LEXINGTON, Va. Oct. 24, 2024 — It was early morning and Trey Copenhaver '12 was sound asleep in his room in Old Barracks at Virginia Military Institute. The year was 2011 and Copenhaver was a 1st Class cadet. He had tasked his rat to wake him up that morning for guard duty.  

"We were in room 104, and usually our rats would come down and wake us up in the morning,” he said. “They would come in, flip on the coffee pot that we weren't supposed to have, and roll our hays and put our beds up like they're supposed to. We would go out to breakfast formation, and for whatever reason that morning, they didn't come down.”

Instead, it was a soft, low knock on his door that jolted him from his sleep.  

“I hear, like, ‘tap, tap, tap.’ Three knocks on the door. I woke up really quick, and I looked at the time and it was five minutes to the breakfast call,” he said. 

The thing was, there was no one on the stoop. Copenhaver said it had been cold outside, so there were not a lot of cadets roaming around barracks. The sound also wasn’t from any rats because Copenhaver said they had some sort of training that morning, which is why his didn’t show for the wakeup call.  

Talking with his fellow cadets, he heard from one cohort that the random wakeup calls from unknown sources was a thing. 

“He's like, 'yeah, it's probably the ghost that wakes you up if you're going to be late,’” Copenhaver said. 

He and others think the ghost is a former sentinel or guard, that’s why he goes around waking up cadets who are about to be late for things.  

This isn’t the only ghost story to haunt the hallowed halls of VMI. Copenhaver, who now works at VMI as academic support coordinator for the Miller Academic Center with the rank of captain, said he’s familiar with a lot of haunting tales.  

Battle Haunts

He was on guard duty one evening checking out all the academic buildings to make sure everything was secure. He and others who were on duty with him had just finished up at the Nichols Engineering Building, with their last stop at Memorial Hall.  

Copenhaver was waiting outside Memorial Hall for two others to return. He saw them running up the side stairs that can be seen from the windows before they came racing outside. He had no idea why they had come racing out, until the two cadets said they were checking the museum and went to head up to Memorial Hall when something spooked them. 

“They heard yelling, and they heard cannon fire, like gunfire and screaming,” he said.  

He suspects the sounds they heard had something to do with the Battle of New Market painting that hangs in Memorial Hall.  

"I have heard of people, if you go in at a certain time of night, you'll see the painting move and you can see stuff going on,” he said. “This was the first time I was hearing about the guys freaked out by the battle sound.” 

His third haunting occurrence was in New Market's battlefield. He and a few others were walking past the orchard there, since they had camped on the battlefield for the night, when one of the cadets picked up an apple.  

It had hit him and he was pointing the blame at the others he was with. Copenhaver said that everyone was accounted for and no one in the group had thrown it.  

"All of a sudden, three or four more apples start coming at us from out in the field, in the direction of where the orchard is, and right near the cannons. No one else is there. The gates are locked. It's nighttime. We were getting hit by apples from somebody in the field at night.” 

The cadets at VMI are also familiar with other spooky stories around post, like the yellow specter that’s lingered around the Institute for over a century. The ghostly figure is said to appear around 3:30 a.m., the time that’s tied to the cadet drum-out ceremony that dismisses cadets with honor violations. The figure has led to such precautions from cadets as having revolvers under their pillows in the earlier years of VMI. 

Tunnels and Turrets

Other stories include that of the underground network of tunnels, beneath Old Barracks, which was re-constructed in 1865 after being burned during Hunter’s raid in June 1864 during the Civil War. These include steam tunnels and former trunk rooms once used to store cadet belongings.  

The tunnels, now used for maintenance access, are said to be roamed by spirits. One is a “ghost cadet” that was allegedly captured on VMI security cameras. This figure was seen near the entrance of a tunnel in an area of the Old Barracks known as the “Bear Den,” a place that housed the barracks carpenter.  

Cadets have been told through the years that this spirit is not confined to the tunnels, and some have said they’ve seen him in the corners of their rooms, watching them as they study late into the night. 

From below barracks to above, the haunting history of the turret rooms above Washington Arch is said to have paranormal activity for those who live below them. In the past, the turret rooms were high, secluded rooms where cadets who were found guilty by the Honor Court would remain prior to being expelled from the ranks.  

Some say cadets were left a rope, a knife, and the words “Death before dishonor” etched into the stone walls, awaiting their consequences. Over the years, stories of strange occurrences and unsettling events have passed down from one generation of cadets to the next, fueling the haunted aura of these rooms. 

Cadets who have lived in the rooms directly below the turret chambers shared unnerving experiences. Cups flying off surfaces, shades being pulled up or down. One cadet said windows would shut no matter what you’d do to keep them open. Others reported a far more personal encounter with the unknown, feeling a touch on their shoulder before falling asleep.  

Whatever the truth may be, the legend of the turret rooms and the haunting phrase “Death before dishonor” have become inseparable from VMI’s haunted history. 

If these stories are true or not, you can tell the energy surrounding certain spots on post are a little spooky. 

Laura Peters Shapiro and Rhita Daniel
Communications & Marketing
VIRGINIA MILITARY INSTITUTE