By Siobhan Mulligan, Campus Carrier Features Editor
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| Graphic by Leo Narrison | CAMPUS CARRIER |
Martha Berry’s Haunting Grounds
The Hoge Building is rumored to be one of the more haunted spots on campus, with strange flickering lights, mysterious cold spots and Civil War soldiers. In particular, it is said to be haunted by the ghost of Martha Berry herself, whose office was in Hoge.
In 2009, Ashley Anglin was interviewed for the documentary “Rome 175 Spirits.” Anglin, then a senior at Berry, talked about an incident that took place in Hoge when she was about five years old. Anglin was playing in the hallway that led to Martha Berry’s office when her mother, Jackie McDowell, heard her holding a one-sided conversation with somebody in the hall. It was late at night, so McDowell went to see who her daughter was talking to but saw nobody there and nobody in the rest of the building. Anglin said she was talking to a nice lady who had touched her face with cold hands.
“I can’t really remember much about this person other than that she was old,” Anglin said. “I couldn’t tell how old, but to me as a kid she was like a grandmother figure. So she had the curly hair – white hair – and I was talking with her. I don’t remember what she asked me, I just remember this nice lady. I wasn’t threatened by her.”
Later on, Anglin recognized a similar woman in a picture and learned that it was Martha Berry. Although
she was unsure if it was the same person she spoke to in the hall, the idea that the woman with the cold hands was the ghost of Martha Berry has become a popular theory on campus. Situated on the oldest part of campus and home to Martha Berry’s office, perhaps it is unsurprising that she would choose to haunt the Hoge building.
Ghost Church for a Ghost Town
Another popular Berry legend concerns the Mountain
Springs Methodist Church, located about three miles east of Possum Trot off the CCC Road. The church was constructed around 1890 from wood taken from a nearby church that had been dismantled recently, and for a while, the church and cemetery were joined by Mountain Springs Academy, a one-room schoolhouse. In the first half of the 20th century, Berry purchased the land surrounding the church from Mountain Springs residents looking to move elsewhere, with the last privately-owned tract of land sold in 1957. However, Berry never bought the church or the land on which it stands.
For a few decades, the church has become more famous as the site of supposed Satanic or occult worship. Occult symbols on the walls and the number of children’s graves in the cemetery led people to believe that a cult practiced child sacrifice there, but an article in the Spring 1998 edition of the North Georgia Journal offers a different explanation. Author Daniel M. Porter sketches the history of Mountain Springs as a hardworking but poor community, and the number of children buried in the local cemetery is a testament to the hard living conditions in the mountains around the turn of the century.
Because of the church’s isolation, it also experiences frequent problems with vandalism. On one occasion, the church was vandalized with occult symbols, starting the rumors that it was haunted or served as a meeting place for a Satanic cult. The Game and Fish Commission closed off the CCC Road with a gate due to these vandalism problems. However, as of April this year, the Mountain Springs Methodist Church was still holding regular services on the second Saturday of each month, though their page on VenueDog added that services are only held if the weather is good. In this case, at least, it seems that the only ghosts here are the ones our own minds create.
Cryptid or Caretaker?
Alegend that has seen less attention recently is Swafford,
a huge monster – or a monstrous man – who lived on Mountain Campus and captured or killed boys who wandered off onto the mountain alone.
“Swafford, as far as we could tell, was interpreted as kind of a cross between Bigfoot and the bogeyman,” said Rachel McLucas, curator at Oak Hill and the Martha Berry Museum.
The legend began at the Mount Berry School for Boys, where it may have been used to explain the disappearance of students who committed suicide or were expelled from the school.
The fascination with Swafford carried on for years. In 1968, a column in Lavendar Blue – Berry Academy’s student newspaper – detailed some students’ theories about Swafford’s true identity. Some thought he may have worked at the House o’ Dreams as a foreman or engineer, or perhaps he was a boss at the dairy who stole sheep and fled into the mountains. The column included a tongue-in-cheek, fictional interview with Swafford claiming that he was a Berry Academy student who ran away because of demerits, but now plans on getting his revenge by stealing Berry livestock.
In fact, a real person named Swafford worked as a grounds keeper at the Mount Berry School for Boys, but he likely bore little resemblance to the myth that grew out of his name. After he left the school, said McLucas, the legend of a man named Swafford who carried away misbehaving boys scared students for years.
Green With Envy
The most famous Berry ghost story is perhaps that of the Green Lady. Many versions of the story exist, but most claim that if you drive up Stretch Road at night, you may see glowing green mist in the middle of the road or strange green lights in the rearview mirror. Some say that if you stop by a certain speed bump and honk or flicker your headlights, a ghost will appear on the road in front or in the passenger seat.
The 2004 book “Haunted Halls of Ivy: Ghosts of Southern
Colleges and Universities” by Daniel W. Barefoot placed the first sighting of the Green Lady in the mid-1980s. A Berry student was driving to Mountain Campus when she saw the green ghost of a little girl in a tattered dress and bonnet from the early 20th century. She had no eyes, and she floated about a foot above the road; the student quickly drove away in fright.
Many deaths have occurred on Stretch Road that may have given rise to this story, but one story centers around a group of WinShape students in the 1980s who used a Ouija board to contact the ghost, who supposedly spelled out the name “Becky Stanson.” The students took a subsequent trip to the Floyd County Records Center, where they discovered the record of a girl with a similar name, Becky Stanton, who died in a house fire in 1923. This could not be confirmed, but the story fits with the image of a young girl dressed in clothes from the early 20th century.
Rachel McLucas, curator at Oak Hill and the Martha Berry Museum, also mentioned that there have been sightings of the Green Lady elsewhere on Mountain Campus. At least two sightings have occurred near the Manning grave, where a family who likely lived in the area is buried. If the Green Lady was a young girl, perhaps she was one of the Manning family’s children.
Another possible origin story takes place after Barefoot claimed the first Green Lady sighting occurred. In 1988, a Berry freshman named Lindsey Will was fatally injured on Stretch Road, allegedly when she collided with a friend on a bicycle. Will later died in a Rome hospital, and two plaques in her memory were put between the benches in
front of the library. They read “These seats placed where paths cross and minds meet are dedicated to the memory of Lindsey Elizabeth Will, October 21, 1968 – May 9, 1988.” This tragedy may have led to a new version of the Green Lady story that claimed the Green Lady was killed when her boyfriend accidentally hit her with his car after an argument on Stretch Road.
Old Stories, New Frights
These and many other stories continue to entice students, encouraging them to venture out to find Mountain Springs Church or honk three times on Stretch Road to summon the Green Lady. Some stories were born of tragedy, while others came from the need for a good tale to tell come Halloween. Some may even have a degree of truth to them. But if they’re not true, why do we continue to tell them?
“I find that here, especially at Oak Hill, there’s a desire for it [to be true] in a lot of ways, so that sort of drives the students to be scared,” said McLucas. “Then the reality is that there’s little to nothing that has ever happened here that is unexplainable.”
In the end, regardless of whether they’re true or not, these Berry legends hold a grip on students and likely will for years to come.