Capt. Trey Copenhaver '12 Gathering VMI's Ghostly Legends for an Upcoming Book

On Wednesday, 14 October, 2025, The Cadet sat down with Capt. Trey Copenhaver '12 to discuss his time at the Virginia Military Institute (VMI), as well as his upcoming book on ghost stories at the Mother I. The Cadet: Could you tell me a bit about your background, your time at VMI, and what you've done since then? Capt. Copenhaver: I matriculated back in 2008; Class of 2012. I was here for four consecutive years every summer. For four years, summer school, but I got out. I was always an English major. I worked on the literary magazine while I was a cadet and was one of the editors for that. I was on the Virginia History Club, the VMI Civil War Roundtable, which was a reenacting history club, where we did portraying of VMI cadets at New Market, and we spent a lot of time at the New Market Battlefield. I stayed in the house there before. We had spring FTX, where we volunteered to help on the battlefield because we were not commissioning. And we stayed there. There was a little apartment in the Bush Hall farmhouse, and we'd be there at night, and we'd hear footsteps below us. It was a hospital after the battle. People died there. After I got out of [VMI] in 2012, I went into education as my primary career. I spent several years living and working in Russia…teaching over there. [I] came back in 2019 to the U.S. I taught English and History at Fishburne Military School in Waynesboro for 5 years. And now I'm here. It has been almost 2 years. The Cadet: What brought you back to VMI, for one? What is your current role or your focus here? Capt. Copenhaver: I honestly was just looking around on the VMI site and on Indeed, because I was looking to possibly get out of teaching, but also do some teaching. I had just got my Master's degree. I felt like I wanted to just move on in my career. I saw this job here. I started off at the writing center as a consultant there. Part-time in the evenings, and I still work there sometimes as well, directly helping cadets with papers, helping them in the editing process, and giving them feedback. I really like that one-on-one interaction. I get to use my degree, and I also get to help the next generation. I like it when I can see that I helped someone, it just means more. So this job opened up, the Miller Academic Center (MAC) had very, very little staff, a little over two years ago. So we hired a whole new team. I'm an academic support coordinator, so I help cadets with anything regarding study skills, time management skills, getting them connected with tutors, group study sessions, GPA calculations, overall kind of academic coaching, academic mentoring. I have also designed a program, and run the program for cadets on academic probation (ACPRO) to help improve their skills, to hopefully get back in good standing and not be on ACPRO. That has been going on now for a little over a year. That's always adjusting, trying new things and seeing what works and what doesn't work. I really like my one-on-one time with cadets and when they come in, especially Rats, when they're nervous, you know, they see all my stuff on the wall, and they're like, oh, you went here too. So there's immediately a connection where you can relate to them. Sounds goofy, but there's like this magical connection between Cadets and Alum. You know what I mean? Even though there might be a 40-year gap. [We can] very easily identify with what they're, what you're, going through. So I feel like that helps a lot. Just kind of breaking the ice and being able to say, oh, "Hey, when you're shining your shoes on a Sunday night," after you do that, they're like, "You know me." The Cadet: Could you describe the current project? Where are you right now? Capt. Copenhaver: I'm in what I think the legal world would call the discovery phase. So I'm trying to find stories and evidence. Several people have already helped, as far as reaching out, and forwarding me information: the VMI archives, your mentor Col. Morris, and Col. Gibson have given me some advice as well. So there's already some collaboration going on, which I'm very grateful for. I mean, like some really cool stuff, like there's a handwritten letter from the 1920s of a cadet, talking about some ghosts in the barracks and how they were literally sleeping with pistols and knives under their pillows, because they were so scared of this thing. It's wild. It's crazy stuff. It's obviously in the very, very rough stages. I've kind of written a general outline of where I want it to be, how the chapters could possibly be divided. I've written a short forward, like an introduction, about just a little bit of VMI's history. There's a section on the Honor Code and how, you know, it's interesting that with the Honor Code being what it is, that we still have all these stories, because cadets wouldn't generally lie. So, you know, I feel like that's kind of the crux of the argument there is, why would they lie about this but not lie about that? Right. Like I said, it's in the very early stages. I'm still in the Discovery phase. I've just posted some info about that on some Facebook groups. But your newspaper is gonna be the biggest push so far to get some information. The Cadet: What other kinds of support resources or contributions are you looking for as you go through this? Capt. Copenhaver: Any and all, you know, stories, and memories – evidence, supernatural occurrences. I just think the more the merrier. I would welcome collaboration from interested cadets if they wanted to help take on this project and kind of work together on it. I'm very much a collaborative person. I've never written a book before, so it's completely a new territory for me, as it probably would be for cadets. We could, you know, learn together in the process. It's always good to have a second set of eyes. You don't want to dig yourself into some sort of echo chamber or be sniffing your own gases thinking you're the best when you're not. Any advice, any constructive criticism, anything like that, and I'm totally fine about that. The Cadet: Why do you think this project is important or interesting both to you personally and to the broader community such as alumni? Capt. Copenhaver: I've heard all these stories for years and years, and never has there been a collection of them. I like writing. I like to do it. I was an English major. I like to read a good story. I like to tell a good story, I like to talk to people generally. I've always liked the supernatural and horror movies and reading Stephen King and things like that. I just think it's an interesting topic. And why not? Try to add something of my own to the mix. I like VMI, I love VMI history. I think that's something that, in the last several years, has sort of been forgotten in a sense. I don't feel like cadets, through no fault of their own, just don't know a lot of the history of VMI pre-1900, for example. Obviously, current events, notwithstanding political climate, you can still learn about history and not sympathize with one side or the other. I feel like it's important to study that history and to know it. This is VMI. The social history and the history of Barracks life, and this topic of ghosts is so tied together. This was something that was constantly talked about on the stoops when I was a cadet. You know, every couple of years, like I said, there's some story that comes out about it. A lot of them talk about it. It's a very common thing that kind of unites all of the classes together. There's some weird stuff going on that we don't really know about. There are, you know, men and women from all these different classes, no matter the generation, that will be like, "Yes. Yeah, I agree." That's something we can all agree with. We might not agree with whatever is going on in the world politically, but we can always come back and go, "You know what? There's some weird stuff going on in our minds." So for the VMI, broader community, I think it would just have had another chapter and another aspect of that VMI story in the VMI history. It is not, like I said, meant to be exploitative; it's not meant to be sensational. I'd like to keep it as grounded and down to earth as much as possible. I would hope we don't have teams of ghost hunters showing up and bothering everybody, but you never know, right? That could be unintended. Could be plausible at this point. There could be an unintended consequence. But like I said, it's just meant as sort of a labor of love for VMI's history and, you know, just adding a new, literally a new book on the shelf for VMI's stories. The Cadet: This is something that I have actually seen in Barracks, which has been brought up a lot with the ghost stories. I've heard this from alumni and the outsiders, we always hear the stories that they're up late at night. They're on guard. They're sleep deprived. They're stressed out. Of course, they're gonna see a shadow or whatever. What is your answer to that? Capt. Copenhaver: It's definitely possible. But with so many cadets from so many years corroborating, agreeing on the same story and being consistent with it. I feel like there's got to be some truth to it. And once again, I mean it's true barracks can be shadowy, you can be tired. But a lot of times, cadets will see things and have things going on when they're perfectly lucid and hopefully sober. I mean, anyone can make anything up, and then you gotta think of the Honor Code as well. People are scared to death to toe the line with that, and they don't want to intentionally or not say a downright lie. I mean, there's always going to be fish stories. That's gonna be a thing, but you still have to go back to the fact that since the 1920s, there have been, and before, there have been reportings of the Yellow Peril consistently. There's been stories of those, the towers at Washington Arch, the Rats that live underneath those towers will hear footsteps. They'll have things flying off their shelves. Lights will flicker, they'll feel presences. I've talked to several Rats that have lived in those rooms over there, including one of my best friends and he's like, "Yeah, there is something weird." There's a plaque that marks where Jackson's classroom was. I have a friend that swears up and down that he woke up in the middle of the night, and Stonewall Jackson was standing on the desk, staring at him with flaming blue eyes. He will swear to this day that was the real thing that happened. Now, could that have been sleep paralysis? Sure. Could he have been drunk? Maybe. But there's so many commonalities and look at the history of this place. For God's sake. I mean, it's insane. With the way the Honor Code has been interpreted over the years, there has always been rumors of suicide. I don't know if that's ever happened. I honestly don't even know if that would even be public information. I don't know how serious it is or if it ever happened. The place has been here almost 200 years with active participation in the Civil War, burned and shelled in the Civil War, all kinds of stuff. I had a friend who told me a story that, and I think Colonel Gibson might be able to collaborate this, but I've never asked him directly about it, when Stonewall Jackson's statue was still here, VMI, several years ago, I guess they took it to get restored, because it's very old. It was like 100 years old and more. And it's bronze and they had to strip the paint or I don't know what they did. Anyway, the legend was that drumouts used to recur on the parade field, and the cadets would literally walk the line down and they would turn their backs on you and walk out. And the legend was that Stonewall Jackson, who faced the parade field, would turn his head in shame, when a cadet was drummed out. Well, the story is that several years ago, when they took the statue up north somewhere to be refurbished, that the restorer called Keith Gibson, and was like, "Can you explain the stretch marks on the neck of this statue?" We discovered them. I do not know how much of this is BS or not. But that same friend that I told you about whose Rat room was underneath the towers, he was my OG one night when I was OD on guard. And back then, you had to go through all the academic buildings on every floor, and, like, check after taps and it was creepy, especially going into the chapel at night when it was like midnight. I was in Scott Shipp doing rounds, coming up the hill, and he had gone into the chapel with a Rat. And I come up the hill, because I come out of Scott Shipp, and it was much smaller. And he comes barreling out of the door, like, the front of JM [Jackson Memorial] Hall, and he's, like, freaking out. Look, he's like, "Did you hear that? Did you hear that?" And I'm like, "What are you talking about?" And he's like, "We were in the museum level coming up the stairs, and we heard screaming and booming and running. And we thought there was like a riot or something going on above us. And we ran upstairs, nothing." And they just looked at the painting, and it was just lit up by the moon and so, like, there's a legend that on certain nights you can hear the battle itself. You go into the chapel and you can hear the cadets yelling and booming, and the cannons. It's just so fascinating. He's certified. He's on guard. He's a cadet. You're not gonna make-up nothing like that. It's just interesting to me. There are so many stories like this of men and women that are honorable, good, don't tell a lie, and yet, what do you do when you hear a ghost story from them? Is it BS? I don't know. I haven't personally seen ghosts. We did get woken up by the guard ghost one time, our room. Could it have been someone kicking the door? Maybe, but I like to feel that it was the ghost, because it was the dead of winter. The rats had gone out to do some Rat stuff early one morning, and we didn't have them come down to wake us up for BRC as first classmen. Usually we get up at 6:50 [A.M.] or so to go outside and none of us had woken up that morning because we didn't have an alarm because we thought the Rats were coming. [The] Bugle had already gone and people had already been out and it was, like, the one minute call or the two minute call. I don't remember how they went, but we heard this "bang, bang," -- two bangs on the bottom of our door. Not where someone would knock, but, like, near the bottom of the door. We woke up, looked at the time, and we're like, "Oh, crap, we're gonna miss BRC!" We threw our stuff on and ran out. Perfect timing. But when we got out, either everyone was already out there or no one was around who knocked on the door. You could see down the stoop. There was no one there. So we were like, "Who woke us up?" Then my buddy was like, "Oh, it was probably the guard ghost." I never saw the yellow peril or anything like that, but I know people that say they've seen it. I felt like I've been in rooms alone before and you always feel like you're being watched. Your hair stands up and you really feel like you're not alone in a room. I've had that happen. The Cadet: Is there anything else that you'd like to share or add that we haven't already covered? Capt. Copenhaver: If you have a story, please submit it. I'd like to hear from you. If you do submit a story, I will be in touch. If you want your name and class used as well, I can throw that in. Those with Ghost stories or desiring to collaborate with Capt. Copenhaver, in his research, can be contacted at: vmighosts@gmail.com