Surely everyone has heard the urban legend about the co-ed who comes home late one night and, so as not to wake her roommate, slips into bed without turning on the lights. The next day she finds her roommate dead and a note saying, “Aren’t you glad you didn’t turn on the lights?” That’s the bare bones version, of course, and details vary between tellings, but the story itself is familiar to all.
There are many college urban legends, some outlined in movies like, well, “Urban Legend,” but more interesting are those that are college-specific.
Some sound like strange incarnations of Greek myths. At the University of North Carolina there is a statue named “Silent Sam,” erected in memorial of a UNC alumnus who died fighting for the Confederacy in the Civil War. Legend says that the soldier will shoot his rifle if a virgin walks by. Similarly, at the University of Tennessee, if a virgin walks under the statue of The Torchbearer, legend has it that his flame will go out.
Some are less specific to place and situation. It is merely the basic frame of the story that is passed down. At the University of Michigan and a few other Big 10 universities, the story of a Halloween massacre by a costumed murderer circulates, hence, “Scream.”
Some have particular stories behind them, and these seem usually to have the most credibility. As much credibility as a ghost story can have, that is. At the University of Montevallo there is a door with an image “burned” into it of a girl who died in the early 1900s. Even though the door has been replaced multiple times, the image keeps appearing in the wood.
All of these stories got me thinking: does MSU have any legends? And if so, why haven’t I heard about them?
As it turns out, numerous searches for haunted places in Mississippi turned up results for almost every city but Starkville. Surprisingly enough, Mississippi has some pretty bizarre legends, from a three-legged woman who haunts a road known, appropriately, as “Three-Legged Lady Road,” to a bright light that accosts employees at a Sav-a-lot in Pontotoc. Even Mississippi University for Women in Columbus has a ghost. In Calloway Hall the ghost of a girl named Mary sits and weeps at the edge of girls’ beds and is also sometimes seen looking through the top floor window for her lost love. But Starkville, it seems, is legendless.
Then I did some asking around and found that my literature classes about mythology didn’t lie-it is by word of mouth that legends are passed down, and I discovered a pretty interesting one from an MSU alumna. Submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society, I call this story, “The Tale of the Old Main Ghost.”
The burning of the Old Main dormitory is legend itself, so I assumed there must be a creepy ghost story somehow related to the event, and I was right. Old Main housed about 40,000 students from 1880 until its burning in 1959. It was immense, having more than 500 rooms and dimensions larger than a football field, and thought perhaps to be the largest dorm in the United States. One student died in the event, but the legend I was told says otherwise.
On the night of the tragic burning, a male student was with his girlfriend in his room after hours. When people began evacuating, the boy, terrified that he and his girlfriend would be caught and convinced that it was merely a drill or false alarm, told his girlfriend to hide in the closet until he returned. The girl was asphyxiated inside the closet before she could escape and burned with the building.
The alumna who passed the story on to me included an eerie epilogue. If you turn off all the lights and light a candle in a dorm closet, more specifically in an older dorm on the MSU campus, the girl’s face will appear in the dim candlelight. Common sense tells you that you should never, ever light a candle in a dorm closet, of course. But that’s how the legend goes. The girl has also been seen in the candlelight at the Chapel of Memories, which was built from bricks of the Old Main dormitory.
Is there any truth to the story? Probably not, but how many urban legends are true? And why does it matter if it’s false? The fun of knowing that there are actually legends surrounding the campus is all you’re meant to take from the tale. It gives the university an element of intrigue and interest that a simple, factual “History of MSU” doesn’t include. Ghost stories add to the culture of an area or group of people, and this certainly contributes to the culture of MSU.
So go ahead, pass it down. Or ask some alumni if they know of others. Or live your own. Or just make one up. That’s probably how most urban legends are started anyway.