The ever-so-frightful holiday of Halloween is fast approaching, that fateful night upon which disguises are garnished and delightful treats are gifted to all. Though the COVID-19 pandemic has temporarily halted thrill-seeking students from touring Winthrop University’s haunted hallways, ghosts and ghouls still most certainly abound the campus’s hallowed grounds. Professors and students alike whisper in hushed tones of a one-armed specter that roams behind the closed doors of
the Little Chapel building.
“Our first president, David Bancroft Johnson, is actually buried underneath the Little Chapel,” said Ada Carpenter, vice president of the Ambassadors program and junior childhood education major.
“It was his dying wish to be buried under the building. If you actually go inside there and pull off the rug, you can see that under it is his and his wife’s tombstone.”
“He actually only has one arm; no one knows what happened to his missing one. Some think he lost it to cancer, others say he fell off a horse. Some even say he got hit by a train. There are people who say they’ve seen DBJ and his wife walking around Little Chapel, as well as ghosts of former students.”
The history of Little Chapel is inseparably intertwined with Winthrop University. Long before Winthrop came to Rock Hill or was even founded, the Little Chapel building was built as a seminary owned by the Presbyterian church and situated in Columbia, South Carolina, according to Winthrop’s Digital Commons website. In 1886, Johnson borrowed the building to house the first twenty-one students of the Winthrop Training School for Teachers, which served as the humble genesis of the Winthrop academic institution.
The Winthrop Training School migrated to its current location in 1895, leaving its home behind in Columbia after more than thirty years there. In 1936, Winthrop alumnae and many other WU leaders successfully petitioned to have the Little Chapel building dismantled brick by brick and transported to the Rock Hill campus, where it was rebuilt and installed as a one-house school room, according to Carpenter.
Presently, the Little Chapel is reserved only for special events such as weddings, the Ambassador induction ceremony and other secretive organization meetings. Last year, the university campus police provided an unofficial ghost tour of the building, a position that normally would be fulfilled by the Alumni Association sponsored ghost tour. According to Carpenter, the campus police reportedly claimed to have captured paranormal footage on the security cameras in multiple buildings, including Little Chapel.
The Little Chapel building may never again be open to the students of Winthrop, but one thing seems certain — some part of Winthrop’s past will forever lurk within its time-weathered walls.
Photo by Emma Crouch
I got married in there. I’m an alumni. Saw many AKPsi initiations there as well. Why and when did it become not open to students?