From: FURRJK@vtvm1.cc.vt.edu
Subject: The Ghost of Robert Toombs
Organization: The Ohio State University Department of Computer and Information Science
Date: Fri, 21 Aug 1992 16:14:00 GMT

When I was an undergraduate at the University of Georgia, I was a member of
the Demosthenian Society, the oldest student organization at the university,
founded in 1803.  We had our own building located on North Campus, surrounded
by magnolias, etc.  Beautiful old two-story Federalist building, with a
meeting chamber upstairs lined with portraits of famous Demosthenian alumni
such as Crawford Long, the man who invented anesthesia.  The biggest portrait
was a very imposing rendition of Robert Toombs, who most people outside
Georgia will not have heard of... Toombs was a firebrand politician, United
States and Confederate States Senator, candidate for President of the CSA,
Confederate General, etc.  He was a student at Georgia in the 1820's, belonging
to Demosthenian as many students did, and was expelled from the university for
general immoral behavior, just weeks before graduation.

Legend has it that on the day of graduation, Toombs showed up at the chapel
and waited until all the faculty, graduates, and family had gone inside, then
climbed up in a large oak tree outside the chapel and began to give a speech,
just as each graduate inside would give a short speech.  Toombs is said to
have spoken with such fire and fervor and passion that all the people in the
chapel came out to hear him speak. Thereafter that oak was always known as
Toombs's Oak.

He went on to live a long, glorious life, and died in the 1880's.  On the
day he died, lightning struck and destroyed that oak tree, and the Demos-
thenians appropriated the wood and had some of it made into a lectern and
the rest, a section of the stump, was used thereafter as a platform for
speeches by candidates for Society office... 'stump' speeches, as it were.

Toombs's ghost is said to haunt Demosthenian Hall, and frankly, my point of
view is that if there's such a thing as a ghost ANYWHERE, there's definitely
one at the Hall.  Many's the night I sat up in the library downstairs playing
poker or spades or hearts with my friends Jeff Thompson and Larry Welborn
and Radford Bunker, and we'd all hear footsteps walking around in the meeting
chamber upstairs.  Yes, the building WAS 160 years old, but we knew the
difference between creaks and groans in the old wood and footsteps.  A few
times we all put down our cards because we all felt some sort of presence
in the room, and now and then the person sitting with his back to the wall
looking out the library door would see someone peek around the corner, then
pull their head back.

A former President of the Society was studying at the Hall late one night, and
had gone into the restroom to relieve himself.  As he was doing so, he heard
someone wearing boots or hard-soled shoes come slowly down the stairs from
the Upper Chamber, stomping deliberately down the stairs.  When the person
got to the bottom of the stairs, he/she/it kept walking right up to the
bathroom door, then stopped, sighed as if very tired, and then made no
further noises.  When our noble Demosthenian ex-President looked out, there
was no one there.

A few nights later, another member was studying up at the Hall and took a
short restroom break, coming out a few minutes later to find all his books
stacked neatly by the door, and a lampshade was spinning slowly around.
Now, the Hall was so old that it was completely impossible to move around
quietly, and if someone had come in, opening the front door, crossed to
where the guy'd been studying, walked back (setting the lampshade spinning
on the way), and left, it would have been very, very audible.

Radford and Larry claimed to have taken a Ouija board up to the Hall and
used it one dark night and gotten a lengthy curse in some archaic form
of English out of it, but then Larry and Radford would have lied to make
the rest of us feel more spooked if they thought we'd believe them.

The thing is, for all that we sat there utterly spooked some nights while
playing cards while Toombs (or whomever) stalked around upstairs, there
was not a great deal of fear involved; a lot of us felt a kind of pride in
the ghost, and even though people seemed to agree that the Upper Chamber
was the nexus of the observed ghost activities, people would still go up
there at night with the lights out and have sex under the lectern, thereby
earning membership into the ranks of the so-called "True Demosthenians."
And for all Toombs's walking at midnight, I never heard him interrupt an
actual Demosthenian thursday night meeting, perhaps because our oratorical
skills kept him enraptured.

I'm not generally the sort of person who believes in ghosts, as I've said
various places, but Toombs's ghost was one I tend to lean towards believing
in.  Many was the night I'd find myself up at the Hall at 3:00 in the
morning, and when I'd finally stir myself to go home, I'd NEVER NEVER NEVER
glance back up at the windows of the upper chamber, for fear that I'd see
someone or something staring out at me.  I'd go to great lengths to avoid
looking at those windows if I happened to come to the Hall at night.  On
one occasion, at the beginning of my senior year, I did make the mistake of
looking back over my shoulder as I left the Hall and started down the
sidewalk toward Broad Street.  There, in the window on the side of the
building facing the Academic Building, was a pale white face, looking
steadily out the window at me.

I turned and ran.
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.ghost-stories