Farmville Campus Where the Elevator Boy Still Rides
Farmville, VA 23909
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
The campus is a working university; visitors may walk the grounds. No admission fee for exterior campus visit.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Paved campus paths; elevator access within buildings
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1969 · Virginia Higher Education History · Civil Rights History · Prince Edward County Virginia
Longwood University traces its founding to 1839, making it one of the oldest public institutions of higher education in Virginia. The campus at Farmville, in Prince Edward County, has accumulated a layered history that includes a significant Civil War chapter — Union troops occupied the town during the final days of the war — and a civil rights chapter directly tied to the region's own Moton High School student strikes of 1951.
The two high-rise residence halls constructed on campus in 1969 and 1970, known as Curry Hall and Frazer Hall, stood as the most prominent vertical structures on the campus for decades. In 2019 and 2020, Longwood undertook a comprehensive renovation of both towers. The Farmville Herald and Longwood's own news publications documented the renaming that followed: Frazer Hall became Moss Hall in honor of Dr. C. Gordon Moss, a Longwood history professor and dean of faculty; Curry Hall became Johns Hall in honor of Barbara Rose Johns, the student activist.
The renovation firm Corgan documented the project, which increased residential capacity and updated both buildings' interiors and exterior facades to align more closely with the campus's Georgian-influenced architectural character. The original 10-story profile of both buildings was preserved.
The campus ghost tours operated by Longwood's student organizations have long featured the building formerly known as Curry Hall among their stops, keeping the elevator legend alive across student generations even as the building's name changed.
Sources
The legend of the elevator boy at what was Curry Hall has circulated among Longwood University students since at least the 1990s. The account describes a three-year-old child who rode his bicycle into the open elevator shaft in the dormitory, falling to his death. According to the legend, the child's presence is most reliably encountered by riding the elevator to the tenth floor — the building's highest — and then going directly to the basement without stopping. When the doors open at the basement level, witnesses report seeing the boy's apparition.
The Visit Farmville tourism office includes the account in its guide to Longwood campus ghost stories alongside other documented university legends, such as the account of Professor Edith Stevens, who died saving students from a laboratory fire in 1945, and the story of a young woman killed when the Longwood bell fell on her during transport from the train station in 1896.
The building has been renamed Johns Hall as of 2020, but the student oral tradition of the elevator legend predates and survives the name change. No contemporaneous news record of a child's death in the elevator shaft was located through available sources. The account exists in the register of campus folklore.
Notable Entities
Walk the historic Longwood University campus and visit the building formerly known as Curry Hall, now named Johns Hall after a 2020 renovation and renaming. The 10-story residence hall is the site of the elevator shaft legend. Campus buildings are not generally open to non-enrolled visitors; exterior and public campus spaces are accessible.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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