Chapel Hill, NC – After weeks of investigation, Campus Police have identified Lieutenant Colonel Ignatius Hayfield Alderson, C.S.A., Class of 1852, as the source of the uncanny chill pervading the Nelson Mandela auditorium.

Reports indicate that Colonel Alderson moved into the 250-person auditorium, known for its comfortable seating, movie theater-sized screen, and perturbing ambiance, shortly after the completion of the FedEx Global Center.

Speaking in the disembodied voice of one who has not yet passed on, Alderson explained that he moved into UNC’s premiere venue for guest lecturers and cultural exhibitions to make use of its generous amenities–which include a Region-Free Blue-Ray player, fixed tablet arm seating, and wireless microphones–and also to protest the recognition of Mr. Mandela, whom he believes “does not represent the values of this University.”

“I really like the dimmable lighting. It helps me project an aura of cold fear and dread. But I don’t see how we can name a room after a human rights advocate like Nelson Mandela and still uphold the ideals of our founders,” said the specter, who rose from beneath the auditorium’s movable podium adorned in the uniform of a Confederate Calvary officer, still bloody from a gunshot wound sustained during the Battle of the Wilderness.

“I think we should recognize the people who actually built this University, like plantation owners, confederate soldiers, and KKK organizers. It just seems to me like we are moving away from our roots” added Alderson, who uses the auditorium’s document camera during meetings of his Confederate Ghosts Book Club, which meets biweekly to read and discuss the love letters and white supremacist tracts its members wrote during their lifetimes.

“Of course, some of us boys have got buildings named after us,” explained Alderson, as he passed his wraith-like hands over the keyboard of the auditorium’s In-House PC, “like Billy Saunders [Class of ’54]. I fought with Billy. He’s a true confederate, and his work with the KKK was laudable. Governor Vance [Class of ’52] and General Pettigrew [Class of ’47] got buildings named for ’em too. Lots of us got buildings at UNC, but ain’t a none of them as fancy as that colored Mandela’s.”

Damned to walk the earth until Judgment Day, Alderson said that when he is not raising goose bumps on the arms of students at the Nelson Mandela Auditorium’s various cultural offerings, he spends his time admiring the Confederate flag in the upper window of the Sigma Chi house or using his racist alum discount at the Daniels Student Stores, whose namesake, Josephus Daniels, continues to publish prejudiced diatribes in the area’s foremost ghost periodical, the Raleigh News and Observer.