Tales have long circulated about the ghosts that allegedly haunt the campus. UNCG’s most well known ghost reportedly inhabits Aycock Auditorium.
Aycock Auditorium
Raymond Taylor, who taught drama and was the director of dramatic activities on campus from 1921 until 1960, recounts his personal experiences with the ghost of Aycock Auditorium.
According to Taylor, an elderly lady once lived in a large house where Aycock Auditorium now stands. Lonely and unhappy, she one day went up to the attic and hanged herself with a rope from the rafters. When the house was torn down, she haunted the area until Aycock Auditorium was built in 1927, and then she adopted the auditorium as her home. Taylor told of an incident that happened on a hot day when he and the Aycock Auditorium janitor were working on a set for a play.
In order to be more comfortable he and the janitor removed some of their clothes. When Taylor went upstairs to dress he found his clothes disarranged and his watch chain arranged on the table in the form of a cross.
Students have given the Aycock spirit a name, they call her Jane Aycock, and say she is the daughter of the man for whom the auditorium was named; but Governor Charles Aycock had no daughter by that name.
Mary Foust Residence Hall
A ghost also allegedly haunts Mary Foust Residence Hall, which is named for Mary Foust, the daughter of the College’s second President, Julius I. Foust.
Mary Foust died during childbirth in 1925 and rumors have floated around for years about random “unexpected crying” and “funny noises” on the hall’s second floor.
Also, an unproven rumor circulates that in the 1950s, three nursing students hanged themselves from the attic rafters.
In the late 1960s, the Spencer Residence Hall ghost was known simply as “The Blue Ghost” or “The Woman in Blue.”
Bell Towers of Spencer Residence HallStudents later gave her the name “Annabelle.” Annabelle is supposedly the spirit of a student who hanged herself years ago in one of Spencer Residence Hall’s bell towers; however, no suicide has ever been documented.
In the 1970s, Annabelle allegedly appeared as a blue shadow to staff members in the Spencer parlor, and there have been reports of a blue haze passing by a laundry room and of objects being flung across rooms.