Willingham Chapel

Ofc. John Morgan, a policeman working the midnight-to-eight shift at Mercer University, was in Willingham Chapel at about two o'clock one morning when he heard the sound of footsteps that seemed to be coming from the balcony echoing throughout the chapel. They sounded as if they were treading on wood, but the floors in the balcony are made of concrete. After searching the area, he found no one. He knew that he had locked the chapel doors behind him when he arrived, and he knew that he possessed the only key. He wondered how the mysterious person could have entered or left without being detected. There were panic bars on the doors that might have facilitated an escape, but he hadn't heard them open.

That same night as he walked through the auditorium in the basement of the chapel, Morgan ran into a column of freezing air. Startled, he walked all around the area and noted that the air surrounding the pillar was quite warm by comparison. He stepped into the frigid column, but the cold air became intolerable, and he had to back away.

These unusual occurrences brought to mind old rumors of a Confederate soldier or officer who may have been killed there in the 1860s. Stories of an apparition seen by some students in the early 1900s still circulated.

Or could this be the ghost that Mercer's drama students call Oscar? Mercer University's tiny Back Door Theater inhabits the chapel basement and, according to an article in the Macon Telegraph, October 28, 1994, one night in the mid-1970s a student who was rehearsing for a play was nearly clobbered by a large wooden plank that apparently fell from nowhere. All of the doors in the theater were locked, and the student was quite sure he was alone in the building. When he investigated, he discovered that the timber matched similar pieces found in the attic of the old building.

How could this particular piece have mysteriously fallen onto the stage? After much discussion and conjecture, the most popular explanation was that the near-tragic accident had been the prank of a ghost. From then on, the drama students attributed all mysterious occurrences in the building to the ghost they dubbed Oscar.

Paul Oppy, Mercer's theater director since the fall of 1974, denies the existence of the ghost. He says that the incidents happened to the students, not to him, and while he enjoys hearing their stories, he remains a skeptic.

According to Oppy, the students believe that Oscar's pranks have been numerous. During the first dress rehearsal of each new play, Oscar seems always to play with the lighting. Sometimes props disappear when they are needed most. Some students admit that they feel a "presence" from time to time in the chapel and the theater.

According to the newspaper article, one student, Shelly Johnson, recalled a time when she and another student were alone, rehearsing their lines in the chapel. They heard a seat in the chapel creak, followed by the sound of a door closing, but they never say anyone leave. Johnson said that she felt the "presence" in the theater dressing room and refused to be there alone. "This place is like a labyrinth," the article quoted her as saying. "It's dark and moldy, and there's lots of little passageways and cubbyholes. It gets scary."

Paul Oppy doesn't think there's anything to worry about. "From all of the students' reports, Oscar is not a malevolent ghost," Oppy says. "Oscar appears to be more of a trickster."