N&O Archives
RALEIGH
In the fall of 1918, the flu pandemic raged through Raleigh wielding a reaper’s scythe, so sudden and cruel that an ice cream truck doubled as a rolling morgue, transporting the dead.
The flu killed 288 people in a single month, and terrified citizens tried any quack remedy to ward off infection: tying cucumbers to their ankles, carrying potatoes in their pockets, sprinkling sulfur in their shoes.
As the death toll mounted, a young nurse named Eliza Riddick threw herself into the deadliest trenches, volunteering in the infirmary on what was then the State College campus — full to bursting with sick young boys.
All the students on campus were busy training for World War I, then in its final weeks, and when the flu hit, doctors carried them on stretchers to what is now Winslow Hall, where they died within hours, still wearing soldier’s boots.
Riddick nursed them day and night for two weeks, watching the flu take 10 souls a day, even his own brother, until she finally succumbed – 108 years ago, almost to the day.
“Men say it is infinitely pathetic that death should come to someone so young, so strong and so beautiful,” lamented one newspaper.
But some say Riddick never left – at least not in spirit.
His ghost is said to still roam Winslow — now home to the university’s Facilities Division — bringing water and fresh linens to convicts, knocking books off shelves and papers off desks.
She is perhaps the only ghost scarier in life than in death – a witness to a disease that feeds on youth and vitality, watching men trained to fight with tanks and machine guns screaming for their mothers, panting in their graves.
The story of Riddick eternally tending to corpses on cots takes place as part of the Red Terror Tour at NC State – a collection of Raleigh’s most academic horrors.
As a century-old ghost, Riddick and his patients scream at the great unconcern of Death – a ghost who is frightening not because she hides in the darkness but rather because of her rage against the dying light.
“They exist eternally,” wrote the student news site The Technician in 2021, “with the injustice of premature death that has taken over the world.”
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Before he died at age 24, Riddick was a standout in Raleigh society, mentioned among attendees at teas and dances, including one held in 1917 for State College students.
“Favours of horns and caps were bestowed,” exclaimed The N&O. “There was plenty of confetti.”
She joined the Junior Suffrage League and the Knitting Club, and worked as a receptionist at State College, where her uncle Wallace was president. When her flu turned into pneumonia and killed her, the State College “boys” took comfort in the belief that Riddick was the type to volunteer without hesitation and was simply following his nature to put himself in harm’s way.
“She was an exquisite type of Southern womanhood,” State College students wrote in The N&O after her death, “and by this type is meant a woman who is neither spoiled by luxury nor cast down by misfortune. Gracing a ballroom, she also had the finer grace to pursue, faithfully, the difficult path to self-sufficiency.”
Riddick and another flu-stricken nurse earned a memorial outside the Wake County Courthouse, celebrating their sacrifice. Flowers and flags covered her grave at Oakwood Cemetery, where she joined her brother William in the ground after just a week. Tributes poured in for years after the war and pandemic ended.
And yet, Riddick continues to work, wiping sweat from his feverish brows.
In this way, his haunting is the scariest in Raleigh – not macabre, not bloody, just as senseless and wicked as real life.
Josh Shaffer
News and the observer
Josh Shaffer is a general reporter on the lookout for “talkers,” which are stories you might discuss around a water cooler. He has worked for The News & Observer since 2004 and writes a column about unusual people and places.
Gn Health
