Mike Conley's Tales of the Weird: Professor's ghost haunts Chapel Hill house

In Chapel Hill, folks still talk about the legend of Peter Dromgoole, the University of North Carolina student who was killed in a duel in 1832. Many students have reported seeing Dromgoole’s ghost and the ghost of his girlfriend at Gimghoul Castle, where the young man’s remains are supposedly buried under a blood-stained rock.

But there is another well-known spirit supposedly haunting a section of beautiful and historic Chapel Hill.

Built in the 1840s, the Horace Williams House is located in the college town’s historic district. It is within walking distance of the University of North Carolina and the downtown section. The historic home is owned by the Preservation Society of Chapel Hill and is open to the public, according to a Web site.

Originally built as a simple farmhouse, the residence went through several owners and renovations until it was purchased by Horace Williams in 1897. Williams was the chairman of UNC’s Philosophy Department and was much beloved by his students. One of them was the future author Thomas Wolfe. In his novel “You Can’t Go Home Again,” Wolfe wrote this about his favorite philosophy professor: “He was a great teacher, and what he did for us, and for others before us for fifty years, was not to give us his ‘philosophy’. . . but to communicate to us his alertness, his originality, his power to think.” Sen. Sam Ervin was another one of his students, according to a Web site.

When he died in 1940, Williams bequeathed the house and his property to the University of North Carolina. In the 1970s, it became the home of the Preservation Society of Chapel Hill.

Many folks in Chapel Hill believe that the good professor never really left. They report that his ghost moves items around in the house as he sees fit. One former occupant of the place reported that as a child, she noticed many strange happenings in the old house. This included fire utensils being moved from one side of the fireplace to the other. Her sister supposedly had several conversations with Horace Williams’ ghost. The caretaker of the house has stated that a rocking chair sometimes rocks by itself and the toilets have flushed by themselves on some occasions, according to a Web site.

For us Tar Heel fans, all of this should come as no surprise. Once you’ve spent time in Chapel Hill, it is very hard to leave it. That is why we call it “the Southern part of heaven.”

***

Last month, this column took a look at the Web site www.skyshipsovercashiers.com. Created by Mary Joyce and Evelyn Gordon, this Web site takes a close look at unexplained happenings in western North Carolina. It also contains eyewitness accounts of other unexplained lights and sounds in the sky.

Susan Anspacher of Sylva submitted an eyewitness testimony to this Web site.

“Even though I’ve always believed sky ships were real, I’d never seen one until I was driving home on July 20, 2010,” she writes. “I was headed south on Highway 441 about 9:40 p.m. As I came upon the Exxon station just south of Dillsboro, I had a strong feeling I should look up.

“As I turned my eyes toward the black night sky, there it was hovering just 100 feet over the highway between Sutton Branch and Greens Creek roads. It was a narrow, rectangular ship that appeared to be about 50 to 60 feet wide and 20 feet high.”

The sky ship had dim lights arranged in no particular order. The weird object hovered at a slight angle as though it might be circling or perhaps seeking a place to land, according to Anspacher’s report.

“I heard a loud, screeching noise behind it – like the sound of a jumbo jet about to land,” she writes. “The thought crossed my mind that military jets might be chasing it. Of course, jets can’t fly that low and would have been forced to abruptly regain altitude. That might account for the noise. Since I didn’t feel safe stopping at night to observe it, I passed under the ship and drove on home.”

Anspacher writes that seeing the sky ship left her with a feeling of wonder, instead of fear. She also felt surprisingly calm and grateful to have finally encountered one of the strange crafts that others in western North Carolina have reported seeing.

Contact Mike Conley at 652-3313, ext. 3422 or e-mail nconley@mcdowellnews.com.