44 texashighways.com
CENTRAL TEXAS
AI
ENGINEERING
BUILDING
(Formerly the Animal Industries Building)
423 Spence St., College Station.
IN 1959, ROY SIMMS—foreman of the meat locker in Texas A&M
University’s old Animal Industries building—was performing a bit of
routine butchery on a slab of bacon. As he was cutting toward him-
self, the knife slipped in his hand, stabbing his leg near the groin.
The blade cut open his femoral artery. His assistant, who’d stepped
out for a moment, returned to find him bleeding out on the floor. An
ambulance was summoned, but in vain: Simms died before he could
be removed from the building.
Simms’ death was a tragic accident. But it doesn’t take much for
tragic accidents to take on a more ghostly cast. “In the daytime, we
never thought much about any ghosts or strange occurrences,” says
Jeffrey Savell, a Texas A&M professor who was an undergrad and grad
student in the 1970s. “It was the nights when we were in the Meat Lab-
oratory, conducting research, usually by ourselves, that one would
hear strange noises or feel like you were not alone.”
Over the years, Savell says, students and custodians working in
the bowels of the building have reported invisible footsteps, strange
noises, and objects scattered far from their original resting spots.
Savell attributes many of the stories to the natural spookiness of an
old building and noisy machinery such as the elevator and the re-
frigeration compressors. A series of renovations of the building have
turned the site of Simms’ accident into an office space.
Whether or not Simms’ ghost roams the hallways, Savell says, one
thing keeping his memory alive is the lesson offered by his death. “It
became a precautionary tale each semester as we visited with stu-
dents about safety and meat cutting. It gets their attention when you
tell them that someone lost their life because of a knife accident.” –A.E.Photos:Dave ShaferFrom Left: Entrance to
the AI Building; leather-
clad doors that once led
to a livestock butchering
room; the building’s
interior; cow-skull
design on a door.