Image from Wikimedia Commons.

When the old courthouse in Randolph County was retired and converted to house the Heart of North Carolina Visitors Bureau and Tourism Development Authority, director Tammy O’Kelley started hearing strange noises late at night in the building, reports the Courier-Tribune. After researching the history of the building, O’Kelley formed the theory that it was the ghost of Laura Worth, a genteel local woman who had been given a room in the basement after falling on hard times in the 1930s. “Miss Laura” was the official county historian until her death in the 1970s, and loved to dip snuff, which she spat into a tin can. “There have been times when I could have sworn I heard a can rattling,” O’Kelley told the reporter.

Other workers have observed strange phenomena as well, says Donovan Davis, the director of Randolph County Emergency Services. “A lot of us have seen something. As long as I’ve been here, 20 years, people have said they have seen something.”