Already the new girls are quaking with fear and trembling at the thought of the fast approaching date for the coming of Chowan’s annual visitor known as “The Brown Lady.” We know that she must have some of Chowan College’s training in punctuality, for they say she has never failed to make her call on Hallowe’en night, since that night years ago about Hallowe’en time when her soul took its flight5 and left her cold form, clothed in her favorite dress of brown, they thought stilled forever. But, alas! The rustle of that brown silk is heard yet as her ghostly form sprightly trips up and down the halls on Hallowe’en nights. Of all the ghosts, spooks, and hobgoblins of Spookdom, they say none can make you shake and shiver like this lady in brown can when her marble white face bends over your bed and strokes your brow gently with her cold fingers of death, and bids you to come with her for a ramble through the woods to the city of toombs.
Those who have in former years become acquainted with the mysterious apparition are advising the new girls to sleep in bath robes (next line obscured) departments have their harnesses for the horses, ready to jump under at a moment’s notice; for the comes in the wee small hours of night, when all the world is hushed and still. No use in acting scared and saucy, for the more stubborn you act, the longer she lingers. The best way is just to go where she says go; and do what she says do; and submit to her magic spell until she sees fit to tell you good-bye.
From the front page of the Chowanian, Murfreesboro, N.C., Thursday, Oct. 11, 1923
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