Main Residence Hall

Condie Cunniham’s is a tragic story . The telling of it has all the elements of a Friday the 13^th or one of the more recent horror movies. It seems that at the turn of the century, she was a student living in main Residence Hall. It was and still is today a female residence hall. She and some of the other girls were fixing a hot chocolate over a burner and it tipped over. Condie’s gown caught fire. As the fire marshal tells us, the worst thing you can do when you are on fire is run, and that is exactly what Condie did. She ran down the hall. Subsequently, she died at the local hospital.

The legend of Condie flows from that, and it becomes more bizarre as students began to see in the wood grain panel to the door to her room the image of a woman screaming. Her hair was on fire, and the flames were shooting up. There were maintenance people who claim that they have seen the image too. It wasn’t just students who saw her. A few years ago, somebody decided to put the door in storage to put the school at ease. What happened was, the ghost reappeared in the new door. So it’s a classic kind of story. Even today, you can talk to students who swear that Condie came into their room. She’s been known to go into the shower areas and scream her head off. Some students have felt wind when the windows were closed. They have seen the carpet on the threshold of her room ripple as if someone walked into the room. Or they’ll tell the story of a door opening, and there won’t be anyone there. Now there is probably a rational explanation. It’s an old building, and it is probably settling. There are images in clouds called pseudo morphs, and if the brain is looking for something, it will see it. And another person comes along, and they believe you. The girls say when she roams the hall, she doesn’t do it quietly. She runs and screams through the halls as if she is still on fire. One student said Condie is coming back because she is trying to livie vicariously through the young students in the hall.

It’s a scary building if you approach it at night. According to everybody that’s seen it, the image is still on the door. I saw it twenty years ago. The girls often will hold initiations, and one part of it is you’ve got to go see Condie’s door, and it’s leaning against the wall in a storage closet. It happened in the central part of the building. The wings were added later. Nobody lives in that room now because of Condie. From the standpoint of fire hazards in the early 20^th century, I would say yes. From my experience teaching in various colleges, I would have to say that most female dorms have ghosts. I’m not sure if there is any proof or not.

Last updated 07/24/01

Main Residence Hall (University of Montevallo) By Dr. Frank McCoy

Main Residence Hall
(University of Montevallo)
By Dr. Frank McCoy