THE STORY
Reported Haunting
Salem College in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, is allegedly haunted by the spirits of students who suffered tragic deaths on campus, including a young girl who fell down an elevator shaft in Clewell Hall. The Gramley Building is rumored to host the ghosts of two girls killed in a 1907 electrocution accident, whose full-body apparitions reportedly scream if you lock eyes with them. Additionally, residents of the dormitories frequently document experiencing minor poltergeist activity, phantom footsteps, and a famous portrait whose eyes seemingly track students as they walk past.
Salem College began in 1772 as a primary school, then a high school and now a college. It is the oldest women’s college in the Southern U.S., and it has the abundance of haunts fitting to such an old institution. For example, the Clewell Dorm is haunted by a little girl who fell down an elevator shaft (now boarded up), and in the Gramley Library, the spirits of two girls electrocuted in 1907 manifest as apparitions and screams on the third floor. Gramley Dorm has a spirit of a girl who hanged herself in the attic; she makes dragging sounds in the attic as if moving furniture. The Fine Arts Center has a pianist ghost who walks down the halls and plays the pianos and organs, and the ghost of a man who died in Theatre #2 is said to haunt that building. At Babcock Dormitory, the lobby portrait of Mary Reynolds Babcock, daughter of tobacco magnate R.J. Reynolds, is said to have eyes that follow you.