LITTLE ROCK — named Gertrude was so enamored with Galloway that she wanted to stay there forever, and, as fate would have it, she might have gotten her wish.
In the spot where the Harding Administration Building now stands, there was once a dormitory known as Godden Hall.
"It was a huge, gothic structure and those always seem to attract the macabre," recalled Arthur Shearin, chairman of the Harding University Music Department.
It was in Godden Hall that Gertrude is said to have fallen to her death in an elevator shaft one night after returning to the dorm from a party. As legend goes, the girl told her date goodnight and headed to her
Did you ever see a shadow from the corner of your eye, or hear soft music playing in the dead of night? Such a question, asked of students who have passed through the halls of the Harding University Music Department, might bring to mind the tragic tale of the spirit known as "Galloway Gertie," a girl who came to the campus as a student many years ago, and, some say, never left.
Before Harding came to Searcy in the 1930s, the campus was home to Galloway College, a Methodist school for girls. It was reputed to be one of the finest institutions of higher learning for young women in the South and home to many girls of high society. In fact, it is rumored that a young girlroom. As she glided down the hall, her white evening gown rustling softly behind her, she tried to be quiet so as not to wake her roommates. As she drew near her room, she heard a noise in the direction of the elevator shaft and turned to investigate. A piercing scream echoed through the dorm and girls ran from their rooms in a panic. The dorm mother called the police and upon their arrival the girl was found dead at the bottom of the shaft. A dark form is said to have been seen by one of Gertrude's roommates, rushing from the seen, but foul play was never proven.
After the mysterious death, stories of ghostly visits and strange occurrences began to be whispered by the students of Galloway. They persisted even after the school moved to Conway and became part of Hendrix College.
There were reports of the bell in the old tower ringing at midnight, organ music at odd hours and sightings of a young woman in a billowing white gown on the campus grounds.
An article taken from the Nov. 4, 1950, issue of Harding University's campus newspaper, The Bison, tells of one such sighting.
"A freshman awoke at midnight and ambled down the hall for a drink. A harvest moon cut ribbons of light across the walkway. The freshman paused at the elevator shaft and peered through the partly boarded door.
"She stifled a scream, somehow managed to make it back to her room and wakened her roommate. Just before she dropped into a dead faint, she told her roomy, 'I could see her in the moonlight, sitting there in a white evening gown, combing her platinum-blonde hair.' Her buddy mustered enough nerve to go down the hall and look. The girl across the hall, brought out of slumber by the commotion outside, found freshman number two standing speechless, wide-eyed against the opposite wall.
"She - she - walked right through the wall to the first floor," the terrified freshman said as she gasped.
The dean of women was summoned, and as they peered into the darkened elevator shaft, she said, 'There's nothing down there, silly . . . except an old comb!"
Godden Hall was torn down in 1951, and in 1953 bricks from the old structure were reused in the construction of the Pattie Cobb women's residence hall.
Bricks from Godden Hall would also be used in the building of the Claude Rogers Lee Music Center, where the Galloway ghost is said to have made her new home. The haunting sounds of piano music and rustling footsteps began to be reported in the halls of the music building at odd hours, and a figure was said to have been seen staring down from the top window of the old music building, which is why some say the window is painted black.
As could be expected, other stories grew from the original legend. One account, recalledin the 1999 edition of the Harding yearbook, Petit Jean, tells of a group of boys who, in trying to prove that Gertie didn't exist, decided to spend the night in the old music building. Security locked them in the building and checked to make sure nothing or no one was hiding there. Left alone, the boys began to hear a piano playing softly and were so frightened that they called security to come and get them out. Before the guards arrived, though, the boys went toward the piano sounds and as they neared, the playing stopped.
As Harding continued to expand, a new music building, the Reynolds Center, was eventually constructed. Shearin said reports of Gertie sightings have died down; but there are those who believe she simply moved across campus with it.
"If you're in there late at night, Gertie might cross your mind," Shearin said. "Students are practicing most of the time, and with so many noises, youjust don't know if they are human or they belong to the spirit world."
So when a piano plays in the night or a glimpse of white catches the eye on the Harding grounds, it is left to wonder if it is merely imagination or the Galloway ghost, continuing to lurk in the shadows of the campus she will forever call home.
Editor's note: This is the first in a series of four "ghost stories" from White County. Read the Sunday, Oct. 14, Three Rivers Edition to read about a supposedly haunted slave cemetery in Bald Knob.
Three Rivers, Pages 111, 121 on 10/07/2007