South Caroliniana Library (Ghost Tour)

👻 President J.R. McKissick 1936-1944 (Class of 1905)

When built, South Caroliniana Library was the first free standing library on any college campus and distinguished SC College as an ‘ivy league’ college prior to the Civil War. The beautiful reading room on the 2nd floor of this building is modeled after the Bulfinch Room in the Library of Congress and the building also holds valuable manuscripts that historians have used through the ages.

President McKissick is memorialized in many ways on this campus. He was a beloved president of the University. He is often remembered for roaming the campus in professional attire while on his bicycle. He also loved the University so much that his wife asked the Board of Trustees to let him be buried on the Horseshoe and you will see his gravesite to the left of the front doors of this building.

It is important to mention that not all ghostly auras are frightful. President McKissick is thought to haunt the South Caroliniana Library. Deceased in 1944, McKissick is said to have been seen strolling along the library’s balconies, we believe simply to be keeping watch over the University he loved. In 1976, a librarian reported opening up the library and finding two figures who she took to be McKissick and a uniformed officer pouring over two of the day’s newspapers, one from Columbia, the other from Charleston. She left the room, and when she returned with help, the figures were gone, the two newspapers were left.

Later, when university President James Holderman served USC, it was reported that McKissick could be heard pacing upstairs in the library on days when negative articles about the university were published. As you can see, even today, we depend on President McKissick to be a faithful steward of our University.