissions office. During that time I also oftentimes had to go into the old Cooper Hall building to get supplies.
You see, back when I was in college, Cooper Hall was used for storage, and, let me tell you, that building was spooky! You'd walk down those long door-lined halls with your footsteps echoing behind you each time you took a step on that old dusty wooden floor. Random creeks and pops would jump out here and there to startle you. I nearly jumped out of my skin many-a-time as I'd make my way down to the admissions office storage room.
Oh yes. That place scared the liver outta me. I wish you could have seen it. The paint on those old walls was peeling in places and there was never enough light to quite see well, so I'd either have to stop and squint to make sure I was at the right place, or I'd have to count the doors as I'd go along.
That building was built with huge and beautiful windows in the rooms behind all those doors. It was meant for those windows to be opened for ventilation, as the outside air was fresh and clean back in 1835, but those windows had long since been painted or nailed shut to keep students from finding mischief in the storage rooms, so the air was always a little too warm making it stale and hard to breathe in there. Even so, you'd pass through cold spots as you walked past some of the doors. Those cold spots often made the hair stand up on the back of my neck and my arms break out in goosebumps.
It just didn't feel or look "right" in there.
There was no electricity in the original building, and it seemed like what was added later was just an afterthought. Bare bulbs here and there on long wires hanging down and old turn switches whose safety was questionable.
One day as I was going to the storage room, I noticed someone had left one of the doors open to a room that only contained a rocking chair. I thought that odd, as all the doors were usually locked, so I walked over to the room intending to close and lock the door with the skeleton key all the doors used, when that rocking chair suddenly started rocking.
I kid you not.
It just started rocking!
I thought earthquake? But the dangling light bulbs on their wires were not moving. Then I thought maybe a loose board I had stepped on made the chair rock, so I retraced my steps as the rocking slowed and stopped. Nope. I couldn't make it rock again, so I just decided it was a prank, retrieved my things from storage and went back to work.
The next day I started asking around about the rocking chair. Turns out the reason the door was open was some students from Duke University were doing some paranormal research and had placed the rocker in that room because of a ghost story!!! They were going to set up more equipment to measure paranormal activity in there. I was fascinated.
The ghost was supposedly a young girl who came to school there with her nanny around 1870. One day the girl took sick with a very high fever. She was fitful. Tossing and turning and wearing herself out. She just couldn't sleep. She couldn't rest. The only thing her nanny could think to do to comfort her was rock her, so that's what she did.
The girl's nanny held her on her lap in that old wooden rocking chair and rocked her all night that night to comfort her. On towards morning, as the night faded, in that early morning twilight before dawn, the girl quieted, and still the nanny rocked and sang sweet childhood songs to comfort her, even as her body stiffened. You see, the young beloved girl had died in her nanny's arms.
This is the legend. There are conflicting stories as to exactly where she did die on campus, but all the stories say she did indeed die on campus. It is a fact that the room I saw that day with the rocking chair was her dorm room where her nanny rocked her when she was so sick. That much is definitely true.
Now they say when the air turns cool and the leaves are not long off the trees, if you put a rocking chair anywhere in that particular room, it will rock of its own accord.
I believe it.
I've seen it with my own eyes.
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