Haunting of Lee Hall

From: Tim Jordan (ncsharus@yahoo.com)
Story type: Ghost
Location: Black Mountain, NC
Source: Form Submission

Single encounter.
While in college I spent three summers working at Blue Ridge Assembly, a YMCA conference center in the mountains of North Carolina. The enter facility was centered around Lee Hall, the original building, which was built in 1912 and which has served many different purposes over the years. Lee Hall is huge for such an old building: 5 stories counting the basement and the attic, with hundreds of rooms. It is an ominous presence on the mountain looming hugely over everything else. At the end of the summer we had to thoroughly clean the building and lock it up as it was not used during the winter.

I was in charge of a small team of people cleaning the building and at the end of the day me and my friend Jim personally locked the building. That evening all of the employees were cleaning the men's and women's dorms, getting them ready for the coming winter as well, when we ran out of cleaning supplies. Jim and I were elected to return to Lee Hall and get more supplies since that is where the Housekeeping department was stationed.

We approached the rear of the building with some hesitation. Lee Hall was totally dark and we would have to walk half the length of the building, down a long hallway, to find the circuit breaker in order to get some lights on. Neither one of us had thought to bring flashlights and we nervously joked about the long walk down the dark hallway with room after creepy room open on either side of us.

As we approached the back staircase leading to the second floor door that would let us in near the Housekeeping storeroom, we both confessed to being unusually "creeped out" by the whole affair. We paused a minute and joked some more, reminding ourselves that although it was kind of scary nothing could possibly happen, and began to climb the stairs again. As soon as we reached the landing just a few feet from the door, the door swung silently open and then banged against the wall. I felt a sudden chill deep in my bones like I'd never felt before. It felt like the building was "welcoming" us inside, but I didn't want any part of that welcome and refused to go in. Jim wasn't going in either, so we retreated and got some other people to help us search the building. Of course it was empty, and the door that had opened was still locked, yet still standing wide open. I never spent another moment alone in Lee Hall again.