HAUNTED LAWRENCE

Atop Windmill Hill in the very center of the city rises the regal three-
story Stubbs Mansion. The building is an architectural work of art,
from its elegant Ionic columns to its sturdy brick walls. As one might
imagine, the inside, with its elaborate staircases and spacious parlors, is no
less splendid.
Today, Stubbs Mansion serves as the house for the Sigma Nu fraternity,
but it did not begin its life as a domicile for college men. Rather, it was the
proud home of the eighteenth governor of Kansas, W.R. Stubbs, and his
wife, Stella. The two lived in the mansion from 1907 until the early 1920s,
and in 1922, the house was sold to Sigma Nu. However, despite this rich
history, the house is arguably best known for a legend detailing the tragic
suicide (or possible murder) of a young maid named Virginia, whose spirit is
said to haunt its halls to this very day.
The story of Virginia and Stubbs Mansion has been told and retold for
almost one hundred years now. As such, it has morphed into a complex
mythology, with several different variants. * In spite of this, the central
narrative has largely remained the same. The legend, collated from various
and disparate accounts, is as follows:
In the early 1910s, W.R. Stubbs was the governor of Kansas. And while
the capitol building was in Topeka, he and his wife, Stella, lived in an
* The biggest difference is that in some variants of the legend, it is said that Virginia
hanged herself/was killed in a closet, not a ballroom.
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expansive mansion atop Windmill Hill, located next to the University
of Kansas.
At some point, Stubbs had heard stories of a young woman of around
seventeen or eighteen who lived in the area. Her name was Virginia. Today,
not much is known about her, but she is said to have been very beautiful,
and upon meeting her, the governor felt a pang of love. Yes, Stubbs loved
W.R. Stubbs, the eighteenth governor of Kansas. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.
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Virginia. But what was the nature of this love? Many say that he impiously
lusted after her and took her on as a mistress, drawing the anger of his wife.
Others, however, claim he merely loved her like a daughter and adopted her
as a ward.
Regardless of Stubbs’s exact feelings, Virginia was hired on as a maid
at the governor’s manor, where she quickly gained a reputation as a reliable
worker and a gregarious young woman.
On the evening of April 21, 1911, after returning from a long day
at the capitol, Stubbs rang his mansion’s doorbell, only for his otherwise
impeccable servant to not answer. This was odd, for Virginia always
answered promptly. Nevertheless, Stubbs assumed she was preoccupied with
some other task, as she was an industrious worker. He unlocked the door
himself and entered, and as he did so, he called out for Virginia.
There was no answer.
Now this was odd. Was something wrong? While this thought fleeted
into the governor’s head, he brushed it away. After all, everything in the
home seemed in order. Nevertheless, Stubbs had the overwhelming urge to
find his servant. As he walked farther into his home, he passed by Virginia’s
bedroom. Was she taking a rest? Since her door was open, the governor
peered inside: she was not there.
He searched the first floor. No Virginia.
Slightly worried, he searched the second floor. Still no Virginia.
At this point, Stubbs was very concerned. Where could she be? The
last place to check was the expansive third floor, which contained a large
ballroom. He hurriedly ascended his mansion’s stairs and threw open the
doors to the ornate chamber.
It was there that he found her.
Virginia’s lifeless body was hanging from a crystal chandelier by a noose,
her youthful beauty snuffed out.
This all made no sense. Virginia was the last person that Stubbs would
have suspected of suicide. No, no, this wasn’t right. Stubbs needed to find
his wife—maybe she knew what had happened.
He eventually found Stella on the rooftop balcony, sitting in a rocking
chair, shaking, bewildered and somewhat out of it. She had clearly been
traumatized.
What had happened? The situation seemed to heavily suggest suicide. But
the pieces didn’t quite add up. Virginia seemingly had no reason to kill herself.
Perhaps it was murder. After all, Stubbs’s wife was often jealous of the
attention her husband gave to their maid.
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Eventually, Stubbs charged that his wife had murdered their maid out
of jealousy. Stella, on the other hand, began to rage about how her husband
had taken on Virginia as a paramour. These bitter accusations grew to be
so intense that after all was said and done, the governor was inconsolably
devastated and his wife was carted off to an asylum.
Following the tragedy, Stubbs had Virginia’s remains cremated. He then
sealed the ashes up behind a large stone fireplace in his mansion. Over her
niche-tomb, he had the following words inscribed: “The World of Strife
Shut Out, the World of Love Shut In.”
In 1922, Stubbs’s family sold his mansion to the Sigma Nu fraternity,
which quickly retrofitted the building into housing for students. Consequently,
the room wherein Virginia died was remodeled and turned into a series of
bedrooms, and it is said that to this very day (and especially during rainy
April), Virginia’s soul manifests in the mansion and roams the halls of the
house in which her young life was tragically cut short.
It is undoubtedly an eerie story, but it raises the key question of whether
any of it actually happened. Several elements are definitely embellishments,
such as the claim that Stella Stubbs was relegated to an asylum—an
assertion of which there is not a shred of proof. Other parts of the story
are not as easily debunked. It is true that no death certificate has ever been
found that corroborates the existence of Virginia, but it was not mandated
that death certificates be recorded until July 1911, only a few months after
her purported death. Furthermore, records indicate that someone did die
in the mansion in 1911, although the identity of this person has never been
revealed due to legal restrictions.
Some naysayers claim that the legend is patently false and has its origins
in a smear campaign perpetrated by political enemies of W.R. Stubbs. The
governor, after all, was a progressive Republican, meaning that he was
among other things anti-alcohol and pro-regulation; these factors in and of
themselves were probably enough to earn him the ire of powerful business
leaders and their many political cronies. Others, however, assert that the
legend is indeed true but that the shocking affair was covered up by either
the governor or his family. (Author Beth Cooper, for instance, notes that,
after all, “money and power can smooth life’s inconvenient moments.”)
Regardless of whether the rumor is true, Lisa Hefner Heitz points out
in her 1990 book Haunted Kansas that the story of Virginia is set apart
from other ghostly stories by one key element: the fireplace-tomb with
its memorial plaque. In 1982, the Lawrence Journal-World ran a story on
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the Sigma Nu house and noted that both the fireplace and plaque were
peculiar for several reasons:
Records show that the fireplace...opened onto both an entryway and the
former dining room. The dining room side of the fireplace was walled off
before the Sigma Nu chapter bought the house.…But an iron bar built for
holding a cooking pot that once swung into the dining room now can only
swing into the entryway.…There is no logical reason for the fireplace to be
walled off. [In regards to the plaque,] several funeral directors who
were fathers of fraternity members have remarked that the plaque is unusual
for use in a home. It features a blank recessed area at the base, the kind of
spot usually left open to add the date of birth and date of death.
Indeed, the plaque is rather ominous and better suited for the niche of
a columbarium or a church, rather than a fireplace. Perhaps this is why,
in 1982, a KU law student by the name of Kevin Sevidge—despite being
skeptical of the legend—described the plaque as “a major heebie-jeebie
[and something] you see in Hitchcock movies.”
And what about that ominous inscription, “The World of Strife Shut
Out, the World of Love Shut In”? According to some, the first part of the
engraving refers to Stubbs scorning his wife following the tragedy, whereas
Stubbs Mansion in the early twentieth century. Courtesy of the Kenneth Spencer Research Library.
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the second part refers to Virginia’s ashes, which have literally been shut into
the wall. However, it should be noted that the line itself is not an invention
of Stubbs (or anyone affiliated with him). Rather, it seems that it was taken—
and slightly modified—from the poem “Home” by nineteenth-century
English poet Dora Greenwell:
Two birds within one nest;
Two hearts within one breast;
Two spirits in one fair
Firm league of love and prayer,
Together bound for aye, together blest.
An ear that waits to catch
A hand upon the latch;
A step that hastens its sweet rest to win,
A world of care without,
A world of strife shut out,
A world of love shut in.
Because Greenwell was known in her time for her spiritual and quasi-
mystical themes, it is both logical and appropriate that one of her poems
would be selected as an epitaph for a grave.
The fireplace plaque behind which Virginia’s remains are said to rest. Note the blank recess
underneath the inscription—a feature commonly found on burial plaques to list birth and
death dates. Author’s collection.
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The plaque, however, is not the only spooky thing about the house. For
decades now, fraternity members living in the old Stubbs Mansion have
recounted bizarre experiences that many contend are proof that the house
is haunted by the very spirit of Virginia.
Numerous individuals have reported the sound of footsteps, either
through otherwise vacant hallways or on empty stairways. It is a popular
belief that these footsteps are produced by the specter of Virginia as she
wanders throughout the house, making her way to the former ballroom
wherein she was hanged.
Sometimes, the strange smell of lavender-scented perfume will waft
through the air. This scent, so the stories go, was the one favored by Virginia.
Due to her reportedly deadly relationship with Stella Stubbs, it is
contended that the spirit of Virginia does not like women. Consequently,
some female houseguests have reported waking up with scratch marks on
their backs.
Many of those living in the house have reported seeing full-body
apparitions of a ghostly young woman. According to the Lawrence-Journal
World, Patrick Redetzke, a former resident of the house, saw an entity
staring out of the window of the second-floor group sleeping room.
In 1982, the Lawrence Journal-World recorded the testimony of former
resident named Dave Randall, who saw a nebulous and otherworldly
figure, superimposed against the darkness of his surroundings, moving
“rhythmically” in the room wherein Virginia is supposed to have died.
Another notable recollection of an apparition comes from an anonymous
student interviewed by Cooper in her book Ghosts of Kansas. This individual
claimed that one night his closet door opened up and the ghostly shade of
a woman floated toward his bed, hovered above him and then faded into
nothingness as it drifted back into the closet from whence it came.
In April, the strange occurrences are said to increase in frequency, and
on the twenty-first of the month (the anniversary of her death), the misty
figure of Virginia has been spotted walking the halls of the old mansion or
sometimes sitting on the stairway.
A somewhat humorous tale concerning the ghost of Virginia comes to us
courtesy of Beth Kornegay, a Kansas Ghost Tours guide. According to her,
during one tour:
The fraternity members were hosting a Halloween party, so we did not go
inside as to respect their privacy. However, they put on quite a show for us
as one of the female guests dressed up as “Virginia” and walked around
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outside with a noose around her neck. Out of nowhere came some guys
dressed as “Ghostbusters” who quickly sprayed Virginia with ectoplasm.
Everyone on our tour got a good laugh from the production. It wasn’t until
two years later that we found out what happened later that night. After
the Virginia production with the Ghostbusters, one of the members made a
comment about the real Virginia giving a sign if she did in fact haunt the
house. Three beer bottles sitting on a ledge exploded just a few moments
later. Virginia made a believer out of those students!
According to Heitz, the tale of Virginia functions as a sort of initiation ritual,
allowing current members of the house and new pledges to come together
and bond over the grisly story of a death that occurred in the very building
that they call home. But she notes that the legend’s longevity—indeed, it has
been told and retold for almost a hundred years now—is surprising, as most
contemporary initiation-based legends fizzle out after a few generations.
Could this be evidence that there really is something paranormal wandering
the halls of the mansion?
In 1978, when he was still an undergraduate, Sevidge set out to investigate
the veracity of the legend. In doing so, he interviewed several dozen Sigma
Nu alumni, some of whom had even lived in the hall during the 1920s.
Despite the disparate times in which these men had occupied the house,
The front of the Sigma Nu House today. Author’s collection.
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they had all reported seeing Virginia’s spirit. What is more, Sevidge found
that all the ghost sightings were similar in nature. This seems to suggest
that either Virginia’s spirit is rather consistent in her manner of haunting
or that the popular story has ingrained itself into the minds of the house’s
inhabitants and therefore colors eyewitness accounts. Skeptics are wont to
favor the latter hypothesis, whereas believers favor the former.
The Stubbs Mansion is located at 1501 Sigma Nu Place, just off Emery
Road on the northwestern side of the main university campus. Sigma Nu
fraternity members—who truly seem to relish the tale of Virginia—have
been very open to requests for information, and some are amenable to
giving tours. That being said, those interested in visiting or going inside the
building are advised to contact the fraternity and secure permission first.