Bridgewater, VA – Bridgewater College might be haunted. This is what students say goes on around campus.
First and foremost, the Carter Center dolls are a constant topic of conversation. In 2022, the Digital Media Creatives made a video talking about the Carter Center Dolls. The video suggests that the dolls are haunted by the ghost of Nancy Wingfield, who handmade the dolls for her friend Mrs. Carter. This article will talk about other potential paranormal encounters that may be lesser known.
“Nancy is a nice ghost…she’s friendly…but you’ve got to respect her space” said Ewan Benjamin, a senior History and Political Science major with minors in Religion and Philosophy and Peace Studies. “They like to flicker the lights, which I think is cute,” Benjamin said.
Benjamin shared a story about a late night in the Carter Center with his roommate. “I was talking to my roommate in the concert hall…we heard a lot of banging,” he said. They went to investigate, and the noise was coming from a small room with music stands. As they opened the door, the noises stopped. “As soon as we closed the door, the banging started again, like someone was throwing around the music stands,” Benjamin said. “That’s when we decided it was time to go to bed.”
Sometimes, the most haunted buildings are the oldest. Memorial Hall, built in 1890, is the oldest building on the Bridgewater College campus. “The whole building makes creepy noises,” said an anonymous source. “The whole building creeks.” They recalled experiences they had during classes in room 13 when “it got weirdly cold for split seconds.” They said it felt like a presence passed by.
There are also rumors about room 104 in Blue Ridge Hall according to Abby Nester, a student in the class of 2025, who lived in that room briefly in the Fall of 2022. “Our room visibly sparked,” she said. Multiple people on the facilities staff looked into the issue and found no problems.
One resident of the same room the following year, Sammie Herbst, a Bridgewater College senior, said that mushrooms started growing “out of a crack in the wall.” She called in a work order to get them removed. “They [the mushrooms] came back two weeks later,” Herbst said.
Wakeman has been closed for several years now, and there are whispers that it’s not completely empty. “I was walking back home late to the [Wampler] towers,” one student, choosing to remain anonymous, said “and I could have sworn I saw someone in one of the windows.”
“There was a completely sealed off former dorm room in Rebecca, complete with separate bathrooms, kitchen and carpets,” said one anonymous student. “It had been shut off while the rest of the floor was used as offices.” Rebecca was previously a women’s dorm room and even housed the former dining hall. The student said it was so eerie and that it was the closest he felt to being in a haunted space on campus.
In Cole Hall, when a performer does well and the room is empty, “you’ll hear clapping,” said one student who preferred to remain anonymous. She said that the clapping is Dr. Charles Knox Cole, whom the building honors. The aforementioned video about the Carter Center dolls also mentioned that an apparition had been seen in the balcony that was also thought to be Dr. Cole.
Is Bridgewater Haunted? Maybe Nancy Wingfield or Dr. Charles Knox Cole knows.
