Chowan University has a ghostly “Brown Lady” on the third floor of its Columns Building. Her footsteps have been heard, and security guards have chased her thinking she was a prankster. And at Belks Hall, the ghost of a little girl who fell down the stairs while riding a tricycle laughs or screams, and a student who committed suicide also is rumored to show up here. A piano-playing ghost haunts the Music Hall, and at Mixon Hall, a student who hanged himself on the stairs haunts the second floor.

Louisburg College, founded in 1787, is a private Methodist institution with many suspected ghosts. Its Main Building, used as a hospital during the Civil War, is haunted by a little boy with no face. Voices and sounds abound here, and other ghosts are suspected to call the building home. In the Kenan Girls Dormitory, namesake Mrs. Kennan keeps a watch on her halls. A green glow is said to come from the fourth floor. And at Merritt Dorm, cold spots and poltergeist activity have been reported. Faucets turn on by themselves, doors slam, TVs and radios act up, desk chairs roll across rooms, and disembodied footsteps are heard.

Salem College began in 1772 as a primary school, then a high school and now a college. It is the oldest women’s college in the Southern U.S., and it has the abundance of haunts fitting to such an old institution. For example, the Clewell Dorm is haunted by a little girl who fell down an elevator shaft (now boarded up), and in the Gramley Library, the spirits of two girls electrocuted in 1907 manifest as apparitions and screams on the third floor. Gramley Dorm has a spirit of a girl who hanged herself in the attic; she makes dragging sounds in the attic as if moving furniture. The Fine Arts Center has a pianist ghost who walks down the halls and plays the pianos and organs, and the ghost of a man who died in Theatre #2 is said to haunt that building. At Babcock Dormitory, the lobby portrait of Mary Reynolds Babcock, daughter of tobacco magnate R.J. Reynolds, is said to have eyes that follow you.