My favorite local ghosts

So here I am on Halloween night, hanging out at home instead of trick-or-treating for free drinks (‘cause I still have the sniffles), but there’s a “Ghost Hunters” special on SyFy, so it’s all good. I have a long-standing fantasy that Jason and Grant and the rest of the TAPS team will roll into my neighborhood and spend a solid week investigating my favorite creepy spots. (A girl can dream…)

When I worked at Old Salem, it seemed like every historic interpreter had spooky first-hand experience. Certainly, spending as much time as we did in old buildings heightened our senses, so I’m open to the idea that we can chalk up most of these experiences to the power of suggestion. I don’t put a lot of stock in the most often-published Salem ghost stories, the Tavern Ghost and the Single Brothers House’s “Little Red Man,” for reasons I’ll explain in a moment. Likewise, in my time at Salem Academy and College, I heard a few creepy stories, some of which seemed more believable to me than others.

So, should the Ghost Hunters ever make their way to Winston-Salem, here’s my wish list:

Old Salem – the Tavern Museum
Yes, I know I just said I don’t believe in the “Tavern Ghost.” According to that legend, a Charleston businessman traveling through Salem died at the tavern and was buried in the strangers’ graveyard. Shortly after, tavern servants reported seeing an apparition in the attic, which communicated that it was the ghost of the dead man, and that his brother/fiancée/wife (depending on which version you read) could be contacted in Charleston. The tavern keeper sent a letter to the relative, who traveled to Salem to claim the man’s belongings and ask that he be reburied in God’s Acre. Once this was done, the haunting stopped.

According to the town records, a man named Samuel McClary died at the tavern the night of Sept. 6-7, 1831. He was very ill, and apparently was returning home to, yes, Charleston, after an unsuccessful trip to a hot spring. He was buried in the strangers’ graveyard either Sept. 7 or 8, then reburied Sept. 10 in God’s Acre, where you can still see his gravestone. Here’s the weird part – while the strangers’ graveyard, at the south end of Church Street, was intended for people who did not belong to Salem’s Moravian congregation, after about 1816 it was almost exclusively used for African Americans in the town, a refection of Salem’s deteriorating race relations. It’s not inconceivable that McClary’s relatives didn’t want him buried here, and asked that his body be moved up the hill to the cemetery with the white people. Such were the times.

But it’s hard to imagine a letter being mailed Sept. 7 even reaching Charleston in less than three days, let alone McClary’s family traveling back to Salem before Sept. 10. They must have already been close to Salem, which casts doubt on a ghost intervening to get them up here. (Thanks to my former Old Salem colleague Linda Cody, from whose paper much of this information is taken.)

That said, I think there’s *something* in the tavern museum. I always found it to be a supremely creepy place; it was by far my least favorite place to work. On the days when I was responsible for opening the building, I would unlock it and wait outside for someone else to arrive. And I was petrified of going upstairs, even with other people. I felt fine in the kitchen even the attic above… but upstairs where the guest rooms are always felt very sinister and threatening.

If you believe that people leave emotional energy behind, the tavern museum would be a rich spot. Some unhappy, even angry things happened there, particularly during the American Revolution. The tavern keeper and his wife lived in the building, but weren’t allowed to have their young children living with them. Entire families of enslaved people worked there at times. And some of the people who stayed there were sketchy, even violent.

So, basically, the place is *begging* for an extended EVP session and some electromagnetic field measurements.


Salem Academy – Patterson Hall
The facilities and housekeeping staffs at Salem A&C are bursting with stories of creepy encounters. Many of them told me about catching glimpses of the Academy’s resident ghost (doesn’t every school have one of these?), the “Lady in White.” But the story that I buy the most is much simpler… One of the staff, Darrell, told me about a time when he was working in one of Patterson Hall’s twin staircases (which go from the basement to the fourth floor), and hearing the sound of girls laughing, and footsteps that seemed to run down a flight of stairs right past him. This, and most of the other stories, happened during breaks when the building was empty.


Salem College – Main Hall
In my informal survey of campus haunts, I heard several independent stories of a figure spotted around the back on Main Hall – one moving along the back porch, and another few on the lower level of the History wing. Most described the figure as a woman wearing a black cloak or floor-length dress, with no face visible. It’s possible these people made the assumption that the figure was a woman simply because almost all of Salem’s population, past and present, are women. Again, all the sightings happened during the week in the winter where the campus is closed, and even faculty and staff are gone.


Salem Academy and College – Rondthaler-Gramley House
The R-G House, used for so many parties, weddings and other happy occasions, is the site of one of the most hair-raising incidents I’m aware of on Salem’s campus. In its history, it’s been a residence, a class building, an office building and now a guest house. One of my professors, who in her first year of teaching commuted from her home 90 minutes away, stayed there during the week. One night, something kept opening and closing the door to her room. She found the experience so frightening that she left that night, driving all the way home and refusing to enter the building alone after that. Even years later, she told me the story only reluctantly – even the memory was unpleasant. The R-G House is another building that I’ve never liked being in by myself.


Old Salem – Private home, Church Street
Though it’s in the historic district, this house is owned by the college, which rents it to staff members. I first read this story in a book about Triad hauntings. In the 1960s, a young couple moved in and found every door in the house stacked in the attic. They reinstalled them, and shortly after, various doors would slam shut day and night. Eventually, a medium told them that the ghost of an elderly woman lived in the house; she wasn’t a threat, but slammed the doors more for her own entertainment. Here’s the fun part: when the college bought the house (in the 90s, as best I can tell), the maintenance staff found all of the doors stacked up in the attic. The staff member who lived in the house when I worked there never reported any problems, so maybe the elderly ghost finally got bored and gave it up.


And, where the Ghost Hunters should NOT waste any time:

Old Salem – Single Brothers House
Here’s the documented information: in the late 18th Century, the men living in the house were digging a cellar underneath the south wing. One man, Andreas Kremser, had the unenviable job of digging out the bottom of an earth bank, which would then be allowed to collapse. Unfortunately, the wall of red clay collapsed on top of Brother Kremser. Several hours after obtaining massive internal injuries, Brother Kremser mercifully passed away.

The legend of the “Little Red Man,” which didn’t pop up for another century, has Kremser, a shoemaker, tapping his hammer all over the house (by that time, a residence for older women) and disappearing around dark corners, leaving only flashes of his red waistcoat behind. This pushes my BS button for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that the story didn’t appear until an era where it was fashionable to live in a haunted house.

Nevertheless, it’s still the legend most popularly associated with Old Salem. For me, the Single Brothers House has always felt more like a college residence hall than anything.