HGB Ep. 631 - University of South Carolina

This Month in History - Doug Hegdahl blown overboard (Suggested by: Michael Rogers)

In the month of April, on the 6th, in 1967, U.S. Navy petty officer second class, Doug Hegdahl became a prisoner of war during the Vietnam conflict. Hegdahl was aboard the USS Canberra in the Gulf of Tonkin when he was knocked overboard. He had been on the teakwood deck around 4:30 a.m. watching the 5-inch gun mount firing in the dark. Hegdahl's recounting of what caused him to fall overboard was unclear, but it is believed that it was due to a blast of gun fire. He was not missed until the ship's morning muster later that day. After several hours in the South China Sea, the Naval petty officer was picked up by North Vietnamese fishermen and subsequently turned over to the North Vietnamese Army. Doug Hegdahl was the youngest and lowest ranking POW of the Vietnam War. He was imprisoned for two years. Initially the Vietnamese interrogators thought that Hegdahl was a spy, but he was able to convince them of his low ranking status in the U.S. Navy and that he truly fell off his ship. The guards began calling him "The Incredibly Stupid One", however, Hegdahl was far from stupid. He determined that acting stupid was to his advantage and the young petty officer actually had an incredible memory. Hegdahl used his gift to memorize the names, capture dates and personal details about all the 256 men he was imprisoned with. He used the song, 'Old MacDonald Had a Farm' to help him memorize the soldier's information. The POWs had organized an unofficial chain of command amongst themselves in the prison. After two years, Hegdahl's superiors ordered him to accept an early release. Doug originally refused, not feeling right about leaving sooner than the other soldiers, but eventually agreed. The Vietnamese would regularly offer up POWs they wanted gone for propaganda purposes. After Hegdahl returned to the U.S. with two other POWs, he was debriefed and began listing the names of all the military men he had been imprisoned with. The information that Doug Hegdahl shared with the Nixon Administration was critical. It allowed the U.S. to put additional pressure on North Vietnam due the Geneva Convention's rules on the humane treatment of POWs. The information shared by the Navy petty officer second class, significantly improved the life of prisoners in POW camps. Doug Hegdahl may have been the lowest ranking POW to be captured during the Vietnamese War, but he is widely considered a hero of the major armed conflict.

University of South Carolina (Suggested by: Emily West) 

The University of South Carolina in Columbia is said to be the flagship university of the state. This is the home of the Gamecocks and was established over 200 years ago. What started as a small college has become a large university with over 35,000 students. The university features beautiful architecture and poignant sculptures. It also has several ghost stories. Join us for the history and hauntings of the University of South Carolina.

So, I know my first question is, what exactly is a gamecock and why did this university choose that as their mascot? They also have the school colors, garnet and black. Garnet is fairly unique we would think when it comes to colors. Not maroon or crimson, but garnet. First, a gamecock is a specially bred rooster, known for being very aggressive and strong. These are the birds used in cockfighting. If you have ever seen this kind of fight - you don't mess with a gamecock and frankly, I don't think you should mess with a rooster ever. They can be mean. Now, that's enough to make the gamecock a good mascot, but why did the university choose that? Apparently this goes back to the Revolutionary War. General Thomas Sumter, for who Fort Sumter was named, had a nickname and that was "The Fighting Gamecock." He was the last surviving general from the war as well. Since Fort Sumter is in South Carolina, it makes sense that the General would serve as inspiration for the school. But there is more to the story. Clemson is the chief rival to USC. Their mascot is the tiger. Back in 1902, the two schools' football teams were facing off against each other and Carolina was the underdog, They won an upset victory and some USC students made a picture that featured a gamecock crowing over a tiger that had been beaten. When the Clemson team saw this, they told the USC team that they better not carry it in the parade being held the following day. The USC student carried the picture and this set the stage for a violent confrontation. This was 1902, so this wasn't going to be fists. A couple hundred Clemson military cadets marched on the Carolina campus and they were swinging their swords around, calling for a fight. Forty Carolina students grabbed knives and pistols and hid behind a wall, preparing to confront the cadets. Thankfully, the police  and professors heard about this and rushed to the scene and they defused the situation. Everybody gathered round and they burned the picture together. All the students cheered, but the Tigers and Gamecocks wouldn't play a football game against each other for six years. The papers reported the Carolina students as being the Gamecocks and the mascot stuck. There is a tradition of burning paper tigers before every Carolina-Clemson football game now. No one knows where using garnet as a color came from, but it dates back to the 1890s. 

Back in 1801, the governor of South Carolina, John Drayton, wanted to bring harmony between the Lowcountry and the Upcountry of South Carolina. This division split the state into north and south. Charleston was the heart of Lowcountry and it was very powerful and very wealthy, trading heavily with England and the Caribbean. This was one of the most prosperous cities in America. Taxes were levied heavily on the town though and the first whispers of revolution would start here. 

The Upcountry wasn't affected much by England's taxes and had a more modest lifestyle and trade. These were farmers and traders of a lower class and this caused clashes with the richer Lowcountry. The Lowcountry were Patriots, while the Upcountry were Loyalists. There was actually armed conflict between the two sides before the Revolutionary War. William Drayton had been a prominent Lowcountry leader and he went to broker peace with the Upcountry. Initial attempts failed, but when the Cherokee Nation started to form an alliance with the Lowcountry, Upcountry leaders realized they would be in a big pickle. So they brokered a peace agreement until the war started. This rivalry still had a hold in 1801. So, Governor John Drayton - who was the son of Willaim Drayton - went to the South Carolina General Assembly and asked them to found South Carolina College. They agreed and passed an act to do so on December 19, 1801. There were initially nine students enrolled in a traditional classical curriculum when it opened its doors in 1805. The first president was the Baptist minister and theologian Reverend Jonathan Maxcy. The early plan was to build eleven buildings to form the campus. The first building served multiple purposes as an administrative office, academic building, residence hall, and chapel and still stands today. It is known as Rutledge College today. The President's House was the next to be built and was finished in 1807. The building that eventually will be DeSaussure (De sah soor) College was next and then the other eight buildings came over the next couple of decades. This grouping of buildings ended up forming a U-shape and this earned it the nickname "The Horseshoe." This has remained the central part of the university. 

These early years had the student body forming two literary societies: the Clariosophic Society and the Euphradian Society. These societies prepared students for leadership with a focus on oratory excellence. From the 1970s to 2013, the Clariosophic Society was shut down, but in 2013, it was re-activated. The Euphradian Society shut down multiple times through the years and would restart with the most recent being in 2010. The college was the leading institution of the South.

But being that this college was in the south, there is a history involving slavery and discrimination and and civil rights. The early buildings were made from slaved-made brick and slaves did the construction work. Maintenance and cleaning was also performed by enslaved people. The college supported secession and the Confederate side of the Civil War. Most male students volunteered, but there was also a system of conscription. The college ended up allowing students under the age of 18 to enroll, so that there were students for professors to teach. When the war was over and reconstruction was under way, The University Act of 1869 was passed to fund and reorganize the university with an amendment added by black representative W. J. Whipper, that would prevent racial discrimination at the university. Two black trustees, Benjamin A. Boseman and Francis Lewis Cardozo, were also added to the governing board. Most enslaved people needed remedial educations to prepare for college, so a normal school was added to campus to prepare them and the college also abolished tuition and other fees. On October 7, 1873, Henry E. Hayne, the Secretary of State of South Carolina, became the first black student when he registered at the medical college at USC for the fall session. This made the national papers and some white students left the school in protest. Because of this, within two years, most of the students were black. There are many monuments around the school inspired by these efforts. The most recent was unveiled in 2024 and features a 12-foot bronze monument with three of the first black students aftyer the campus had been closed off to blacks again: Robert Anderson, Henrie Monteith Treadwell and James Solomon Jr. Treadwell was just 16 years old when she filed the lawsuit that led to USC’s integration in 1963 and she became the first post-Reconstruction black graduate and first black female graduate in 1965. This monument stands near McKissick Museum on the historic Horseshoe. 

At the top of the Horseshoe is a Slavery Historical Marker. It recognizes the work of slaves in building the campus and shares that enslaved people lived in outbuildings, one of which still stands behind what is now the President's House. The Kitchen House and Slave Quarters Marker is near the President's House and identifies the last remaining kitchen and slave quarters on campus. There is  statue of Richard T. Greener who was the first African American professor at the University of South Carolina and he served during the Reconstruction Era.

Things changed in 1877 when the South Carolina legislature became all-white again and they closed the university and reopened it three years later as a white only agricultural college. The university's first black professor, had to leave. And this was just white men. Women weren't allowed at the university until 1893, but even then, they weren't allowed to live on campus. Mattie Jean Adams became the first female graduate in 1898. In 1924, women could finally live in dormitories on the campus and a quarter of the campus was female. In the spring of 1924, Irene Dillard Elliott became the first dean of women at USC. The Horseshoe was registered as a National Historic Landmark and the 11 original buildings there have survived fires, an earthquake and the Civil War. 

The university has grown extensively from its origins, not only adding thousands of students, but the property has added the student union, 24 residence halls, several academic buildings, the Longstreet Theatre, the Koger Center for the Arts, the Carolina Coliseum, the Colonial Life Arena, Carolina Stadium, the Strom Thurmond Wellness and Fitness Center, the Greek Village, the Green Quad, the Honors Residence Hall, the Public Health Research Center, the Graduate Columbia hotel, School of Law building and the Darla Moore School of Business. 

A little lesser known fact about the university is that it has tunnels underneath it. These were steam tunnels that gave power to the university with steam pipes running through them and other utilities. There were rumors that they connected to the tunnels in the underground of downtown Columbia, but this isn't true. The rumor we are most interested in is that these tunnels are the lair of Mr. Third Eye. He has that nickname because he apparently has three eyes. And that's better than his other nickname, which is The Sewer Man. The first story of seeing the Third Eye Man dates back to November 12, 1949. Two students, one of whom was named Christopher Nichols, were walking past the Long Street Theater around 10:30 at night and they saw this man who appeared to be wearing silver clothing and he went down under a manhole cover. Then, about six months later, a police officer was on campus investigating a report of mutilated chickens near the Long Street Theater. He saw those and then he also saw a strange man with silver skin. This man turned and looked at the officer and the officer saw that he had an oddly colored face and he also had three eyes. A third encounter happened later when a group of students claimed to see this thing in the underground utility tunnels. The final story I saw had Mr. Third Eye charging students with a lead pipe in the 1970s. The police searched the tunnels, but they couldn't find him and from that point on, the tunnels have been off limits to students. There are those who claim that sightings continued into the 80s and 90s, but when we went to find these supposed newspaper articles about any of these sightings, we could find none. So this just may be a very elaborate bit of folklore for the campus. 

So let's get into some more realistic hauntings. Lonely_Set1376 wrote on Reddit, "I worked in McMaster College in the darkroom when I was at USC, and it seemed haunted. Several times a young woman would be working alone in the darkroom and come out freaking out claiming someone was in there with them, like that they saw out of the corner of their eye. Different women, who didn't know each other. I never saw anything but the building was really creepy at night when no one was there."

The South Caroliniana Library was constructed in 1840 and it is the oldest freestanding college library in the entire country. It is located on the historic Horseshoe at the intersections of Sumter and College Streets and holds one of the largest Southern manuscript collections in the nation. The American history collection here is also very important. The library was designed by Robert Mills in the Greek Revival architecture and features four Doric columns on the exterior. The interior has a second-floor reading room designed after the 1808 Congressional library that housed Thomas Jefferson's personal library in the second Library of Congress. Two wings were added to the structure in 1927. When the Civil War raged, much of the campus was damaged by occupation by both forces, but the library remained relatively unscathed. A great black leader in America, Richard Greener, served as a steward who protected the library after the war. The building served as the state house for a while after the war because the real state house had been burned down. Being this old and this important, it is not surprising that people claim that it is haunted. J. Rion McKissick was one of the most beloved presidents of USC and he died in office in 1944. He actually had been a student at the school during the infamous 1902 conflict that led to the first "tiger burn." McKissick would ride his bicycle across campus and guided the university during the World War II years. His ghost is said to haunt the library and the area around it. This could be because his grave is to the left of the front doors of the library.

A Confederate nurse is seen haunting the Horseshoe area that had served as a giant hospital during the war. People have taken to calling her Ms. Black. The legend behind her claims that she wasn't helping everyone. In fact, she was poisoning Union wounded. She eventually poisoned herself. She used wine to carry the poison and her ghost is said to wander the Horseshoe, carrying wine and offering it to people. 

The McKissick Museum was originally a library when it was built in 1940. It was built in the same spot that the first President's House was located. The library became the museum in 1984 and specializes in Southern folk art. The Visitor Center offers student-led walking tours, called University Ambassadors. President McKissick's body lay in repose here after his death. The museum was named for him and is also said to be haunted by him. Michaela Reilly, a class of 2021 University Ambassador, said, "My favorite ghost story is the story of James McKissick haunting the McKissick Museum at night. His grave is fairly close to the building. There are rumors that you can hear footsteps at night when no one else is around and that you’ll hear objects moving and feel cool breezes. It’s a lively building during the day, but when all the lights are off at night, it does look pretty spooky.” There are those that think this building is haunted by a former custodian instead. 

DeSaussure (De sah soor) College is the second oldest building on campus and was named for Henry William DeSaussure, who served in the Revolutionary War and later as a politician in both chambers of the South Carolina legislature. He was a part of the assembly that established the college and he was one of the first trustees of the college. The building mirrors Rutledge College in style. It served as a hospital during the Civil War, and was the site of the first medical school at Carolina from 1866-1873. During World War I, one wing served as the first women’s dormitory. Today, it is an upperclassmen dormitory. The University's website reports, "One wing was also used during the Reconstruction Era as a federal military prison. Several of our students are believed to have heard the footsteps and voices of the Civil War soldiers that haunt the building." 

The Spigner House is located at 915 Gregg Street and was recently renovated and is used by the campus as an events and conference center. There are beautiful expansive grounds and an uncovered limestone, brick and tiled terrace that spans the width of the front and wraps onto both side of the exterior with a conference room, two drawing rooms and a central foyer. The house was built in 1915 by J. Carroll Johnson in the Italian Renaissance Revival style for Thomas and Isabel Boyne. The land had been deeded to Isabel by her father. In 1937, the director of the Palmetto National Bank, G. Trezevant Pressley and his wife, Annie, bought the house. Henrietta Bailey was their niece and like a daughter to them and she lived with them during the Depression. When Annie died in 1959, she bequeathed the home to Henrietta. Henrietta gave the home to the University of South Carolina in 1963. Shadow figures have been seen in the house and people claim to get eerie feelings.

The Taylor House is located at 1525 Senate St. and was built for Thomas Taylor, Jr. in 1908 in the Neoclassical style. It was restored in 2024 to serve as the School of Law’s admissions office and event space. The house served as the Columbia Museum of Art from 1950 to 1998. The haunting here includes employees hearing noises upstairs and in the attic. There is never anybody in those locations when checked. The light in the attic has been reported to turn on and off in the middle of the night. Shadow figures have also been seen.  

The Longstreet Theatre is just down the road from the Horseshoe. The theater started off as College Hall when it was built in 1855. The plan had been to have this serve not only as a hall, but as an auditorium and chapel. The exterior is amazing, resembling a Greek temple with large Doric columns in front and a Neoclassical design. It wasn't easy to get built as 400,000 bricks designated for the building were lost when the Congaree River flooded, The contractor also had trouble getting glass for the windows. Then the original contractors went bankrupt and another company had to be brought in to finish the construction. Shortly after opening, in April of 1855, The college's president, James Thornwell, delivered a speech inside the building. That's when it was discovered that the acoustics sucked. The sound was like an echo chamber and most people couldn't understand what was being said. So the college knew that they couldn't use this building for its original intent. It also couldn't be used for academic purposes because it hadn't been built to have a bunch of classrooms.  So it just kinda sat there until the Civil War and then it was used as a military hospital. From 1870 to 1887, it was used as an arsenal and armory by the US Army. In 1888, it was renamed Science Hall and laboratories were set up. The basement was transformed into a gymnasium. An indoor swimming pool was added in 1939 and the name went back to College Hall. An engineering miracle in the 1970s transformed the building into a premier stage for live theater and it took its current name from school president Augustus Baldwin Longstreet. A remodel turned this into a theater in the round and it opened in 1977. 

People claimed that the building was cursed because of all the building issues. A storm even blew the roof off early on. And this is a theater, so it isn't surprising people say it is haunted. Add onto that that this was a hospital and part of it was used as a morgue and you have all the ingredients for ghosts. 

Jim Hunter is the head of the Department of Theatre and Dance, which now occupies the building and he said, "Down underneath the front steps...there are these brick catacombs down there. Those were the morgues because it was cold down there. And of course, there's all the ghost stories that you get from that. We've actually had the Ghost Hunters TV show here shooting overnight. This was quite a few many years ago. And of course, you know, they heard things." Visitors have claimed to hear odd noises and doors slamming and they have seen shadow figures. Disembodied footsteps cause the floors to creak. There are stories of the elevator doors opening on their own and of apparitions being seen in the late-night hours. Students will see someone standing in the dressing room and they'll look away and when they look back, the person is gone. The sounds of moaning and groaning are heard as well.

The campus does host ghost tours every spooky season and the university paper isn't shy about sharing ghost stories, so they clearly feel there are some unexplained things going on here. Is the University of South Carolina haunted? That is for you to decide!