Cockrum Hall (Oakland City University)

At Cockrum Hall, visitors describe doors opening and closing and an orange glow in the tower windows at night. Colonel William M. Cockrum, whose father James Washington Cockrum co-founded the town of Oakland City in 1856, built this Italian Villa-style brick house in 1876; both Cockrum men were real, documented participants in aiding enslaved people seeking freedom through the area before the Civil War. William and his wife Lucretia later helped found Oakland City College, donating the land its first building was raised on in 1885; the house, now known as Cockrum Hall, is the oldest building on what's since become Oakland City University's campus. Local legend holds that a Cockrum wife hanged herself in the tower, though no record confirms it.