Tag Archives: #uga

Stairs to Nowhere

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Does this look familiar to anyone?

From The Red & Black:

On March 1, 1972, UGA student Stanley Park Haddock was found hanging deceased and badly decomposed in room 112 in the southern wing of Joe Brown Hall.

According to a March 2, 1972 article from the Athens Banner-Herald, Haddock’s body was found after a janitor went to investigate a foul odor on the first floor of the building. Cleaning of Haddock’s dormitory proved to be impossible, and the entire wing where the body was discovered was sealed off.

The circumstances surrounding Haddock’s death were never fully clear. It is still unknown whether his death was suicide or an accident. Regardless of the specifics, Haddock’s death has left Joe Brown Hall home to a lot of heartache and unanswered questions.

The “stairs to nowhere” are a most unusual byproduct of the hall’s devastating history. In the southern wing of the building, there is a stairwell that leads to a bricked-up doorway with a photo of a hallway hung in front of it.

It is said that this doorway was sealed due to university officials being unable to completely clean Haddock’s room after his death, leaving it unusable. However, this has never been confirmed or documented.

“Every time I go past the staircase I get the worst sensation,” said Margaret Lonsway, a junior environmental health science major. “It’s awful … It just feels like the place would be haunted.”

Lonsway had multiple classes in Joe Brown Hall for their minor in German. In 2021, they had a hybrid class that offered the option to go to class in person or on Zoom. After attending class in person one time, Lonsway opted to attend online for the rest of the semester.

“After one visit I stopped going because I hated the building so much,” Lonsway said.

Students and faculty have reported hearing knocking and footsteps coming from the sealed wing of the hall, as well as a foul smell, according to the Southern Spirit Guide.

Even beyond these three halls, reports of ghostly activity and otherworldly interactions have popped up all over UGA’s campus.

“There’s no way campus is not haunted,” Lonsway said. “It’s so old — there’s just no way.”

As a young music major, our saxophone teacher, Kenneth Fischer, had an office there and I used to go over there some weeknights for lessons when I was coming up in high school. Can’t say I ever recall any spooky feelings…there again, I never saw this door in my days there, and may have thought different about it had I know. Gives me the heebie jeebies just looking at it.

You know any good ghost stories from you days in Athens?

Wednesday Wondering: Practice Makes Perfect

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Interesting sound bite from a Dawg here:

For today’s Wondering, tell me about something you had to work hard to perfect, through practice or patience, that made you excellent. I’ll start:

I’m a natural introvert. It’s baked in my DNA. One hallmark of introverts is their inability to express themselves, they’re corner huggers at parties, they’re quiet. One thing I’ll say is that beer and UGA broke me out of that. A public speaking class at UGA helped me a lot, and helped me more when the GA who taught it asked me out for a date. And my public speaking project was on the 2nd Amendment and why it was important for us to have the Right to Bear Arms.

In retrospect, I shoulda asked for a second date instead of stumping for the Amendment, but I digress. No, I don’t digress, she was as hot as a South Georgia summer under a clear blue sky beating down on rich, ripe watermelons, and I shoulda had more confidence. Ah, choices. And the life we lead. But, to this day, my remedial English class at UGA along with this fateful class has turned me into the man I am today. I wouldn’t be writing this prose without it.

Discuss, scamps.

We’re Number 1

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Just not in football, but in an academic honor, this time.

The Morehead Honors College is home to recipients of some of the nation’s most prestigious and competitive academic awards. (Dorothy Kozlowski/UGA)

The University of Georgia Jere W. Morehead Honors College was recently ranked the No. 1 honors program or college in the nation by College Transitions, publishers of the best-selling guide, Colleges Worth Your Money.

College Transitions identified three general characteristics—selectivity, benefits offered, and program rigor—for which each honors program or college was scored. Those scores were then standardized, weighted and totaled.

Selectivity, which included test scores, GPA, and acceptance rate, accounted for 25% of a school’s overall score. Rigor, or the number of honors credit hours students are required to take as well as minimum GPA required to remain an honors student, also accounted for 25% of the overall score. The remaining 50% was dedicated to benefits, which included living-learning opportunities, research offerings, and support for applications to national and other competitive scholarships.

What a lovely honor for our beloved University. I never knew this existed when I was on campus, but, then again, I wasn’t exactly an honors student either. (: