By Dr. Frank McCoy
Condie Cunningham's a tragic story. The telling of it has all of the elements of a Friday 13th or one of the more recent horror stories. It seems that at the turn of the century, Condie was a student living in Main Residence Hall. It was and still is today a female residence hall. She and some of the other girls were fixing a hot chocolate over a burner and it tipped over. Condie's gown caught fire. As the fire marshall tells us, the worst thing you can do when you are on fire is run, and that's exactly what Condie did. She ran down the hall. Subsequently, she died at the local hospital.
The legend of Condie flows from that, and it becomes more bizzarre as students begin to see in the wood grain panel to the door to her room the image of a woman screaming. Her hair was on fire, and the flames were shooting up. There was maintenance people who claim that they have seen the image too. It wasn't just the students who saw her. A few years ago some decided to put the door in storage to put the school at ease. What happened was, the ghost reappeared in the new door. So it's a classic kind of story. Even today, you can talk to students who swear that Condie came into thier room. She's been known to go into the shower areas and scream her head off. Some students have felt the wind when windows were closed [-Yeah my room does that to, it's called a crappy sealing job on the window frame. (Lupay)-]. They have seen the carpet on the threshold of her room ripple as if someone walked into the room. Or they'll tell the story of a door opening, and there won't be anyone there [-I think it's a leveling problem because my dorm door will almost completely close by itself on most days (Lupay)-]. Now there is probably a rational explanation. It's an old building, and it is probably settling. There are images in clouds called pseudo morphs, and if the brain is looking for something, it will see it [-Factiod: The human brain is programmed to find facial images in any pattern (Lupay)-]. And another person comes along, and they believe you. The girls say that when she roams the hall, she doesn't do it quietly [-Nope apparently she likes shreiking, especially late at night when most are in bed, and it's a hollow, unnerving sound (Lupay)-]. She runs and screams through the halls as if she is still on fire. One student said Condie is coming back because she is trying to live vicariously through the young students in the hall.
It is a scary building if you approach it at night. [-No it's not! ..wuss! (Lupay)-] According to everybody that's seen it, the image is still on the door. I saw it twenty years ago. The girls often will hold initiations, and one part of it is you've got to go see Condie's door, and it's leaning against the wall in a storage closet. It happened in the central part of the building [-Yeah and I might add that there's only on dorm room door that is metal and it's the last door on main fourth central. I went looking for it not too many days after hearing her shriek (Lupay)-]. The wings were added later. Nobody lives in that room now because of Condie [-or so they want you to believe... (Lupay)-]. From the standpoint of fire hazards in the early 20th century, I would say yes. From my experiance teaching at various colleges, I would have to say that most female dorms have ghost [-every stopped to think that could be because women are less skeptical of these things then men? (Lupay)-]. I'm not sure if there is any proof or not. [-You hear that hollow, bodiless shriek and that's all the proof you'll need! (Lupay)-]
STORY #2:
By Lupay d' Bast
Yeah Condie's not the only haunt in Main. Late at night after I snuck in my boyfriend, I was about to turn over in my bed towards the wall when in the corner of my room for just long enough to make what it was out, I saw a female ghost in a civil war era nurse's outfit seemingly chastizing me for sneaking in this guy late at night. I felt her prescene yet again in Spring 2005 when I was sick and coughing like crazy and just utterly miserable. She is a comforting though still a little unnerving entity and she appears late at night seemingly as if to check in on me and make sure all's well. -like a dorm marm or a kinda strict R.A. -Ironically I live next to the R.A.'s room in the centra part of Main.
One day in Fall 2004 I was sitting in my room about mid afternoon watching T.V. when something caught my attention, distracting me from my show. My tall black floor lamp was rocking by itself. A bit baffled by this, I stopped to form a theory as to how the devil it could be rocking like that by itself. The theory I came up with was that it was an old building. Loose floorboards or simply vibrations in the floor could be the potential culprit. So like any good scientist, I proceeded to test my theory. I walked around my lamp and jumped up and down beside it. The test result gave me a slight shock. The lamp didn't budge. It never once rocked even a little bit. Confused and baffled I sat back down, now that the lamp wasn't rocking. After a minute or two watching t.v. lying still on my bed and not hearing anyone in the surrounding rooms moving or anyone walking down the hall the lamp started rocking again. It didn't stop until I blessed it with holy water [at the time I was still an Ecclectic Wiccan, who literally keep a bottle of holy water in her room ever since she got on campus. I am no longer affiliated with any organized religion, but still pertain there is only one God]. But that baffles me to this day and it's not the only thing that's happened. I've found my can cozies and my pot holders moved from where I last placed them -though never very far. The entity in my room certainly provides for my entertainment and isn't in the least bit threatening -least not thus far. It's like my ghostly roommate, even if I have a single dorm. She likes messing with me from time to time.
As for Condie, one Wensday night at 4:45AM in late December/ early January I was up late talking on the phone to my boyfriend. Some girls had been goofing around on the floor above me. When they got quiet, not too long afterwards my hair started to stand-up for no apparent reason and I got rather uncomfortable and shortly after, coming from the middle of Main Fourth Central's Hallway I heard a female shriek that could not be reproduce by a living human being's voice without the aid of some sort of voice transforming machine. It is hard to describe but the best word that was thrown my way was "hollow". And it was hollow, bodiless, and eerie. I immediately asked my boyfriend if he heard that, I don't remember his response mostly because I was caught up with the fact in my first semester there I heard the legendary Condie. Page 2 >