Painting on the walls is encouraged in Pemberton Hall.

Through the Piano Lounge, down a flight of stairs, past a metal doorway into the basement and on a wall to the right, bold strokes of vibrant reds, hazy greens and royal blues circle around each other. The casual passer-by would see simple lines of color. But closer inspection reveals strokes that form letters making form words.

Together complete. Love. Unity. Diversity and Freedom.

“It doesn’t grab you that they’re words,” said Resident Assistant Bonnie Cielenski. “You have to look a little deeper.”

At first glance, Pemberton Hall looks like a bulwark of stone – gray and somber like most buildings. The building was the first women’s residence hall in Illinois, earning it a spot on the state’s Historic Register.

Former Eastern History Professor Charles H. Coleman recorded Pemberton’s history in his book, “Eastern Illinois State College, 50 years of Public Service,” published in 1950.

“Eastern’s first president, Livingston Lord believed that a women’s residence hall was ‘absolutely necessary’ if the school was to ‘cultivate in its students the spirit that its graduates should take into their own schools, and into communities in which they teach,'” Coleman wrote.

Lord worked from 1900 until 1907 to obtain the state funding needed to build Pemberton. Having a residence hall on campus was not a popular idea. State legislators were more interested in funding gymnasiums for teacher colleges. But one state senator, Stanton C. Pemberton of Oakland, was convinced.

Unlike other historic buildings, Pemberton is not a shrine to past glory days. While the inside boasts the expected period furniture, the musty smell older buildings acquire, a creepy fourth floor and a possible ghostly presence – facts or not that tour guides spotlight for visitors – it’s the building’s 215 possible residents with their iPods, makeup and laptops that define the building as a center for modern activity.

Nearly 180 women reside in the residence hall this semester.

Sara Schaller works as Pemberton’s associate resident director. The graduate student in the College of Student Affairs supervises the hall as part of her graduate assistantship.

She spends part of her workday in her office sitting at a large brown desk, which seems to engulf her slender figure while she works on her computer. Her clutter of papers and books around the room’s edges casts an aura of organized productivity.

The first time Schaller walked into Pemberton, the three-story staircase captured her imagination. “This is the building I wanted to be in,” she said.

Other residents were not convinced as quick. The biggest drawback to living in Pemberton is its lack of air conditioning, but even this becomes a minor annoyance as residents learn the building’s history.

“Once they move in, they discover the charm of the building,” said Mark Hudson, director of housing and dinning.

To ward off August and September heat and humidity, the hum of electric fans permeates the building. Residents also prop open room doors and keep their windows up.

This creates an unexpected benefit.

Residents get to know each other better, compared to other air conditioned halls where residents might keep their doors shut, Schaller said.

Pemberton’s location on campus also promotes interaction between the women.

“They bond easier because we’re the only residence hall down on this end (of campus),” Schaller said.

Tucked between a screen of trees and the corner of campus, most students are only vaguely aware of Pemberton as the place where they wait in long lines to get their textbooks.

Upon leaving Pemberton’s front door, a resident would have to pass the corner of Pemberton, where textbook rental resides, the Physical Sciences Building and MacAfee Gym on the right and then the Student Services Building, the Martin Luther King Jr. University Union and the Library Quad on the left to reach Gregg Triad, the next closest residence hall.

None of these buildings existed before Pemberton. Besides Old Main, it is the oldest building on campus.

Lord and Pemberton did not achieve funding for the state’s first residence hall until 1907. The state legislator passed the funding twice, only to have the governor veto it. The funds finally appropriated were $100,000 and included money to build a gymnasium, where textbook rental is now located.

As the building neared completion, an additional $3,000 was allocated to finish 10 rooms in the basement and attic.

On the far end of the Pit – residents’ affectionate term for Pemberton’s basement – in a back room, five washing machines and six dryers spin. The air smells soft and is reminiscent of a time when clean towels seemed bigger and fluffier. A Precious Moments blond-haired boy, his Dalmatian puppy and maybe his sister are captured in a mural on the far wall. The boy sits in a brown wash barrel, scrubbing the puppy’s head with a pink brush. The girl is depicted wearing a purple dress and bonnet while washing her clothes in another barrel.

To reach the room, the women who live in the Pit must walk through the “Creepy Hallway.” The hall is narrow and painted grayish green. At one intersection the outline of a dead body can be seen on the cement floor.

“It scares everyone when they move in,” Cielenski said.

One Halloween many years ago, when Pemberton residents transformed the building into a haunted house, the clean up crew removed the tape marking where the imaginary crime scene victim lay, but the adhesive stuck to the cold concrete, forever leaving the spooky outline.

Some believe Pemberton is haunted. The ghost is that of Mary Hawkins who rumor has it stays around to look after the girls.

Mary Hawkins did exist. She was the building’s head of house – a position today occupied by Schaller. Hawkins supervised Pemberton from 1910 until her death in 1917. She did go crazy, but not because, as rumor says, she opened her door one night to find a resident attempting to reach safety before she died, murdered by a crazed janitor. She died of syphilis, according to Hudson.

“I think what’s more creepy is the building itself,” Schaller said.

Once past its impressive castle-like facade, the main staircase engulfs the foyer. Its large wooden railings speak of a time when beauty and majesty guided the design of a building instead of governmental safety requirements.

During the day, the nearly 180 residents flit up and down the stairs. The creaky noise from the steps fades into the background like a familiar sound of the robin’s song out in the North Quad. At night, the creeks and clanks of the buildings are not as easily forgotten – especially for those away from home for the first time.

“Last year, I had some people who were legitimately scared to live in the building,” Schaller said.

Several Internet sites like www.theshawdowlands.net list ghostly symptoms that are rumored to occur at Pemberton: clocks turn back in time, voices are heard in the halls, doors mysteriously lock after the girls enter, and bloody or wet footprints appear in the halls.

The site also claims the girl was murdered on the fourth floor.

The fourth floor is now boarded up.

Cielenski has seen the fourth floor and said there’s nothing spooky about it.

It’s used for storage, she said. There’s only dusty furniture up there.

“No one has ever died in that building,” Hudson said. Hudson was a student at Eastern from 1979 to 1983. He was an RA for three of those years, then a graduate director for another two. He returned to campus in 2001 after getting his master’s degree to become director of housing and dining.

If the building were haunted, he would know.

“We’ve gone through and looked through the archives and not found anything,” he said.

Pemberton’s haunting is just an urban legend. Not even old newspapers contain a hint of a murder in the residence hall. Hudson continued pointing out that if such a gruesome murder did occur in the small farming community of Charleston it would have made the newspapers.

But the urban legend still lives on.

“I don’t believe she’s around, and if she is, she protects us at least that what we like to say,” Schaller said.

Pemberton Hall officially opened Jan. 4, 1909. It housed 100 women for $4 a week. Coleman wrote that the hall exceeded Lord’s hopes. “It forms the social center of the school,” Lord wrote about the women’s residence hall in 1911 to the president of the Normal School in Cape Girardeau, Mo. “The girls learn certain things necessary for them to know that they cannot learn in the classroom.”

Things like: Together complete. Love. Unity. Diversity and freedom.