Brenau University

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Agnes is the ghost who is believed to haunt the 1878 women’s college called Brenau University. A former student in the early 1900s, Agnes is said to have hanged herself. Her reasons for her distressed differ depending on who tells the story. She may have been ostracized by sorority members or denied the lead in a dance performance. Her hanging site was either the balcony of Pearce Auditorium or at the swimming pool below the Pearce complex, which is walled up and some say never even existed. Some say her apparition can be seen hanging in the auditorium.

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Geographic Information

Address:
500 Washington St NE
Gainesville, GA 30501
United States

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GPS:
34.30323585173043, -83.82172492139944
County:
Hall County, Georgia
Nearest Towns:
Gainesville, GA (0.4 mi.)
Oakwood, GA (6.3 mi.)
Talmo, GA (10.0 mi.)
Flowery Branch, GA (10.1 mi.)
Lula, GA (10.6 mi.)
Gillsville, GA (10.7 mi.)
Clermont, GA (12.4 mi.)
Pendergrass, GA (12.7 mi.)
Braselton, GA (13.8 mi.)
Hoschton, GA (14.7 mi.)

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Comments (7)

  1. Carolina RUCKS-ALSAEDI  |  

    I graduated from Brenau in 1983. I lived in Wilkes Dorm my freshman year. Every one knew the story of the place being haunted. I had a couple of strange things happen while living there that made me doubt my sanity at times. Once I returned to my locked room and heard someone inside. I went and found the house mother who unlocked the door….nothing. Another time I woke up to find a bag of potting soil in the middle of my room. No….it wasn’t open or anything like that. I had purchased it for house plants. I convinced myself I MUST have done it and just couldn’t remember. Brenau is rich in history and legends. who knows?

  2. I was a stage manager for one of the Gainesville Theatre Alliance’s production’s in 2002. While closing up one night around 11:00pm I went to make sure the door that led up to the upstairs dorms was locked. On my way down the dark hallway, heading toward the front doors, I heard a sound like a wrench banging on a pipe behind the walls. I entered the men’s restroom, where the sound was coming from, and heard nothing. As I continued down the hall, I heard the same banging inside the women’s restroom. I kept walking and the banging sound followed me down the hall to the house doors. Needless to say, I kept walking and locked the door behind me and never looked back. Way too creepy locking up Pearce Auditorium by myself at 11:00pm.

  3. Renee Busron Loggins class of 87  |  

    I was a Theatre major in the mid 80’s, many creepy nights at Pearce Auditorium! Our costume room was housed in a old, old house on campus it was always making noise and scaring the crap out of us. Also an Alpha Gamma Delta sister, We heard many tells of Agnes.

  4. I work at a summer camp at Brenau and have experienced an automatic door slammed in my face, electronics turning on and off, and had a very creepy experience while cleaning the dorms at the end of camp by myself. There’s another ghost legend on campus at Crudup – the legend of Red, the little boy who supposedly died during a construction accident during the construction of Crudup. I was the only person in the entire building, and I was cleaning one of the rooms rumored to be haunted. I was taking out the bathroom trash and heard the closet door slam from the outside room. Another staff member witnessed Agnes dancing across the stage one night while putting the seats back up at Pearce. Another counselor witnessed the Alpha Gamma Delta ghost one night in the middle of the night. Its crawling with spirits!

  5. My mom used to work as a security guard for the college, and I would accompany her during the summer, having nothing else to do. Every night Agnes’s theatre seat that she used to sit in would be down while the rest were up. During one of the nights we decided to get a recording of her, and we heard a “get out” after my mom asked about the teacher she fell in love with. We also got a recording of an orb magically appear and move around while I played the piano.

  6. My mother is a custodial worker at brenau and one day she let me and my friend go up to the attic there we encountered some strange things. We filmed our entrance and as soon as we entered there was orbs flying from every direction. We then stumbled across a dead bird placed carefully in the middle of the room and a bird cage that had been there a while. My mother worked in vanhoose/crudup where red is apparently. She also had multiple experiences in the science building where a ghost had started to throw pictures of the wall my mother demanded them to stop that she knew they were there and it hasn’t happened again since. I’ve also personally have seen the dorm in which Agnes apparently lived. Some people go and preform weird rituals there there’s symbols everywhere. Agnes is said to have either hung her self due to a love affair with a teacher where she ended up pregnant another said she died of tb. Even though Agnes is one ghost there are plenty more and they demand to be known also. My mother and I have caught pictures in which apparitions can be seen. There was once a psychic who visited and told them that the rest of the ghost are annoyed that Agnes is the one with all the attention lol I know weird right. I personally am sensitive to spirits and know that they are plenty of ghosts around. I’ll try to find the pics and post them here so y’all may see what we have encountered.

  7. I attended Brenau in the late 1990s. As an Interior Design major, I spent most of my time in the Simmons building, attached to the right wing of the Pearce complex. Most of the time, I parked in the parking lot behind The Tea Room, so in order to get something from my car, I had to take the elevator down to the 2nd floor of Simmons, cross the foyer of Pearce, pass the little theater, and go out the back door of Bailey. I worked many long nights in the drafting room, and often made this trip back and forth to retrieve additional supplies from my car. I never had anything happen until one night when I made the trip alone. I had left the door between Pearce and Simmons propped open as usual, but when I returned from my car, it was closed. As I approached the door and reached for the handle, the lock turned, essentially trapping me in the Pearce foyer. The flower-shaped auditorium lights were on, which they should not have been in the middle of the night, but all entrances to the theater were locked. As I knocked on the door that had been locked, thinking it was Campus Security who had secured the door, the lock unlocked and I yanked the door open, expecting to see a security officer. There was no one on the other side, and all of the lights were off in the corridor. A person would have to know the twists and turns very well in order to run through there in the dark. There was no noise of anyone running. When I arrived at the elevator and switched the lights back on, there was no one in the hallway. I took the elevator back to the third floor, and called campus security to ask if someone could come over to check the buildings. I was told it would be a bit, because the officer on duty was on the other side of campus. I was also told that both doors (Bailey and the basement of Simmons) had been locked hours earlier, so there was no way that anyone could be in the building unless they had the codes, which was only a few of us, none of which were there that night except myself and my friend who stayed alone in Simmons, too frightened to cross over Pearce during the middle of the night. After that occurrence, I found out that several of my friends who were Alpha Chi Omegas had witnessed unusual occurrences in Wilkes. When someone said that Agnes was an urban legend, a friend of ours stated that it was untrue. She said that her grandmother had been Agnes’ roommate and that Agnes had existed and had committed suicide on campus, just not in Pearce. If memory serves, Agnes may have died in Crudup. There is a student who may fit the description, Agnes Galloway, in an old copy of “Bubbles”, the Brenau yearbook. Her death notice states that she died of TB, but that would be how a family from that time period would have handled a suicide. I’m not sure why Brenau denies that there was ever a pool under Pearce. Years ago during a renovation, some doors and partitions were left open, and students were very clearly able to see the remnants of a pool. I know because I was one of those students.

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