Haunted Halls of Ivy

W. Barefoot, Daniel. Haunted Halls of Ivy: Ghosts of Southern Colleges and Universities. Detroit: Detroit Publishing Company, 2004. 87-91. Print.




I read the book Haunted Halls of Ivy: Ghosts of Southern Colleges and Universities by Daniel W. Barefoot. My book is basically a collection of thirty nine ghost stories about ghosts that take up residents in the universities and colleges throughout thirteen southern states. For more than two hundred years college professors and college students have witnessed and reported supernatural occurrences that they have experienced throughout college life. Many of these schools have had students who have committed suicide, committed murders, or died from accidental causes. Vivid reports of paranormal activity in the places where these unfortunate students lost their lives offer the idea that the spirits of these people reside there. The cool thing about this book is that after you have read the stories that have taken place in these colleges, you can visit and form your own opinion on these spirits that have supposedly roamed the halls for many years. One particular story that was scary to me was the story of Isabella from Northwestern State University in Louisiana. Isabella was beautiful and had many suitors, but when a dashing young man from the East came to Natchitoches on business one day, she fell deeply in love and the couple agreed to marry. Just days before the wedding, her lover was killed in a duel, rumored to be a duel over another woman’s heart. Isabella was devastated and decided to become a nun. On a stormy night the sisters in the convent grew scared and decided to go down to the basement, but not Isabella. She locked her door and stayed in her room. The next day the sisters came to check on her and found “a knife thrust through her heart and her bloody handprint stained a wall” (Barefoot 88). Not long after her burial her ghost began roaming the halls of the convent, which was later acquired by the state of Louisiana to serve as the campus of Louisiana State Normal School. Isabella’s ghost remained throughout all the changes that the building went through. The school went through many changes. In 1944, the state legislature changed the name of the school to Northwestern State University. Isabella has kept residence in the school although some of the halls she once resided in have been torn down. Some of the students even throw her parties for her spirit to move to new parts of the school. Nobody knows if she is happy with these changes, but people can still see her bloody handprint on the wall to whatever hall she makes her new home.

This book was very interesting to me because it told detailed stories about the people that attended these schools and it drew you in to these people’s lives and their deaths. Knowing a little bit of background information on these ghosts’ previous lives makes them seem more real. The people that have experienced paranormal activity in the areas that these people’s lives were taken have given some evidence that supports the idea that these spirits still exist. It was a book that I definitely couldn’t read late at night because it gave detailed descriptions of hauntings and of the fate that these people faced and it was a little bit scary to me.

This book has somewhat convinced me that spirits may exist. I still think that sprits are demons masquerading around as people who have previously lived to deceive us into thinking that the chains of death can be broken. My pastor is a good family friend of ours and he was at my house this past Friday. He has also read this book before when he was doing a study on the supernatural. He explained that, being a pastor, he wanted to explore the supernatural from all points of view so that he can further his knowledge of what happens to us when we die. We both discussed our beliefs on the topic and we agree that these collections of stories about these people probably took place, but we think that their spirits aren’t really them at all, but instead are demons that roam the halls to deceive the students. The students that were still living know exactly what happened to these students whose lives were taken away so they are easily influenced to believe that the paranormal activity that has occurred around them are the spirits of those same people who have died. Which, they may be, but I’m convinced that ghosts are just a tool that Satan uses to throw us off. In the bible it says that Satan and his followers can disguise themselves as an angel of light to trick us, and I think that is exactly what ghosts are: demons who make us believe that they are a “helpful” spirit, or sometimes they may not pretend to be helpful and are just harmful spirits. Not to sound preachy at all, that’s just the way that I see it.