Payne Hall Ghost: Spooked by Renovations?

Sandy O’Connell vividly remembers the morning she saw the Payne Hall ghost.

It was about 8 a.m., a gray and overcast day, and she was stepping from the Colonnade into the first-floor hallway of Payne Hall. O’Connell, the administrative assistant to the English Department, was the first person to enter the building that morning—or so she thought.

As O’Connell started to flip on the light, something caught her eye. “Up the stairwell went a figure in a white shirt,” she said. “I’m thinking, this is a student who’s turning in a paper late. Didn’t hear any footsteps, but just saw the white shirt going up the steps.”

O’Connell dashed up the stairs to see what the student wanted. The second-floor hallway was dark—and empty. “Then I went up to the third floor. Dark as it could be up there. The professors hadn’t come in yet. Not a soul up there.” She turned on the lights, then returned to the second floor, even stepping into the men’s bathroom to see if there was anyone in the building. “There was not a soul.”

O’Connell is just one of many people who have reported ghostly encounters in and around Payne Hall. Built in 1830 as the Lyceum, its name was changed to Payne after a 1930s renovation; it now houses the English Department. Purported sightings include a dark presence moving swiftly down the back stairs, a person dressed in black swirling down the Colonnade, and a cape-wearing figure that whisks into the building.

Is there just one Payne Hall ghost? Or several? Or are the stories the stuff of a creative English Department coupled with the imaginations of impressionable students?

In a class a few years ago, Lesley Wheeler, the Henry S. Fox Professor of English, was discussing “The Book of Ephraim,” a poem by James Merrill that he wrote with the help of a Ouija board and séances. Several students asked if they could use a Ouija board to communicate with the spirits in Payne Hall. “I thought that sounded like the most questionable field trip ever,” said Wheeler. “So I said, I’ll do it with you, but it’s got to be really optional.”

About six students gathered on a spring evening in Payne 201, the large, second-floor classroom where Robert E. Lee took his oath of office as W&L’s president in 1865. It was dark outside, but light enough to read the letters on the Ouija board. “I assumed if I was in the room, nothing would happen,” said Wheeler.

The students and Wheeler each placed one finger on the planchette, the pointer that Ouija-board believers say spells out letter-by-letter messages from spirits. The planchette flew across the board.

“I’m not claiming this is real, but we had a series of apparent conversations,” said Wheeler. The group determined that the first spirit to communicate with them was a Civil War veteran. “The questions eventually led us to the idea that he was a guy who died at 40. He was from North Carolina,” said Wheeler, who kept notes about the encounter in an early draft of a poem. The spirit seemed to idolize one of Stonewall Jackson’s daughters. “I vaguely remember that. It was a strange little detail.”