Last year just about this time, life began to return to Belmont Manor when it was reopened to the public. The estate had been a private residence for almost two centuries before it was donated to the Smithsonian Institution in 1964 for use as a conference center. The Smithsonian sold the property in 1982 to the American Chemical Society which used it as a meeting facility. They sold the property to Howard Community College which closed the property in 2010 after facing financial difficulties. Until the property sold in 2012, the grand house quietly sat in a pall of silence. Only the dead stirred.
As the house was being renovated and restored by Howard County, its new owner, the dead continued to stir. Workers on the estate observed a little girl running about. The county contacted Inspired Ghost Tracking who investigated and was able to captured an image of the spectral girl peering around a corner.
Belmont Manor, 2015, by Scott218. Courtesy of Wikipedia.
This ghostly child can be added to the legend recorded a little more than a hundred years ago in John Martin Hammond’s 1914 book, Colonial Mansions of Maryland and Delaware. In addition to relating the histories of these magnificent estates, Hammond included the occasional ghost story when they popped up. The Belmont Ghost, as Hammond dubs the spectral event, usually happened at least once every winter. On a dark, windy night, residents and visitors to Belmont would hear the sounds of an invisible carriage approach the house. Upon opening the door, the living would see nothing but continue to hear the sounds of an invisible retinue enter the house. Once unloaded, the carriage would be heard to head towards the stable.
Since opening to the public last year, Belmont is now playing host to weddings and other events while the public explores the historic woodlands that remain unchanged since the building of the house in 1738. Now that the dead have been discovered on the estate, Howard County has brought out paranormal investigators and those interested in learning about the spirits around us to learn about paranormal investigating here. According to the Baltimore Sun, the next public paranormal investigation will be held this summer.
Sources
Bonk, Valerie. “Ghost investigations at Belmont gather people curious about the paranormal.” Baltimore Sun. 6 April 2016.
Gunts, Edward. “The past is prologue for Elkridge’s Belmont Mansion.” Baltimore Sun. 20 September 2012.
Okonowicz, Ed. The Big Book of Maryland Ghosts. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2010.
The feast is done, the table has been cleared, the guests have left, the spirits have quietly returned to their rest, and the veil between our world and the next has been restored. This season has been great for articles about the haunted South so, I’m wrapping up this Southern Feast of All Souls with a look at some of the new (to me) haunted places that were covered in the news media.
Colby Building 191 North Foster Street Dothan, Alabama
An investigator from Circle City Ghost Hunters said of the Colby Building in downtown Dothan, “Somebody once upon a time put their heart and soul in the building.” Perhaps that soul is still here. According to an October 29th article in the Dothan Eagle, this group investigated the building after numerous reports of paranormal activity in the building surfaced.
The Colby Building, 2015, by Michael Rivera. Courtesy of Wikipedia.
While working on my recent book about haunted Alabama, I had a heck of a time trying to find anything on the Dothan area. As the seventh largest city in the state by population, there should be more information on hauntings in the area, sadly there was nothing reliable. Therefore, I was rather excited to see this article appear. The Colby Building was built in 1938 as a J.C. Penney’s Department Store and has since hosted a number of businesses. The building was redeveloped by a private/public partnership in 2008 and currently houses two restaurants, Colby’s on North Foster Street and Bella’s in the back of the building on West Troy Street.
Employees and guests have had experiences in the building including things moving on their own and seeing figures. Others have had their names called and the employees have nicknamed the spirit “’Rachel’ because all kinds of crazy stuff happened.” (I’m presuming this a reference to the television show Friends.) The owner of the restaurants was delighted to host an investigation when Circle City Ghost Hunters inquired about investigating there. The article notes that the activity is explained by a story involving the death of a young woman on the building’s third floor in the 1950s.
N.B. As of 2019, it appears that Colby’s has closed, though Bella’s remains open.
Sources
Ingram, Debbie. “Plans unveiled for $2.4 million Penney building project.” Dothan Eagle. 18 August 2008.
Suntan Arts Center (Don Vicente Building) 3300 Gulf Boulevard St. Pete Beach, Florida
Adjoining the Don CeSar Beach Resort, a palatial pink Jazz Age dream, is the Don Vicente Building which was built just prior to the grand hotel to serve as offices during the construction. Over the years, the building has seen many incarnations serving as offices for the hotel, a bank, and even a firehouse. The building has housed the 50 year old Suntan Arts Center for many years. The center provides classes and support for the local arts community.
The center hosted a ghost tour this year highlighting the paranormal activity that has been experienced in the building. For many years people here have encountered the spirit of a man in a white suit. As this building did serve as an office for Thomas Rowe, the hotel’s founder, this spirit has been identified as him. During an investigation of the building in 2013 by SPIRITS of St. Petersburg, the group got a response when Rowe’s name was mentioned. Besides Mr. Rowe’s white-suited spirit there may be other spirits here as well.
Sources
“Self-guided ghost tour departs from Suntan Arts Center.” TBN Weekly. 28 September 2015.
SPIRITS of St. Petersburg Paranormal Investigation Group. “Report for Suntan Arts Center.” Accessed 8 November 2015.
Porter Hall Mercer University Macon, Georgia
Porter Hall, a residence hall on the campus of Mercer University, one of the oldest private universities in Georgia, possibly has something mysterious residing on its fourth floor. One student reported that she “heard things like chairs being dragged across the pine, like a hard pine floor.” The fourth floor is not accessible to students and used for storage. Reportedly, only the dorm’s resident advisor has access. When students complain of noise from that floor, the resident advisor will check it out and find the floor empty of living beings.
Westover Terrace (private) 905 West Main Street Richmond, Kentucky
When the current owners of Westover Terrace began restoration on the house after they acquired it in 1995, the house was severely dilapidated and vandals had defaced parts of the interior. A pentagram had been painted upstairs, walls and windows had been smashed, and the mantelpieces and radiators had been stolen. Local kids occasionally prowled the creepy house in search of ghosts in this former funeral home. The new owners did not realize they acquired ghosts with this magnificent 1881 home.
As work progressed, the owners and contractors began to have odd experiences including loud crashes and bangs that sounded like sledge hammers being used and heavy furniture being moved. The voice of a little girl was heard asking workers what they were doing and warning them on occasion. While doing repair work on a staircase, one particular board was removed several times. After the owner used a hydraulic nail gun to attach the it, the board disappeared entirely. When the owners finally moved into the home in 2005, the activity seemed to quiet down. Evidently, the ghosts are pleased with the renovations. This is a private home, please respect the owners’ privacy and observe the house from the street.
Green Light Bridge Green Light Road Winnsboro, Louisiana
An article about Louisiana hauntings from the Shreveport Times highlighted this very interesting location near Winnsboro in Franklin Parish in the northeast portion of the state. The origin of the road’s odd name has been lost to history, but is possibly related to the paranormal green light that is supposed to emanate from underneath the bridge and along the banks of the stream here. The article does not name the creek, but after looking at Google maps, it seems that the road only crosses one stream, Turkey Creek, in its course from LA-15 to its termination at Dummy Line Road.
The possible reasons for the odd green light are varied. A church once existed on one side of the creek and sometime in the mid-20th century a man was hung from a tree in front of the church. A fatal car accident that occurred here may be related to the activity as well. A woman lost her life when her car crashed into a tree. There is also speculation that the woman was frightened by the mysterious green light.
Sources
“’Haunted’ Louisiana: Tales of Terror from Shreveport and beyond.” Shreveport Times. 30 September 2015.
Librarians at the Glen Burnie Regional Library have been spooked by something within this 1969 library for many years. Odd sounds have been heard by staff when they have closed the building at night while books have been pushed to the floor by unseen hands. Staff called in the Maryland Ghost Trackers to investigate. During the investigation, the investigators made contact with a number of male spirits who are apparently hanging around and enjoy making a bit of trouble now and then.
Ole Tavern on George Street 416 George Street Jackson, Mississippi
There are several ghosts still patronizing the Ole Tavern on George Street according to a Halloween article from Jackson, Mississippi news station, WAPT. The article highlights a recent investigation of this establishment by the Mississippi Paranormal Research Institute. Employees of the popular eatery have had several eerie encounters with a few possible spirits here.
One employee saw a woman sitting at the bar one morning as he opened up. He had just removed the padlock from the door when he saw the woman. Realizing that no one was in the building, the employee returned to his car until someone else arrived. This spirit is believed to be the spirit of a prostitute who once worked in the building and committed suicide here in the 1970s. The investigation produced evidence that this woman may remain in the building with some other spirits.
Sources
“Ghost hunters seek answers from ‘Bitter Hooker.’” 31 October 2015.
N.B. This page was edited and revised 26 May 2020.
Among theatre folks there’s an old saying, “no good theatre, worth its salt, will be without a ghost.” The South is not immune to this phenomenon and its landscape is dotted with many theatres claiming to be haunted. The variety of theatres is astonishing; from 1920s-era movie palaces, to opera houses to performance spaces that have been created out of old buildings, and even cinemas, so many of these sites have wonderful and creepy stories to tell.
Mary G. Hardin Center for Cultural Arts 501 Broad Street Gadsden, Alabama
This prominent corner of Broad and 5th Streets has witnessed much of Gadsden’s history. A home stood on this corner until 1860 when the First Baptist Church erected a church here with a graveyard surrounding the building. Around the turn of the 20th century, the church was sold and the graves—most of them—were relocated to nearby Forrest Cemetery. A furniture store operated on the site until the building of the Imperial Theatre which opened in 1920. The theatre changed hands a few years later, was extensively remodeled and reopened as the Princess Theatre in 1926. The Princess—a vaudeville and motion picture house—provided the citizens of Gadsden the utmost in comfort and technology until it’s destruction by fire in 1963.
The Mary G. Harden Center for Cultural Arts on a grey day in October 2019. Photo by Lewis O. Powell IV, all rights reserved.
The starkly modern Mary G. Hardin Center for Cultural Arts now occupies the corner. Within its modern corridors, galleries, studios and performance spaces there are spirits. Betty McCoy reports that two visitors encountered the spirit of a child who was apparently quite confused. The spirit of a young girl appeared at the Princess Theatre just after it opened in 1920 and many patrons encountered the young and quite curious entity. The identity of this young entity has always been a mystery. Was she attached to one of the graves formerly on the site? Is she one of the spirits in the modern arts center? As long as spirits linger, the questions will remain.
Sources
Goodson, Mike. Haunted Etowah County, Alabama. Charleston, SC: History Press, 2011.
Hardin Center for Cultural Arts. “About the Center for Cultural Arts.” Accessed 18 March 2013.
McCoy, Betty S. Haints, Haunts and Hullabaloos: Etowah and Surrounding Counties. CreateSpace, 2011.
H Street Playhouse 1365 H Street, Northeast Washington, D.C.
Things have a strange way of disappearing at the H Street Playhouse. Some believe that these odd disappearances may be linked to a spirit within the old theatre, besides, these disappearances are truly strange. Take for instance, the matter of the disappearance of the theatre’s router from the office during a meeting. Members of one of the theatre companies that uses the theatre were meeting in the building when the Wi-Fi suddenly went out. Heading back to the office, which was only accessible through the room where the meeting was being held, the router seems to have completely vanished.
H Street Playhouse, 2012, by Smallbones. Courtesy of Wikipedia.
Costumes pieces and props also have a tendency to disappear right before performances. A t-shirt hanging on a rack disappeared without a trace while prop money seemed to have departed briefly from the bag it was stored in during the show. As money was required during the scene, the actors pulled together what bills they had on them to use, though when the props master opened the bag to dole out money for the upcoming scene, the prop money had reappeared.
If the kleptomaniac of the H Street Playhouse is, in fact, a spirit, then there is the question of identity. Tour guide and author Tim Krepp speculates that the spirit may either be the shade of Bruce Robey, who founded the H Street Playhouse with his wife, or perhaps the spirit of a young boy who was severely burned in a fire across the street in 1905. But, perhaps the spirit lies somewhere in the playhouse’s marvelous history.
The Romanesque Revival-styled building was built in 1928 as an automobile showroom. At the time, this particular stretch of H Street boasted so many dealerships it was called “Autombile Row.” This building served as a showroom until 1942 when the building was renovated for use as a cinema for the African-American community that occupied this area. As the social upheavals of the mid-20th century led to the neighborhood’s decline, the building was used for a variety of purposes until its conversion to a live theatre in 2002.
The H Street Playhouse closed in 2012. A gym currently occupies the building.
Sources
Bell, T. David. National Register of Historic Places nomination form for Plymouth Theatre. December 2003.
Krepp, Tim. Capitol Hill Haunts. Charleston, SC: History Press, 2012.
Coconut Grove Playhouse 3500 Main Highway Miami, Florida
The Coconut Grove Playhouse is like a famous actor in a vegetative state. The doctors are faced with a hard choice: unplug him from life-support to let him die or revive him with an expensive, experimental treatment and hope that he makes a full recovery. As of now, the doctors are still arguing over the best course to take.
This most famous of Florida theatres went suddenly into a vegetative state in 2006 under mounting debt. Since the theatre company’s closure, the theatre has been embroiled in mounting drama between a cast of politicians, preservationists, thespians and developers. Occupying a prominent corner on Main Highway at Charles Avenue, the location has developers salivating over the money that could come from a luxury condominium development on the site. Some government officials, preservationists and thespians would reopen the playhouse as a theatre and hopefully revive its cherished name. Before its closure, the theatre was a major economic driver in the Coconut Grove, one of the oldest neighborhoods in the city.
Coconut Grove Playhouse, 2011, by Ebyabe. Courtesy of Wikipedia.
As the drama fills courtrooms, offices and boardrooms outside of the theatre, faces have been seen peering from the buildings upper windows: spiritual guardians of this 1927 edifice. Ghost tours pass by the site regularly as the Mediterranean Revival structure sits forlornly with its doors locked. The theatre opened gloriously as the Player’s State Theatre on New Year’s Day 1927—a jewel in the Paramount crown. All the amenities of the best theatres were incorporated here including a huge Wurlitzer Concert Grand Organ and air conditioning. Riding high on the great Florida Land Boom of the 20s, the theatre’s fortunes ran out when the real estate bubble burst. The theatre closed in the early 1930s. It was not until 1955 that it would resume use as a theatre, but only after being transformed for use as a live-performance venue.
It struggled even as a legitimate theatre, though it did host a grand assortment of prominent actors and productions on its boards. Samuel Becket’s Waiting for Godot had its American premiere here and the stage has seen the work of such noted thespians as Jose Ferrer, Hume Cronyn, Jessica Tandy, and Ethel Merman. But, until the actors in the current drama come to a resolution, the theatre and the spirits peering from its windows will continue to wait for Godot’s eminent arrival.
Sources
Bandell, Brian. “Coconut Grove Playhouse hit with foreclosure.” South Florida Business Journal. 17 January 2013.
Feldman, Hal. “Do ghosts walk among us?” Pinecrest Tribune. 28 June 2012.
Uguccioni, Ellen and Sarah E. Easton. Designation Report: Coconut Grove Playhouse. City of Miami. 2005.
Viglucci, Andres. “Coconut Grove Playhouse board decides not to fight imminent state takeover.” Miami Herald. 2 October 2012.
Viglucci, Andres. “Plan for larger theatre at coconut Grove Playhouse remains alive.” Miami Herald. 12 March 2015.
Viglucci, Andres. “State says shuttered Coconut Grove Playhouse could be sold to private bidders.” Miami Herald. 14 December 2012.
Viglucci, Andres. and Christine Dolan. “FIU, Miami-Dade in possible deal to save Grove Playhouse.” Miami Herald. 13 March 2013.
Springer Opera House 103 10th Street Columbus, Georgia
As a kid, the Springer Opera House was the first local haunting I was familiar with. I recall the intense jealousy I felt when my sister got invited to a birthday party at the Springer and I wasn’t allowed to tag along to “see the ghost.” As a theatre major at Columbus State University, I visited the Spring a number of times and saw a few performances, though still I was distracted by the fact that there may be ghosts wandering about the antique promenades and still taking their seats in the boxes on either side of the stage.
In school, I also began to hear stories from my friends who had worked in the old theatre. Some of the experiences seemed incredible—like the story of a sound technician being levitated in the booth—while others seemed quite credible—a friend’s encounter with a little girl in a hallway who seemingly wanted to play tag but disappeared. When I got hired to work on a book about this theatre, I was excited to possibly experience the spirits there myself.
Interior of the Springer Opera House, 1979. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
I was asked by F. Clason Kyle to work as an editor on his book, In Order of Appearance, a history of the theatre and the many famous personalities—Edwin Booth and John Philip Sousa to Minnie Maddern Fiske and Burt Reynolds—to have trod its boards. Mr. Kyle and I first began by organizing much of the archival material the theatre had. We had our own little room stuffed with boxes of old programs, promotional materials, business papers and the occasional artifact. Among the artifacts was a beaded purse once owned by famed Polish actress, Helena Modjeska. We weren’t sure where the purse was, so we went looking for it.
Before we left the archives room, Mr. Kyle and I had been sorting through the various boxes. We returned to the room after a search of about an hour and I walked straight back to the box I had been searching through. There, sitting on top of the papers within the box was an antique purse. While it was not the Modjeska purse, almost as a consolation prize, an antique pocket watch had been placed on top of the purse. Obviously, if the purse had been there as we were discussing the Modjeska purse I would have asked about it. But to appear after we returned from the search was very odd. Perhaps the Springer’s ghost is similar to the H Street Playhouse’s kleptomaniac spirit.
During my two years working on the book, I also heard footsteps on the second floor and a door slamming shut by itself during a rehearsal. But many others have had more spectacular experiences. The educational director whose office was located on the second floor regularly saw a man walking past her doorway. She also felt a strong bond, motherly really, towards the spirit of a little girl that had been reported throughout the building as well.
There is apparently a host of spirits within the 1871 building, though it seems that the male spirit and the little girl may be the more active. The theatre’s artistic director, Paul Pierce, wrote a book about many of the experiences in the Victorian theatre including his own experience. Pierce had arrived at the theatre early one morning to open the tool room for technicians who were setting up for an event. As he walked through the scene shop, Pierce realized there was a man walking next to him. “Slight of build, he was a young gentleman with a thin, unruly, Van Dyke beard and wearing an ill-fitting tweed suit.”
Pierce walked through the shop with this figure playfully mirroring his stride through the room. They turned a corner and the figure walked behind a screen leaning against the wall. The figure did not emerge from the other side.
Sources
Kyle, F. Clason and Lewis O. Powell, IV, editor. In Order of Appearance: Chronicling 135 Years on America’s Most Celebrated Stage. Columbus, GA: Communicorp, 2006.
Pierce, Paul. The Springer Ghost Book. Columbus, GA: Communicorp, 2003.
Paramount Arts Center 1300 Winchester Avenue Ashland, Kentucky
The Paramount Arts Center gained its ghost fairly early in the theatre’s history when, as legend holds, a worker somehow became entangled in the rigging above the stage and died. If this act was an accident or suicide is unknown, but strange things began to be reported in the building. Over time, theatre staff members dubbed the entity “Paramount Joe.”
Just seven months after the Ashland Opera House was destroyed by fire in 1931, the Paramount Theatre opened as a movie palace for the citizens of the city. When the Art Moderne style theatre closed its doors in 1971, locals purchased the building as a performing arts center.
Paramount Arts Center, 2007, by YoungAmerican. Courtesy of Wikipedia.
In 1992, local musician Billy Ray Cyrus (father of Miley Cyrus) chose the theatre for the filming of the video of his hit song, “Achy Breaky Heart.” While there, he was told the story of “Paramount Joe,” and Cyrus claimed that he spoke with the spirit during a break and signed a poster for Paramount Joe. Some years later when an executive removed the poster from its place in the box office the staff returned the next day to find all the pictures had fallen from the walls some having their glass and frames broken. After Paramount Joe’s signed poster was restored, all has returned to normal in terms of the pictures.
Sources
Ball, Linda Larimore. National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form for the Paramount Theatre. October 1975.
Abbey Players Theatre 200 South State Street Abbeville, Louisiana
The Abbey Players had its founding in 1976 when a small group of thespians staged a successful production of Neil Simon’s Last of the Red Hot Lovers. The theatre company was incorporated the next year with the intention of presenting quality theatre to the region. After spending a few years staging shows at various venues throughout town, the group began renting an old building on South State Street. Previously housing the Reaux Lumber Company, the building dates to 1908 and was originally opened as a saloon.
After adapting the building for use as an arena stage, the company settled in and now produces 3-4 shows per season as well as children’s productions. Additionally, company members have had experiences in the building that may be paranormal. These include the shade of an elderly woman and the voice of a young girl among other unexplained noises. An investigation by Louisiana Spirits Paranormal Investigations captured a number of personal experiences for the team as well as EVPs.
A couple of these experiences are highlighted in Chere Coen’s Haunted Lafayette, Louisiana. During the investigation, Louisiana Spirits discovered a cold spot that seemed to move around a dressing room. The investigators also heard a disembodied voice greet them with a “hi.”
Patapsco Female Institute 3655 Church Road Ellicott City, Maryland
The immortal words of Shakespeare have been uttered within the walls of the Patapsco Female Institute for almost two centuries. Even with only the exterior stone walls remaining, the ruins now provide a perfect backdrop for productions by the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company. Shakespeare’s numerous ghosts may even provide a camouflage for the ghosts that reside among the romantic ruins.
The Patapsco Female Institute opened in 1837 as an elite finishing school for young women. Among some of the more well known alumnae is Winnie Davis, daughter of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Sally Randolph, the great granddaughter of Thomas Jefferson, served as a headmistress. It was during this time in the balmy days leading up to the Civil War that a daughter of a Southern planter was enrolled here.
An illustration of the Patapsco Female Institute in 1857, from The Book of Great Railway Celebrations of 1857.
The young girl hated the school, longed for home and her father would not allow her to return home. The student contracted pneumonia and her body left the school in a coffin. The student’s spirit, however, has remained to wander the ruins of her former school.
The school closed its doors in 1891 and throughout the 20th century the building served as variety of uses including a convalescent home after World War I, a private residence and a theatre. After local officials condemned the building in the late 1950s, the owner gutted the building of its woodwork leaving just the yellow-tinted local stone walls standing. The space is now owned and operated by the Howard County Government as a historic site and an events space.
The white-gowned apparition of the former student still wanders the grounds.
Sources
Hannon, Jean O. Maryland Historic Trust Worksheet for Patapsco Female Institute. January 1978.
Hirsch, Rona S. “Ghostly images, spirited debate.” Baltimore Sun. 31 October 2001.
Cinemark Movies 8 Mall at Barnes Crossing 1001 Barnes Crossing Road Tupelo, Mississippi
An entrance to the Mall at Barnes Crossing, 2015. Photo by Mike Kalasnik, courtesy of Wikipedia.
Any location can be haunted. While most people would not expect to encounter a spirit within a fast food restaurant, big-box retailer (like Wal-Mart or Toys R Us) or a recently constructed building, it does happen. In some cases, recent tragic events may spur such a haunting, but other times, there is no obvious reason at all. Such is the case of this haunted multiplex theatre. According to CinemaTreasures.org, this theatre was opened in 1992, seating 1920 people and a couple spirits. A female spirit, nicknamed Lola, quite mischievously moves things and has been seen peering into the break room trashcan. She apparently gets the brunt of the blame when things go wrong or missing. A male spirit seems to be more elusive and sticks to the projection room.
Steed, Bud. The Haunted Natchez Trace. Charleston, SC: History Press, 2012.
Mountainside Theatre 688 Drama Drive Cherokee, North Carolina
Part of my own heart lies in the mountains of Western North Carolina around Cherokee. While I was in college I spent the three greatest summers of my life working on the historical drama, Unto These Hills, which has been performed at the Mountainside Theatre since 1950. It’s a humbling experience to be able to tell the story of the Cherokee people who have existed in this area for millennia. Even more humbling is being able to tell that story surrounded by the spirits of the characters and their living descendants.
The theatre is truly a sacred space where we can commune with the spirits of the past, both figuratively and literally. From my first day here, we were always made aware of the presence of spirits in this enormous amphitheatre. Among the host of spirits are Cherokee, sacred spirits from Cherokee mythology (see my entry on my own experience with the Cherokee little people) and former cast members. Some of these spirits can be truly frightening while others provide comfort.
Entrance to the Mountainside Theatre, 2012, by Lewis O. Powell, IV. All rights reserved.
In recent years, the Cherokee Historical Association—which operates the drama as well as the Oconaluftee Indian Village (it’s also haunted)—has operated a “Haunted Village” attraction around Halloween. This includes a ghost walk through the theatre and cast housing. In 2013, a zombie run was held at the theatre. During this event participants were chased through the theatre complex and cast housing by a variety of zombies. This included an area just behind the theatre called the ready room. This space is a partially enclosed area where actors may wait once they have put on their costumes. On the wall here is an old pay phone.
The ready room phone, 2014, by Lewis O. Powell, IV. All rights reserved.
I was told this story last summer when I was working in Cherokee. One evening in 2013, an hour or so after the zombie run the local police department received a panicked phone call from the Mountainside Theatre. A terror-filled voice begged for help from the theatre. The Cherokee Police Department responded and sent police up the driveway behind the theatre. The theatre complex was quiet and empty without a living soul to be found. The call had been traced to the theatre pay phone. It was discovered, however, that the phone was disconnected.
This is one of countless stories that have been told about the theatre.
Sources
Connor, William P., Jr. History of the Cherokee Historical Association 1946-1982. Cherokee, NC: Cherokee Historical Association, 1983.
Dock Street Theatre 135 Church Street Charleston, South Carolina
St. Philip’s Episcopal Church aggressively pushes itself into Church Street. Its columned porches thrust out so far that the street must curve to accommodate it. Above the street, the tremendous spire rises like an upright, moral finger, a reminder of the moral duties of the citizens of The Holy City. In the next block south of the church and within the shadow of the spire sits the Dock Street Theatre grinning garishly with its whimsical columns at St. Philip’s and the stringent Gothic Revival face of the French Huguenot Church directly across Church Street.
Theatre has always thumbed its nose at the self-righteous morality of good, church-going folk while often lampooning their foibles and failures on its boards, pulling down the saints from their lofty niches. In turn, the righteous have worked to reign in and silence the heckling theatre. This certainly was the case in Colonial America, a place still reeking of the Puritanism and strict morality that afflicted and bound the earliest settlers. Theatre most certainly struggled to gain a foothold on this steep religious mountain. The original Dock Street Theatre opened its doors in 1736 as, quite possibly, the second oldest edifice devoted to theatrical performance in the colonies.
As a part of a city in its early evolution, the original structure lasted a little less than two decades before that spark of a city’s growth, fire, reduced it to a hollowed shell of brick. The theatre was rebuilt and remained a theatre through the remainder of the 18th century. In 1809 the structure became home to the Calder House Hotel (later known as the Planter’s Hotel) run by Alexander Calder—an ancestor of the 20th century American artist of the same name—to serve wealthy visitors to the city. During the Great Depression, the Works Progress Administration cobbled together the collection of old buildings on this site into the current reincarnation of the Dock Street Theatre which incorporates an 18th century styled theatre and possibly a few brick walls dating to the original 1736 theatre.
Dock Street Theatre, 2011. Photo by Lewis O. Powell, IV. All rights reserved.
The building incorporates a certain spiritual fabric within its aged physical fabric. Most sources refer to two spirits who reside within the old theatre, though I venture that with the Dock Street Theatre’s long history, there’s also quite a good bit of residual energy manifesting itself.
One of the spirits has been identified as the great British thespian, Junius Brutus Booth. Renowned for his portrayals of Shakespearean characters, Booth fathered three sons who were also destined for the stage: Junius Brutus Jr., Edwin and John Wilkes, three thespians who left their mark on the theatrical world and one who would leave a mark upon the world stage. Edwin followed in his father’s footsteps to become one of the greatest tragedians of his day whilst Junius Jr. found better success in the managing of theatres. John Wilkes earned his notoriety as Abraham Lincoln’s assassin.
According to numerous—mostly paranormal in nature—sources, Booth the elder did stay in the Planter’s Hotel and that the well-dressed gentleman’s spirit seen in and around the theatre is his shade. Though it does ask the question of why would Booth haunt this hotel of all the numerous hotels where he stayed? According to the managing director of the theatre Booth was an alcoholic and possibly mentally unstable. During a stay in Charleston Booth allegedly beat his manager with a fire iron. Just as modern actors and performers are prone to bouts of bad behavior, so were the actors and performers of old. It seems this may belong to the phenomenon of historic landmarks picking among their most famous patrons or residents in order to identify their spirits.
Nevertheless, the spirit is still seen within the theatre. A man in a tall hat and overcoat is sometimes seen in the balcony and may sit in on rehearsals. In her Ghosts and Legends of Charleston, Denise Roffe reports on a young woman who saw this gentleman standing in the balcony when she visited.
Though, other stories center on a spirit known as “Netty” or “Nettie.” Likely dating to the same time as the gentleman’s spirit, legend has it that Nettie was a “working girl” who provided entertainment to the gentlemen who patronized the hotel. The legend continues with her dying a violent death on the balcony of the hotel, just above the entrance. While she was out on the balcony one evening, the steel beam supporting the balcony was struck by lightning and she was electrocuted. According to author Terrance Zepke, her spirit form has been observed by passersby and also captured on film. Additionally, she lingers in the second floor backstage hall where she apparently appears to be walking on her knees as the floor was raised during the building’s renovations in the 1930s. Netty is still walking on the original floors.
Sources
Bull, Elias B. National Register of Historic Places nomination form for the Dock Street Theatre. 2 January 1972.
Macy, Ed and Geordie Buxton III. Haunted Charleston: Stories from the College of Charleston, the Citadel and the Holy City. Charleston, SC: History Press, 2004.
Poston, Jonathan H. The Buildings of Charleston. Columbia, SC: U. of SC Press, 1997.
Roffe, Denise. Ghosts and Legends of Charleston, South Carolina. Atglen, PA: Schiffer, 2010.
Zepke, Terrance. Best Ghost Tales of South Carolina. Sarasota, FL: Pineapple Press, 2004.
Paramount Center for the Performing Arts 518 State Street Bristol, Tennessee
In 1991 at the age of 60 the Paramount Theatre, run down and virtually abandoned, rose like its “Mighty Wurlitzer” organ once did from the depths to be reborn as the Paramount Center for the Performing Arts. Opened in 1931, the theatre was meant as a cinema and its small stage had to be enlarged to accommodate live performance in the modern day. Sitting proudly on State Street not far from the Tennessee/Virginia state line, which divides this city, the theatre continues to attract people from all over the region.
The Paramount Center for the Performing Arts by Carole M. Highsmith, courtesy of the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
According to a 2009 article from the Bristol Herald Courier, the site of the Paramount Theatre was previously haunted. On that site, Bristol’s first hospital stood, a building that had previously been a hotel. During its time as a hotel, a man was shot and killed there. After that, the hotel had trouble renting his room after that as patrons reported hearing and feeling odd things in that room. There is a spirit still hanging around the theatre, though no indication it is the same from the old hotel. The Executive Director has reported that footsteps are still heard in the empty building with the sound of doors opening and closing as well.
Sources
Netherland, Tom. “A Timeless Stage: Memories of the Paramount Center.” Originally published in Bristol Herald Courier, 17 February 2009. Republished in A! Magazine for the Arts, March 2013.
State Street divides city of Bristol and marks the state line between Tennessee and Virginia. The Cameo Theatre, on the north side of the street, is in Virginia while the Paramount Center for the Performing Arts, just a few blocks down, sits on the south side of the street in Tennessee. The division between the theatres also marks a gulf of fortunes between them as well. While the Paramount Theatre remains open as a performing arts center the Cameo is currently for sale. Two years older than the Paramount, the 1925 theatre was opened as a vaudeville house and recently served as an arts facility, hosting arts classes for children. Sadly, finances did not allow that to continue and the theatre was put up for sale in 2010.
According to V.N. Phillips’ book, Ghosts of Bristol: Haunting Tales from the Twin Cities, the Cameo replaces The Black Shawl, Bristol’s most infamous brothel. Pocahontas Hale, the establishment’s madam, is said to notoriously patrol the sidewalk in front of the Cameo Theatre. Her shade has been spotted wearing the black clothes and wrapped in the black shawl that she always wore in life.
Sources
McGee, David. “Cameo Theatre annex’s inventory being sold off to make way for new owner.” Bristol Herald Courier. 16 June 2010.
Phillips, V.N. Ghosts of Bristol: Haunting Tales from the Twin Cities. Charleston, SC: History Press, 2010.
Old Main Campus of Marshall University Huntington, West Virginia
With a cornerstone laid in 1869—just 32 years after the founding of Marshall Academy on the same spot—Old Main continues to carry Marshall University towards the horizon of the future. The structure’s nomination form for the National Register of Historic Places contains the sentimental statement that “alumni consider Old Main and school itself to be identical. Old Main is Marshall University and Marshall University is Old Main.” Not only does this monumental Tudor structure carry students and faculty forward as a university centerpiece and administration building, but it carries a spirit or two as well.
Old Main, 2013, by WVFunnyman. Courtesy of Wikipedia.
Old Main embodies the history of the school itself in its walls. It is not actually a single building, but five buildings that have been joined over time. Originally one of these building contained an auditorium, though the space has been unused since 1990. School legend relates that a well-dressed man was sometimes seen back stage during performances. Actors and crew back stage would see the man who would be gone with a second glance. This man was identified as a theatre director from the 1920s. The director supposedly disappeared after it was discovered he had embezzled money from the school.
Sources
Bleau, Edward R. National Register of Historic Places nomination form for Old Main—Marshall University. 28 December 1972.
Bozzoli, Carlos. “Old Main Building.” Marshall University Architectural Guide. Accessed 14 March 2013.
Donahue, Kelly. “Untitled article.” The Parthenon. 29 October 1996.
This is the second half of my two-part article on Haunted Hotels and Inns of the South that I created just after the blog was first posted in 2010. It was my first really big (almost too big) article and I have attempted over the years to revisit it with the hope of updating, revising and completing it (I originally left off Virginia and West Virginia when I got tired of writing). This article with my article, 13 Southern Rooms with a Boo, is the replacement.
This article is just a sampling (2 from each of the 13 states that I cover here) of the vast array of haunted lodgings throughout the South. My article, “Dining with Spirits” is a companion piece to this article. Enjoy!
Tutwiler Hotel 2021 Park Place Birmingham, Alabama
The Tutwiler Hotel, like a ghost, has risen from the dead, almost. When it opened in 1914, the Tutwiler was the finest hotel in the city and was at the heart of its social scene hosting events such as actress Tallulah Bankhead’s wedding reception. The hotel was originally constructed to serve visiting steel company executives in this city that was built on the steel industry. When the industry began to die in the second half of the twentieth century, the hotel fell into disrepair and the 450-room landmark with its 1000-seat ballroom was imploded a year after closing its door in 1972.
Panoramic view of the Tutwiler Hotel, 2011, by Chris Pruitt. Courtesy of Wikipedia.
With the recovery of Birmingham’s economy, the need for a luxury hotel again arose. Investors purchased the Ridgeley Apartments, a large brick building on Park Avenue that had been constructed by Major Tutwiler at the same time his grand hotel had opened. The apartment building was restored and refurbished into the new Tutwiler Hotel. Not only has the hotel returned from oblivion, but some of its former residents have returned as well. A spiritual knocker raps on the doors of the hotel’s sixth floor late at night. Of course, when the door is answered, no one is seen. Jessica Penot in her Haunted North Alabama tells of the spirit of a young girl who is also seen on the sixth floor and may be the cause of the knocking.
According to Alan Brown, the bartender of the hotel had issues with the lights in the dining room. He would turn them off and leave for the night only to find them on in the morning. After coming in one morning to discover a fully cooked feast laid out on the table, the bartender began saying goodnight to Major Tutwiler upon leaving at night. The lights have remained off. “Good night, Major Tutwiler.”
Sources
Brown, Alan. “Knocking at the Tutwiler Hotel.” WierdUS,com. Accessed 28 October 2010.
Lewis, Herbert J. “Birmingham.” Encyclopedia of Alabama. 8 January 2008.
Penot, Jessica. Haunted North Alabama. Charleston, SC: History Press, 2010.
The Hay-Adams 800 16th Street, Northwest Washington, D.C.
Marian Adams, known by her nickname, “Clover,” is at the center of two ghost stories. One tale concerns her tragic spirit haunting the fourth floor of the Hay-Adams Hotel and the other concerns her eerie grave at Rock Creek Cemetery. Clover was the socialite wife of historian and writer Henry Adams whose autobiography, The Education of Henry Adams, won the 1919 Pulitzer Prize but omitted his late wife.
The December 10, 1885 edition of the Washington paper, The Critic, briefly notes Marian Adams’ funeral: “The funeral of Mrs. Marian Adams of 1607 H Street, wife of Mr. Henry Adams, took place from her late residence yesterday. The certificate of Dr. Hagner, filed in the Health office, was to the effect that the deceased died of paralysis of the heart superinduced by an overdose of potassium.” Mrs. Adams was an amateur photographer and used potassium cyanide in developing her photographs. It was believed that she had committed suicide, though rumors swirled throughout the city as to why and even if she had possibly been murdered.
Hay-Adams Hotel, 2008, by AgnosticPreachersKid. Courtesy of Wikipedia.
The H Street home where Adams had met her death was being rented by the Adams from art collector W. W. Cochran. The couple had been renting the house while an H. H. Richardson-designed home was being built for them on 16th Street. The home was being built next door to the home of John and Clara Hay, close friends of the Adams. Following his wife’s death, Henry Adams moved into the new house and stories came out of the couple’s old house on H Street where residents witnessed mysterious knocking and the ghost of a “sad-eyed lady.”
To mark his wife’s grave, Henry Adams commissioned the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens to create a fitting memorial that was not “intelligible to the average mind.” The sculptor created a bronze figure that sat atop the grave shrouded in cloth. The figure’s face is hidden under a hood and is hidden in shadow. Though neither Saint-Gaudens or Adams called it such, the creepy statue became known as “Grief.” Over the years, tales have been spun to explain the statue’s effect on people and some have reported that the figure has supernatural powers.
Adams passed away in 1918 and the graceful pair of Richardsonian mansion that had been home to Adams and his friends the Hays became the victims of “progress” in 1927. A developer demolished the homes and constructed a large Italian Renaissance-styled hotel which he named for the former owners of the property. At some point, the hotel gained a permanent guest in the form of the shade of Marian “Clover” Adams.
Clover has apparently taken over the hotel’s fourth floor. Maids in unoccupied rooms on that floor have reported hearing the sounds of a woman sobbing, asking “what do you want?” and calling their name. The hotel’s Wikipedia page cites a source as saying that the spirit of Clover Adams is accompanied by the faint smell of almonds. Potassium cyanide is extracted from almonds.
Sources
Alexander, John. Ghosts: Washington Revisited. Atglen, PA: Schiffer, 1998.
“Funeral of Mrs. Adams.” The Critic. 10 December 1885.
Hay-Adams Hotel. Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Accessed 5 March 2015.
Rooney, E. Ashley and Betsy Johnson. Washington, D.C.: Ghosts, Legends and Lore. Atglen, PA: Schiffer, 2008.
Smith, Terry L. and Mark Jean. Haunted Inns of America. Crane Hill Publishers, 2003.
The Don CeSar 3400 Gulf Boulevard St. Pete Beach, Florida
Facing the sapphire waters of the Gulf of Mexico stands Thomas Rowe’s palatial pink dream, The Don CeSar. Opened in 1928, the resort was, for a time, the heart of the Jazz Age social scene in Florida, hosting luminaries ranging from novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald to baseball legend, Lou Gehrig. The resort survived the tumult of the Great Depression but with Thomas Rowe’s death in 1940, the hotel passed into the hands of his ex-wife. When Rowe died, he had been in the process of changing his will to write out his former spouse, but as this new will remained unsigned at the time of death, the old will was executed. The ex-wife, Mary, was not a business woman and the hotel began to fall into disrepair and was taken over by the government for back taxes.
The immense hotel was transformed by the government into a veteran‘s hospital, stripped of its Old World splendor. Following World War II, the building remained in government hands and served as offices for the Veteran’s Administration and later for other agencies. In 1967, the structure was abandoned and left to the elements. Vagrants, vandals and mice roamed the graffiti painted and trash-strewn corridors. During this time, stories began to circulate of Jazz Age phantoms roaming the beach near the resort and the sound of parties echoing from the ruined patios and terraces.
With the looming threat of demolition, a citizens group banded together to save the pink landmark. The hotel was reopened in 1973 and renovation starting in the early 1980s restored and expanded the resort. Renovations and work in old structures often tends to stir up spiritual activity and such was the case at the Don CeSar. The figure of a man in a tan suit and Panama hat began to be seen poking around the building. Sometimes alone and sometimes seen with a beautiful woman, the man has been identified as Thomas Rowe.
The Don Cesar in 2006 by Porkfork6. Courtesy of Wikipedia.
The woman is connected with the legend of the hotel. According to the story, Rowe built this pink palace as a monument to his first love, an opera singer. The couple was not allowed to marry and when Rowe built the hotel, he named it Don CeSar for the male lead in Wallace’s opera, Maritana. Supposedly, Rowe’s lady love was an opera singer whom he spotted first playing the female lead in the opera. Perhaps Rowe and his love have finally found the solace in death that they could ill afford in life.
Sources
1935 Labor Day hurricane. Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Accessed 29 October 2010.
Don CeSar. Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Accessed 28 October 2010.
Jenkins, Greg. Florida’s Ghostly Legends and Haunted Folklore, Volume 1, South and Central Florida. Sarasota, FL: Pineapple Press, 2008.
Riverview Hotel 105 Osborne Street St. Marys, Georgia
The verandas of the Riverview Hotel have faced the waters of the St. Marys River for nearly 100 years inviting visitors to stay and “set a spell.” This family-owned hotel has been operated by the Brandon family since the 1920s and has seen the likes of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Admiral Chester Nimitz and Senator Richard Russell. Something, possibly not of this world, seems to occupy Room 8, even when the guest register shows it to be vacant. Innkeeper Jerry Brandon is quoted by Sheila Turnage in her Haunted Inns of the Southeast as saying that a male apparition has been spotted outside of Room 8 and people staying in that room have been touched by an unseen presence. He continues that during a power outage, the lights in the room stayed on. In St. Marys, the spirit world still leaves the light on for you.
Riverview Hotel, 2012, by Lewis Powell IV, all rights reserved.
Sources
Hampton, Liz. “Living history at the Riverview.” The Florida Times-Union. 21 February 2004.
Reddick, Marguerite. Camden’s Challenge: A History of Camden County, Georgia. St. Marys, GA: Camden County Historical Society, 1976.
Turnage, Sheila. Haunted Inns of the Southeast. Winton-Salem, NC: John F. Blair, 2001.
Maple Hill Manor 2941 Perryville Road Springfield, Kentucky
Some paranormal researchers speculate that ghosts may see a location as they once knew it rather than what exists now. Despite this speculation, I can imagine the ghosts looking out of the windows of Maple Hill Manor would be confused by the flocks of alpacas and llamas grazing outside. The current innkeepers, Todd Allen and Tyler Horton, raise the alpacas and llamas for their wool which may be used to make clothing, jewelry, and even teddy bears.
In addition to these exotic animals, the innkeepers appear to have a number of spirits on hand in this historic home built between 1848 and 1851. It was the home of Thomas and Sarah McElroy, their children (a few of whom died in infancy) and the family’s slaves. Some of the spirits that are still encountered may be family members, including a son who plunged to his death when a railing on the stairway gave way and the spirits of the McElroy’s slaves including “Mammy Anne” who has been seen sitting in her former room. These spirits are joined by the apparitions of soldiers who were wounded in the Battle of Perryville, fought nearby. The innkeepers have reported that activity, especially in Harriet Beecher Stowe room where the soldiers were treated, tends to spike around October 8, the anniversary of the battle.
Sources
Brown, Alan. Haunted Kentucky: Ghosts and Strange Phenomena of the Bluegrass State. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole, 2009.
T’Frere’s House Bed and Breakfast 1905 Verot School Road Lafayette, Louisiana
During an investigation of T’Frere’s House Bed & Breakfast, Smoke and Mirrors Paranormal captured an EVP of a male voice whispering very gruffly, “that’s it, I want them out!” The spirits here speak a great deal in both English and French. An exterminator was working in the home’s attic when he encountered a small woman who asked him to “viens voir,” or come see. Not wanting to actually see what the mysterious woman wanted to show him, the exterminator fled.
Oneziphore Comeaux, the youngest of seven children, nicknamed T’Frere, meaning “little brother,” built his home in Lafayette in 1880. When the home’s owner, Peggy Moseley decided to open the home as a bed and breakfast in 1986, the name T’Frere’s was perfectly suited for it. When the Pastor family bought the bed and breakfast in 1994, they also didn’t realize their purchase included a ghost.
As the Pastors were moving in the family took a load of things to the house for the night. Their son had forgotten a paper needed for his math homework. He was worrying about it in his room when the sheet suddenly floated down from the ceiling. An investigation of the room did not reveal any reason that the missing paper could have just appeared.
Legend speaks of a young schoolteacher, Amelie, who died when she went to wash her face and fell in the well. When the Catholic Church judged her death a suicide, she was denied burial in the consecrated ground of the cemetery. Amelie’s spirit has been encountered throughout the house, with her mostly making her presence known by rattling pots and pans, turning lights off and on and other mischievous activity.
Sources
Coen, Chere. “Ghost hunters search for inn’s oldest ‘resident.’”IND Monthly. 18 August 2014.
Coen, Chere. Haunted Lafayette, Louisiana. Charleston, SC: History Press, 2013.
Ponseti, Valerie. “Ghost Hunt at T-Frere’s.”KATC. 17 August 2014.
Rose, Christopher. “Minding her manor.” The New Orleans Times-Picayune. 19 April 1992.
Turnage, Sheila. Haunted Inns of the Southeast. Winton-Salem, NC: John F. Blair, 2001.
The Wayside Inn 4344 Columbia Road Ellicott City, Maryland
The massive three-story granite Wayside Inn on the Columbia Turnpike outside of Ellicott City can claim that “George Washington slept here,” it can also claim a ghost. While the early history of the inn is lost in the shadows, it is known that Washington, as well as other colonial luminaries passed through the area. Most likely, they would have stayed in one of the inns that lined the Old Columbia Turnpike, between Washington, D. C. and Baltimore. Little has been written on the female ghost that haunts the premises, though an article written around the time of the inn’s reopening in 2004, mentions that a friend of the innkeepers heard a door open followed by footsteps to discover that no one was present.
Sources
History. WaysideInnMD.com. Accessed 29 October 2010.
Schissler, Eleanor. “B&B’s renovation doesn’t quiet talk of reputed ghost.” Howard County Times. 3 June 2004.
Cedar Grove Mansion Inn & Restaurant 2200 Oak Street Vicksburg, Mississippi
Cedar Grove is a house built for love. Built by John Klein as a wedding gift to his bride, Elizabeth Bartley Day, Cedar Grove was completed in 1852 following a grand tour of Europe with her. With the start of the Vicksburg Campaign during the Civil War, the house was one of the first houses in Vicksburg hit by the Union shelling of the city, in fact, a cannonball is still lodged in the wall of the parlor. Mrs. Klein, a native of Ohio, was also a relative of Union General William Tecumseh Sherman who had been a guest in the house. Sherman gave personal assurances to the Kleins that their home would be spared and he personally escorted the family to safety. Following the Kleins evacuation, the house was used by Union forces until after the fall of Vicksburg.
Foyer of the Cedar Grove Inn, 2004, by Flowerchild48. Courtesy of Wikipedia.
When the Kleins returned to the city after the war, they were met as traitors with turned backs and averted eyes. When the house was purchased in 1983 and conversion into a bed and breakfast began, the Klein’s proud house had fallen into disrepair. The owners have fully restored the house and included homes across the street as cottages including the cottage that John Klein used while the main house was under construction.
I’ve found two main sources on this inn. While there is no confusion about the history, the sources differ on the spiritual guests. Sheila Turnage mentions two spirits, a male spirit, possibly Mr. Klein, whose pipe smoke appears in the gentlemen’s parlor and a female spirit who has been heard and seen on the stairs. Interestingly, my other source, Sylvia Booth Hubbard’s Ghosts! Personal Accounts of Modern Mississippi Hauntings, provides more spirits. Hubbard mentions the possible spirit of Mr. Klein, but also includes the sounds of children playing and an infant crying. She continues by mentioning that a later owner of the home had a sister who committed suicide in the ballroom and that the sounds of a gunshot and a crash are sometimes heard there. Hubbard also indicates that the spirit of a tour guide who lead tours of the hours during the annual pilgrimage has been seen in the house as well. Nonetheless, it seems Cedar Grove has no shortage of history, charm or ghosts.
Sources
“Cedar Grove History.” CedarGroveInn.com. Accessed 31 October 2010.
Hubbard, Sylvia Booth. Ghosts! Personal Accounts of Modern Mississippi Hauntings. Brandon, MS: Quail Ridge Press, 1992.
Kermeen, Frances. Ghostly Encounters: True Stories of American’s Haunted Inns and Hotels. NYC: Warner Books, 2002.
Turnage, Sheila. Haunted Inns of the Southeast. Winton-Salem, NC: John F. Blair, 2001.
The Omni Grove Park Inn 290 Macon Avenue Asheville, North Carolina
Throughout ghost literature there are tales of female wraiths. Over time many of these female spirits have acquired nicknames, usually relating to the color of their clothing: “White Lady” and “Grey Lady” being the most common. Of course, they do appear in other colors; Huntingdon College in Montgomery, Alabama, for instance, has a “Red Lady, but I know of only one spirit that appears in that most feminine of colors, pink, and Asheville’s Grove Park Inn is her home.
The legend is almost typical in ghostlore: a young flapper in the 1920s plunged to her death from a fourth or fifth floor railing and her spirit has been seen ever since. Time has kept her anonymity, though I’m curious if a close scan of local papers might reveal her identity. Anonymous she may be, though, the details of her activity seem to be well known. People staying in rooms 545, 441, 448 and even 320 have experienced a variety of strange activity including the appearance of a young woman wearing a pink dress. A North Carolina police chief staying in room 448 felt someone sit on the edge of his bed while a female journalist staying in 441 the same night had doors in her room open and close mysteriously.
Postcard view of the Grove Park Inn, circa 1914. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
The Inn brought in writer and investigator Joshua Warren to investigate the legend of the Pink Lady in 1996. His results, published in his book Haunted Asheville, include some photographic anomalies, but also a number of personal experiences. The Pink Lady still walks this 1913 edifice.
Sources
“History.” GroveParkInn.com. Accessed 1 November 2010.
Kermeen, Frances. Ghostly Encounters: True Stories of American’s Haunted Inns and Hotels. NYC: Warner Books, 2002.
Turnage, Sheila. Haunted Inns of the Southeast. Winton-Salem, NC: John F. Blair, 2001.
Warren, Joshua P. Haunted Asheville. Johnson City, TN: Overmountain Press, 1996.
Rice Hope Plantation Inn 206 Rice Hope Drive Moncks Corner, South Carolina
Rice Hope Plantation’s resident spirit, Mistress Chicken, certainly ranks among the more amusing spirit names. She was born Catherine Chicken and her grandfather, James Child had founded the nearby community of Childsbury, which no longer exists. Captain George Chicken, Catherine’s father, had been a member of the Goose Creek militia and had been involved in the Yamassee War which helped to exterminate and exile the Yamassee people from the Low Country of South Carolina.
Catherine Chicken’s tale has been told for centuries in this region. After Catherine’s father’s death, her mother remarried and Catherine was placed in a boarding school in Childsbury under the care of Monsieur and Madame Dutarque. Catherine was a sensitive child who bore the strain of the Dutarque’s strict disciplinary methods and she was often punished for minor infractions. Little Catherine had been given some sewing as punishment, but as children are wont to do, she was distracted. Despite the Dutarque’s decree that no student shall possess pets, Catherine Chicken had brought a small pet turtle with her. While she sewed, the turtle had wandered away and Little Mistress Chicken dropped her sewing to pursue it.
Upon finding that the little girl had disappeared, the Dutarques were enraged and Monsieur began to search feverishly for the child. He found her and her small pet and decided to teach the child a lesson with a rather unusual punishment. The child was tied to a tombstone while the cruel schoolmaster threw the small turtle against a stone, killing it before the child’s eyes.
As darkness descended on the tombstones of Strawberry Chapel where the child had been left, the girl grew weary of struggling to cry out and free herself. A slave, out past curfew found her and alerted the locals who found the child limpid with terror and exhaustion. Her limp form was taken to her home where there was a fear she might not awaken. After discovering the culprits behind this travesty, the townsfolk considered hanging for the cruel schoolmasters. Little Mistress Chicken did awaken and exclaimed that she hoped nothing would happen to Monsieur Dutarque. The Dutarques were exiled from the settlement.
Strawberry Chapel where Catherine Chicken was tied to a tombstone. Photo circa 1940 by Frederick Nichols for the Historic American Buildings Survey.
Catherine never quite recovered from her ordeal, though she lived a long and fruitful life. Luckins Plantation, where young Catherine had spent happy days before her father’s death eventually became Rice Hope Plantation according to some sources. Joseph S. Freylinghausen, a former senator from New Jersey, purchased the plantation in the early 1920s and remodeled the house there in 1929. It is this house where Catherine is supposed to return to the Heron Room where she rocks in the rocking chair there. Her forlorn spirit is also occasionally heard still crying for help at Strawberry Chapel as well.
Sources
Chandler, Andrew W. et al. National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form for the Cooper River Historic District. Listed 5 February 2003.
Orr, Bruce. Ghosts of Berkeley County, South Carolina. Charleston, SC: History Press, 2011.
Turnage, Sheila. Haunted Inns of the Southeast. Winton-Salem, NC: John F. Blair, 2001.
Magnolia Manor Bed & Breakfast 418 North Main Street Bolivar, Tennessee
I am certain that one of the first things the citizens of Bolivar, Tennessee would like you to know is how to pronounce their name. While it is named for the South American revolutionary, Simon Bolivar, the town’s name is pronounced to rhyme with “Oliver,” Though I cannot be completely certain, I’m sure the second thing the citizens would want you to know is that Magnolia Manor has wonderful legends associated with it and quite possibly a few ghosts as well.
Just before the Battle of Shiloh, which took place just two counties over, four Union generals: Logan, Sherman, Grant and McPherson, supposedly planned the battle in the Gentleman’s Parlor. (It should be noted, however, that the battle was the result of a surprise attack by Confederate forces.) But the legend continues with the ill-mannered William Tecumseh Sherman making a very disagreeable and telling remark during a meal in suggesting that all Southerners: men, women and children, should be exterminated.
Magnolia Manor’s hostess, Mrs. Miller, the wife of Judge Austin Miller, the home’s builder, excused herself immediately left the room in tears. Ulysses Grant furiously ordered Sherman to apologize. He did so begrudgingly and stormed up the staircase afterwards slashing the banister with his saber. Mrs. Miller was the first of a long line of strong women to oversee this manse and leave a spiritual mark as well—one of Mrs. Miller’s grand-daughters would become the first woman elected to the Tennessee state legislature.
Activity in the 1849 home is at such a level that paranormal investigators have been at work in the house regularly for a number of years. Therefore, being certified as haunted is really just a formality for Memphis Mid-South Ghost Hunters who have been working in the house for quite some time.
The activity in the house ranges from full apparitions to the movement of objects. Guests in the home have witnessed a woman descend the staircase and others have been touched by a female spirit in their rooms while still others have reported a woman pulling the covers from them as they slept.
Sources
Brown, Alan. Haunted Tennessee: Ghosts and Strange Phenomena of the Volunteer State. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole, 2009.
Ferree, Lyda Kay. “Magnolia Manor Bed & Breakfast to host ghost tours.” The Jackson Sun. 27 September 2014.
Phillips, Bianca. “Bumps in the Night.” Memphis Flyer. 12 July 2007.
Turnage, Sheila. Haunted Inns of the Southeast. Winston-Salem, NC: John F. Blair, 2001.
1797 Wayside Inn 7783 Main Street Middletown, Virginia
This building essentially sits at the center of history for this small town. The motley of old buildings forming the tavern were built over a period ranging from the 18th century through to the late 19th century. The oldest portion of the building, that containing Larrick’s Tavern, is considered the oldest portion and may have been constructed around 1750. The road in front was once part of the Great Wagon Road—the road that helped settle the American “backcountry.” The road here, through the Shenandoah Valley, which enters the valley in Winchester, was originally a Native American trail called the Great Indian Warpath, a trail used by the multitude of Native American tribes—including the Cherokee—throughout this region.
In 1797, this collection of buildings became an inn for the many travelers passing on the road. Leo Bernstein, the garrulous personality who took over the inn the latter half of the 20th century, would always claim that this inn was the oldest continuously operating inn in the nation. There does seem to be a good deal of truth behind his claim. It is known that this inn was in operation as war raged up and down the valley during the Civil War and that the inn served both sides.
The Wayside Inn, 2008, by DwayneP. Courtesy of Wikipedia.
Like most buildings in the area, the inn has a number of Civil War related spirits, though there is the possibility that the inn may have been haunted by the time the war rolled through the region. Lord Fairfax, who had been given much the land in the area, did live nearby and died in Winchester (he’s buried at Christ Episcopal Church) is claimed as the spirit that moans on a nightly basis in the oldest portion of the inn. Bernstein describes the space in Sheila Turnage’s Haunted Inns of the Southeast, “Upstairs is about a three foot space. There was a set of steps going up there. The straw is still there.” Bernstein would like to believe that Lord Fairfax is the source of the moan, who may have been a guest here with his young surveyor, George Washington, in tow. The loft is located just above one of the bars and Turnage mentions that people gather to listen for the moan at 11:30 PM nightly.
Besides odd moans, the inn is home to numerous other spirits and employees and guests have witnessed much activity. Objects have moved on their own accord, a dishwasher had his apron untied repeatedly by unseen hands, and full apparitions have been seen including those of Civil War soldiers. Paranormal investigations have captured much evidence including EVPs of horses whinnying and photographs featuring specters.
Sources
Ash, Linda O’Dell. “Respect the spirits, ‘Ghost Hunters International’ star Dustin Pari tells Wayside Inn paranormal investigators.” The Northern Virginia Daily. 7 November 2011.
Daly, Sean. “In Strasburg, a Medium Well Done.” The Washington Post. 31 July 2002.
Middletown Heritage Society. National Register of Historic Place nomination form for Middletown Historic District. 7 May 2003.
Turnage, Sheila. Haunted Inns of the Southeast. Winston-Salem, NC: John F. Blair, 2001.
Varhola, Michael J. Ghosthunting Virginia. Cincinnati, OH: Clerisy Press, 2008.
General Lewis Inn 301 East Washington Street Lewisburg, West Virginia
Last August the General Lewis Inn was purchased by a young couple who remarked that it felt surreal owning “the iconic center of Lewisburg.” The new owners are quoted in a Charleston Gazette-Mail article as saying, “quirkiness is what makes the Inn the Inn. It’s unique; it’s not like staying in a Days Inn or a Hampton Inn.” Most certainly, that quirkiness involves the spirits of the General Lewis Inn as well. When questioned about the inn’s haunted reputation, one of the innkeepers responded, “I haven’t met the ghost. Having them or not having them is fine with me.”
The inn’s history has many layers which have contributed spirits to the site. The oldest portion of the inn was originally constructed as a residence for James Withow in 1834. It is from sometime after this time that one of the inn’s spirits, a slave, comes. Legend speaks of a slave named Reuben who was sold after showing disrespect to an overseer. As punishment, he was sold to another plantation nearby. His new owner promised to free all his slaves upon his death, so Reuben hatched a plan to murder him and make it look like an accident. He killed his new master, but was caught and returned to his former owners in Lewisburg. They opted to execute him by hanging him in one of the outbuildings.
The old Withow house was remodeled and added to in the 1920s to create the General Lewis Inn. The new addition was constructed with beams from some of the outbuildings that stood behind the Withow house, those beams included the beam from which Reuben was hung. Reuben’s shade is joined by a black-clad woman who occasionally strolls into the restaurant and takes a seat. When she is approached by a server, she vanishes. A gingham-clad little girl who may have died in the 1850s also plays throughout the inn. She enjoys stealing socks from guests among other antics and it is believed she enjoys rocking in the lobby’s rocking chairs.
Strange sounds are sometimes heard emanating from Room 206. Ghastly moans have been heard by guests both in and out of the room while guests in Room 208 have encountered a female entity.
Sources
Gutman, David. “New owners, but same (haunted?) history for the General Lewis Inn.” Sunday Gazette-Mail. 31 August 2014.
Kermeen, Frances. Ghostly Encounters: True Stories of American’s Haunted Inns and Hotels. NYC: Warner Books, 2002.
Richmond, Nancy, Tammy Workman and Misty Murray Walkup. Haunted Lewisburg, West Virginia. Privately Published, 2011.
Following on the heels of my article, “Dining With Spirits,” I’ve decided to revamp my Halloween article from 2010 on haunted inns and hotels. That article was so large I published it in two parts so I’m breaking it into a smaller article with just 13 hostelries, one from each of the states that I cover. See part two of this article in “13 More Southern Rooms with a Boo.”
St. James Hotel 1200 Water Street Selma, Alabama
The Queen City of the Black Belt, Selma, has a remarkable history that is intimately connected with the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement, events that, despite their names, were hardly civil. The city is perched on a bluff overlooking the Alabama River and among the collection of buildings that peer down upon the river is the St. James Hotel. Built some 17 years after the incorporation of the town in 1820, the St. James has served patrons for nearly two centuries. The structure was occupied by Union forces during the Civil War, one reason the hotel was not burned like much of the city. Towards the late nineteenth century, the hotel fell on hard times and served a variety of functions. Keeping up with Selma’s drive to bill itself as a tourist destination, the St. James underwent a $6 million restoration in the 1990s which has provided 42 guest rooms, 4 riverfront suites with balconies overlooking the Alabama, the Troup House Restaurant (which utilizes the hotel’s name during the Civil War) and a number of spiritual guests.
The St. James Hotel, 2010, by Carol M. Highsmith. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
Outlaw Jesse James and his gang were frequent guests in the hotel and a male apparition seen in guest rooms on the second and third floors and in the bar may possibly be Jesse or a member of his gang. The spirit has been accompanied by the distinct jangle of spurs. Investigators in one of the hotel’s ballrooms asked “Is anyone there?” during an EVP session. The voice of a male answered on tape, “Well, that’s a stupid question.” Among other spirits still walking the halls of the St. James are a female and a dog whose barking is heard. So, if you check into the St. James, chances are high that you may encounter something, just don’t ask any stupid questions.
Sources
“Dead walk.” The Selma Times-Journal. 23 October 2005.
Lewis, Herbert J. “Selma.” Encyclopedia of Alabama. 12 August 2008.
“St. James hosts ‘spirit.’” The Selma Times-Journal. 30 October 2003.
Turnage, Sheila. Haunted Inns of the Southeast. Winton-Salem, NC: John F. Blair, 2001.
Omni Shoreham Hotel 2500 Calvert Street, NW Washington, D.C.
Suite 870 of this 1930 hotel has seen three deaths. Juliette Brown, a live-in maid to the hotel’s owner, Henry Doherty and his family, died there unexpectedly as well as Doherty’s wife and daughter some time later. The apartment remained abandoned for some 50 years while guests staying in rooms around the suite would complain of late-night sounds coming from the room. Hotel staff has experienced being locked out of the room and cold breezes in and around the suite which is now known as the “Ghost Suite.”
The Omni-Shoreham Hotel, 2009, by Jurden Matern. Courtesy of Wikipedia.
Writer Eric Nuzum spent a night in the room in 2007 and was awakened in the night by an odd, unexplained creaking that happened five times during the early morning hours. Just before he checked out of the room he discovered that lights he had left on were off. As he stood in the dining room pondering the lights, they turned back on by themselves.
The blog, Phantoms and Monsters published an account in 2012 of a hotel guest who stayed in room 866, just down the hall from the Ghost Suite. Around 2:25 AM he was awakened by moaning that seemingly came from the room next door. This was followed by a woman’s scream that issued from just underneath the guest’s bed. The terrified guest then observed a female form that began to take shape next to the bed. The form was a beautiful, nude female who smiled at the guest before turning and dissipating in a nearby wall.
Crowne Plaza Key West – La Concha 430 Duval Street Key West, Florida
La Concha Hotel, 2012, by Acroterion. Courtesy of Wikipedia.
The theme that runs through the ghost stories of the La Concha Hotel in Key West is falling from a great height, both deliberately and accidentally. This seven-story hotel, opened in 1926, is the tallest building in the city and has been the scene of suicides and a horrible accident. The building’s history has also experienced some great falls as well. Opened to great acclaim, this luxury hotel was visited by many of the notable names of the age: Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, even possibly Al Capone and his cronies, but with the stock market crash in 1929, business seriously dropped. The 1935 Labor Day Hurricane which swept the Keys destroyed the Key West Extension of the East Coast Railway which was one of the island’s major arteries.
Following World War II, the La Concha, much decayed, staggered on through the middle of the twentieth century with only the kitchen and the famous rooftop bar open to the public. The hotel was restored and reopened in 1986 to much fanfare. The La Concha Hotel has recovered from its fall, but, perhaps its spirits have not.
On New Year’s Eve, 1982 or ’83 (sources differ), a young man, unfamiliar with the hotel’s ancient service elevator, fell down the elevator shaft while cleaning up after a party. His spirit seems most active on the fifth floor and obviously, around the elevator. More deliberately, according to Dave Lapham’s Ghosthunting Florida, some 13 people have committed suicide from the rooftop bar of the hotel. Some of their spirits may also remain. One gentleman who took the leap in 2006 reportedly downed a glass of Chardonnay before doing so. Since then, patrons have reported their glasses of Chardonnay were sometimes suddenly jerked from their hands by an unseen force. Hopefully, these fallen spirits have found comfort in the Other Side.
Sources
Jenkins, Greg. Florida’s Ghostly Legends and Haunted Folklore, Volume 1, South and Central Florida. Sarasota, FL: Pineapple Press, 2008.
Rodriguez, Stacy. “La Concha Hotel turns 80.” The Key West Citizen. 20 January 2006.
Jekyll Island Club Resort 371 Riverview Drive Jekyll Island, Georgia
The grand and glorious spirit of the Victorian Era is evident at the Jekyll Island Club Hotel, both in the atmosphere but also in the spiritual energy that persists there among the ancient oaks dripping with Spanish moss. Opened in 1888 by a consortium of America’s elite families, the Jekyll Island Club was an exclusive hideaway for families with names such as Vanderbilt, Carnegie, Morgan, Rockefeller, Macy and Goodyear. In addition to the grand clubhouse, some families built mansion-sized “cottages.” As America entered into war in 1942, the club closed its doors and sat vacant until the State of Georgia, who now owned the island, attempted, unsuccessfully, to open the club as a resort in the early 1970s. The club opened as a private resort in 1985.
Jekyll Island Club, 2012, by Lewis Powell IV. All rights reserved.
Almost from the moment the club opened its doors, tales of ghosts were being told. The president of the club, Lloyd Aspinwall, died during the club’s construction, but some in the crowd spotted him stiffly gliding through the crowd in his usual military manner. He has also been encountered on the Riverfront Veranda of the club. In the annex of the clubhouse, a three-story apartment building called Sans Souci (“without care”), the apparition of Samuel Spenser, former head of the Southern Railroad Company, has been reported, still reading his morning paper. The shade of a former bellhop still knocks on doors requesting laundry.
Sources
de Bellis, Ken. National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form for the Jekyll Island Historic District. Listed 20 January 1972.
Turnage, Sheila. Haunted Inns of the Southeast. Winton-Salem, NC: John F. Blair, 2001.
The Brown Hotel 335 West Broadway Louisville, Kentucky
A sculpted likeness of businessman James Graham Brown stands on the sidewalk just outside the magnificent 16-story hotel he built at the corner of Fourth and Broadway. At his feet sits his little canine friend, Woozem, who, as the story goes, Mr. Brown rescued from a circus that had recently cut the dog’s act. The dog and Mr. Brown lived in the lap of luxury there until the end of their days, perhaps they remain.
Brown Hotel, 2005, by Derek Cashman. Courtesy of Wikipedia.
Opening in 1923, the Brown Hotel provided four-star accommodations to the citizens of Louisville for a number of decades. The famous Hot Brown was developed in the hotel’s restaurant. The hotel operated until 1971, just two years after the death of James Brown, when it closed its doors. The grand dame held offices for the public school system and when the downtown began a resurgence in the late 1980s, the hotel was renovated and restored to its former glory.
The fifteenth floor of the hotel is currently an unimproved storage space for the hotel and seems to be the center of spiritual activity. It’s believed that it was on this floor that Mr. Brown has his suite and perhaps his spirit still roams the floor. The elevator is often called to this floor by an unseen presence. Two employees reported going up to the floor and as they exited they noticed a third set of footprints in the plaster dust on the floor. A guest who had stayed on the fourteenth floor complained of hearing heavy footsteps and furniture moving all night. Perhaps Mr. Brown and Woozem are just making themselves comfortable.
Sources
Brown, Alan. Haunted Kentucky: Ghosts and Strange Phenomena of the Bluegrass State. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole, 2009.
Parker, Robert W. Haunted Louisville: History and Hauntings from The Derby City. Decatur, IL: Whitechapel Press, 2007.
Bourbon Orleans Hotel 717 Orleans Street New Orleans, Louisiana
Located just behind St. Louis Cathedral and running along the partier’s paradise of Bourbon Street is the grand Bourbon Orleans Hotel. On my first visit to New Orleans, my family stayed in this marvelous hotel. While we didn’t encounter anything paranormal, I remember spending a few wonderful hours sitting on the balcony watching the crowd below on Bourbon Street.
This graceful building was first opened as the Orleans Ballroom in 1817. It was host to the famous Quadroon Balls, balls where mixed race women (a “Quadroon” was someone whose ancestry was 1/4 of African descent) were introduced to wealthy white men. While these people could not legally marry, the system of plaçage provided these men with mistresses or concubines whom the men would support and provide for. By 1881, the building, with the adjoining Orleans Theatre, had begun to fall into ruin and the buildings were taken over by the Sisters of the Holy Family for use as an orphanage, school and convent. This convent, according to Sheila Turnage, was the first convent for African-Americans in the nation. After some 83 years as a convent, the building was converted into a hotel to serve the booming New Orleans tourist trade.
During my stay, I recall reading or hearing a story from the renovation of the building (though I cannot source it). A worker in the building hurt himself and uttered a vulgarity when an unseen hand slapped him across the face. Certainly, the spirits of nuns and the children that they tended have lingered in this building. Guests often encounter the spirits of children throughout the building. But also, the spirits from the structure’s wilder days as a ballroom do appear as well. Dancing couples have been seen in the ballroom and frock-coated gentlemen are sometimes reported in the men’s restroom off the lobby (once a room for playing poker).
Sources
“History.” com. Accessed 30 October 2010.
Turnage, Sheila. Haunted Inns of the Southeast. Winton-Salem, NC: John F. Blair, 2001.
Lord Baltimore Hotel 20 West Baltimore Street Baltimore, Maryland
Blogger Lon Strickler of the blog, Phantoms and Monsters, wrote about a visit to the Lord Baltimore Hotel in 1980. Sitting with a friend in the hotel’s lobby, he writes, “I sensed many raw emotions, good and bad…We sat in the lobby over drinks and conversed about our past…but, in the meantime, I was being bombarded by distant sounds of yesteryear. It became so bad that I started to feel claustrophobic and had to make a ‘polite as possible’ excuse to leave.” He has never returned to the hotel.
Authors Melissa Rowell and Amy Lynwander include an account of a hotel employee named Fran in their book, Baltimore Harbor Haunts. In it, Fran describes her personal experiences as well as those of employees working under her. Fran’s account mentions a little girl she encountered on the nineteenth floor. The girl ran past an open doorway and when Fran ran after her, she found the hallway deserted. She turned and saw a couple in formal attire walking towards her. Asking if the little girl belonged to them, she turned towards the direction of the now missing child. Fran turned back to the couple and discovered they had disappeared as well.
Lord Baltimore Hotel in a 1942 postcard.
Evidently, Fran is not the only person to witness the apparition of a little girl as a guest was awakened to find a young girl in her room crying. When approached, the girl vanished. One of Fran’s coworkers encountered three or four spirits standing in the hotel’s darkened ballroom. When she turned on the lights, all figures were gone.
Certainly, the Lord Baltimore Hotel could be haunted. Built in 1928, the hotel was the largest in the state of Maryland. As one of the tallest buildings in the area at the time, the hotel attracted jumpers after great stock market crash of 1929. Another writer and psychic, Paul Schroeder, had some possible interactions with some of these vestiges of suicides past when he stayed at the hotel. Entering a suite on the 18th floor, he encountered “the reek near the window overlooking the corner was of death and suicide.” After deeming the room unsatisfactory, Schroeder was given another suite where he had “persistent and intermittent visions of a young girl emotionally bereft screaming a face of frozen horror.” He was later told, by the staff, that a young woman had committed suicide on that floor which was believed to be behind much of the paranormal activity on that floor of the hotel.
Anchuca 1010 First East Street Vicksburg, Mississippi
One guest at Anchuca remarked to the owners that she couldn’t stay in the house because it was too emotional. Indeed, Anchuca’s history is marked with periods of intense emotional turmoil. The house has seen the deaths of some of its past owners, members of their families and then soldiers who came through the home’s doors wounded and ill during the Civil War. Some of them most surely died here as well. Throw in Joe Davis, the brother of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, and you have quite the contingent of spirits roaming the halls of Anchuca.
A 1936 photo of Anchuca taken for the Historic American Buildings Survey by James Butters. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
With a name derived from a Choctaw word meaning “happy home,” Anchuca has hosted a number of families during its long history. It was originally constructed in 1830 for politician J. W. Mauldin and was sold to merchant Victor Wilson some years later. Wilson added the Greek revival portico to the house and he and his wife lived here through the tumult of the Siege of Vicksburg when the house served as a hospital. After the war, the home was owned by Joseph Davis who died here in 1870. The house was then purchased by the Hennessy family.
Portraits believed to be Mr. and Mrs. Hennessy grace the wall above the sideboard and with their portraits hang a tale. Some years ago, one of Anchuca’s owners discovered water leaking from the dining room ceiling. He rushed upstairs to the bathroom above the dining room to find that water is coming from the bathroom ceiling and then making its way into the dining room below. He called in a plumber to check the hot water heater and air conditioning unit that were in the attic above the bathroom. As he was looking for the leak, the plumber plunged his hand into the insulation and pulled out these two portraits. The plumber did not find any dampness to suggest a leak and the leaking water mysteriously subsided. Perhaps Mr. and Mrs. Hennessy wished to have their portraits restored to a rightful place within their former home?
Besides mysterious water leaks, the spirits of Anchuca also do a bit of redecorating on occasion. Just after purchasing the house, a friend of one of the owners witnessed a spirited display of displeasure. The owner had hung three South American masks on the wall of his quarters. A friend of his watched one afternoon as one of the masks lifted itself off the wall, hung for a moment in midair and then dropped to the floor. The friend fled in fear. The owner picked up the mask and hung it in its spot on the wall and asked the spirits to leave it alone. The masks have not been cast to floor since. The owners, staff and guests have also encountered a female spirit throughout the house.
Sources
Brown, Alan. Haunted Vicksburg. Charleston, SC: History Press, 2010.
Miller, Mary Warren. National Register of Historic Places nomination form for Anchuca. 25 February 1981.
Sillery, Barbara. The Haunting of Mississippi. Gretna, LA: Pelican, 2011.
Turnage, Sheila. Haunted Inns of the Southeast. Winton-Salem, NC: John F. Blair, 2001.
Grand Old Lady Inn (formerly Balsam Mountain Inn) 68 Seven Springs Drive Balsam, North Carolina
Balsam Mountain Inn, 2012, by Lewis Powell IV. All rights reserved.
Passengers departing from their trains in Balsam, North Carolina just after the turn of the century were met with an inviting and palatial hotel overlooking the station. They would enjoy the cool mountain air from the double porch with views of the town below. Though the train no longer brings them, visitors today can enjoy the same air and views and, if they stay in room 205, perhaps a nice back rub from a spirit. One guest staying in this room with her husband had a bad back and was awaken by a back rub from him, until she realized he was sound to sleep next to her. The unidentified ghost on the second floor of this hotel which opened in 1908 also rattles doorknobs of rooms on that floor.
Sources
Bordsen, John. “Room with a Boo.” The Charlotte Observer. 25 October 2009.
Kermeen, Frances. Ghostly Encounters: True Stories of American’s Haunted Inns and Hotels. NYC: Warner Books, 2002.
Turnage, Sheila. Haunted Inns of the Southeast. Winton-Salem, NC: John F. Blair, 2001.
20 South Battery (formerly Battery Carriage House Inn) 20 South Battery Charleston, South Carolina
Sign for the Battery Carriage House Inn, 2011, by Lewis Powell, IV. All rights reserved.
Located at the Southern tip of the city of Charleston overlooking the meeting point of the Cooper, Stono, Wando and the Ashley Rivers is The Battery, one of Charleston’s “best” neighborhoods. It was at The Battery where many of the city’s and state’s best families built grand homes. From the rooftops of these grand homes and White Point Gardens fronting Charleston Harbor that citizens, including the diarist Mary Chestnut watched as the Confederacy laid siege to Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. Number 20 South Battery is home to the Battery Carriage House Inn, possibly one of the more spiritually active locations in the city.
A few of the Battery Carriage House Inn’s eleven sumptuous guest rooms are apparently haunted. A couple staying in room 3 were awakened by noise from a cellphone; while this may be quite common, phones are not supposed to make noise when powered off as this phone was. But this activity seems minor compared to the reports from rooms 8 and 10. Guests staying in Room 8 have encountered the apparition of a man’s torso. There is no head or limbs, just a torso dressed in a few layers of clothing. One guest sensed that this figure was quite negative. The spirit in Room 10 is much more pleasant and even described as a gentleman. The innkeepers believe this may be the spirit of the son of a former owner who committed suicide.
Sources
“Ghost Sightings.” com. Accessed 31 October 2010.
Kermeen, Frances. Ghostly Encounters: True Stories of American’s Haunted Inns and Hotels. NYC: Warner Books, 2002.
Spar, Mindy. “Local haunts among treats for Halloween.” The Post and Courier. 26 Otcober 2002.
Turnage, Sheila. Haunted Inns of the Southeast. Winton-Salem, NC: John F. Blair, 2001.
The Union Station Nashville Yards 1001 Broadway Nashville, Tennessee
Ghosts are associated with certain types of stone, primarily granite and limestone, water and also iron. The iron rails of railroads that have stretched around the globe have given rise to many ghostly legends associated with railroads. Nashville’s Union Station, first opened in 1900, while no longer hosting the iron rails or even the old train shed, still hosts a few ghosts associated with the railroad. Legend has it that on nights of the full moon, a ghostly train still pulls into the station, while that legend may be a bit ridiculous, staff and guests of the hotel have reported hearing the scream of a steam whistle at times; perhaps a residual noise.
Union Station Hotel, 2008, by The Peep Holes. Courtesy of Wikipedia.
During World War II, Union Station was the point of departure for tens of thousands of troops departing for battlefronts around the world. Two spirits remain from this period. One is the revenant of a young soldier who stands near the tracks seemingly waiting for something. The other is the spirit of a young woman who legend states was killed when she fell onto the tracks in front of a train. With the demolition of the train shed, it is unknown if these spirits are still active.
In the second half of the twentieth century, the grand station saw fewer and fewer passengers as the automobile became the dominant mode of transportation in America. The last train departed the station in 1978 and the station closed its door only to be reopened as a luxury hotel some years later. A more recent legend tells of a middle-aged couple that would meet at the hotel on a weekend once a month. By all accounts, the man appeared to be married, but perhaps not the woman. The lovers would spend the entire weekend in their room but one month, the man did not show up. The woman, in distress, spent the weekend in her room and was later discovered dead with a revolver at her feet. Her room, 711, has seen a good deal of activity, with one guest reporting her bag, which she had unpacked, had been repacked upon while she had stepped into the bathroom. Activity seems to revolve around this room with the spirit of young woman being encountered in the hall outside this room and in surrounding rooms as well.
Sources
Harris, Frankie and Kim Meredith. Haunted Nashville. Atglen, PA: Schiffer, 2009.
Kermeen, Frances. Ghostly Encounters: True Stories of American’s Haunted Inns and Hotels. NYC: Warner Books, 2002.
Traylor, Ken and Delas M. House, Jr. Nashville Ghosts and Legends. Charleston, SC: History Press, 2007.
Turnage, Sheila. Haunted Inns of the Southeast. Winton-Salem, NC: John F. Blair, 2001.
The Martha Washington Inn & Spa 150 West Main Street Abingdon, Virginia
War changes many things and the Civil War certainly changed Martha Washington College. The young girls that had studied and gossiped in the college’s rooms became nurses for the wounded young soldiers brought from battlefields far and near and some of those rooms housed able young men who were training on the grounds. Like so many buildings that served as hospitals during the Civil War, the pain and death left its mark upon the college. A number of soldiers still are rumored to walk the halls and occasionally shock guests and staff alike. In addition a ghostly horse, still looking for its long-dead master, still walks the grounds outside.
Martha Washington Inn, 2006, by RebalAt. Courtesy of Wikipedia.
Built as a private residence, General Francis Preston’s 1832 home became an upscale women’s college in 1858. The Great Depression’s punch to the nation led to the school’s closure in 1932 and “The Martha” was later reopened as an inn. The inn is now a part of The Camberley Collection, a group of fine, historic properties.
Sources
Hauck, Dennis William. Haunted Places: The National Directory. NYC: Penguin, 2002.
“History.” The Martha Washington Hotel and Spa. Accessed 10 March 2011.
Kermeen, Frances. Ghostly Encounters: True Stories of America’s Haunted Inns and Hotels. NYC: Warner Books, 2002.
Lee, Marguerite DuPont. Virginia Ghosts, Revised Edition. Berryville, VA: Virginia Book Company, 1966.
Rosenberg, Madelyn. “History and Legend Abound at Abingdon’s Martha Washington Inn.” The Roanoke Times. 31 July 1999.
Taylor, L. B., Jr. The Ghosts of Virginia. Progress Printing, 1993.
Turnage, Sheila. Haunted Inns of the Southeast. Winston-Salem, NC: John F. Blair, 2001.
Varhola, Michael J. Ghosthunting Virginia. Cincinnati, OH, Clerisy Press, 2008.
Lowe Hotel 401 Main Street Point Pleasant, West Virginia
N.B. This article was originally published September 24, 2013, as a newsworthy haunt.
Paranormal events rarely resonate so much within a community or even on a national scale as the sightings of the Mothman have. A series of sightings of this creature occurred between November of 1966 and December of 1967; events that inspired a handful of books, a movie and, for over a decade, a festival in Point Pleasant.
Postcard of the Lowe Hotel circa 1930-45. Courtesy of the Boston Public Library.
The annual festival has certainly boosted “paranormal tourism” in Point Pleasant and one of the more popular paranormal spots in the city is the Lowe Hotel. During the festival tours will be lead through this haunted, turn of the 20th century hotel. According to an article from the Point Pleasant Register, the current owners of the hotel were initially bothered by the idea that their hotel might be haunted, though as attitudes towards the paranormal have changed, the haunting has become an attraction to tourists.
Theresa Racer, of the blog, Theresa’s Haunted History of the Tri-State, presents the best history of the hotel to be found online. The hotel was opened as the Hotel Spencer in the nascent years of the 20th century. The four-story hotel was popular with riverboat traffic operating on the Kanawha and Ohio Rivers which meet at Point Pleasant. The hotel was purchased by Homer Lowe in 1929 who renamed it the Lowe Hotel. It operated until the late 1980s when the owner put it up for sale. The current owners purchased the hotel in 1990.
According to Racer, there is a large contingent of spirits within the hotel. The spirit of a beautiful, but disheveled woman has been reported on the mezzanine between the first and second floors. This section houses the dining room and it is here that the spirit is seen dancing to music that only she can hear. On the second floor, a tyke on a tricycle has been seen prowling the halls. Sometimes the sound of a little girl’s laughter will accompany the sound of a squeaky tricycle.
The third floor seems to be the most active with a few of the rooms there being haunted. One of the most remarkable stories involves the suite at 316. A female staying in this suite entered the room one evening to find a man standing by the window looking out. She asked him who he was and he replied that he was Captain Jim and he was waiting on a boat. After noticing the man did not have legs, the woman fled.
Two chairs on the fourth floor seem to have activity surrounding them. The recent article mentions a wheelchair on that apparently moved on its own volition. The chair vanished for about three years only to reappear out of the blue. Racer reports that an old rocking chair in a storage room on that floor is supposed to rock on its own.
We’ve all seen them and we’ve probably posted links to them on Facebook. They come with a seemingly infinite variety of name, superlative and number combinations: “Top 10 Scariest Haunted Places,” “6 Most Terrifying Places to Eat Dinner,” “50 Academically Prestigious Colleges and Universities with Ghosts,” “23 Super-Duper Awesome Most Haunted Prisons.” During Halloween especially, these “articles” sprout like veritable weeds along the sides of the information superhighway.
Usually, these articles simply rehash the same stories about the same locations and rarely do they ever provide much useful information. The author usually puts in just a modicum of research and produces something that is simply entertaining without providing much depth. It’s like a picture of Kim Kardashian that gets retweeted a million times, it provides nothing useful yet it gets passed around ad nauseum to the enlightenment of no one.
This is my attempt at one-upping these “articles.” There are countless haunted locations that are rarely covered, yet, in my humble opinion, are fascinating and worthy of a bit more attention.
University of Montevallo Montevallo, Alabama
My friend, Jenna, had some roommate issues her freshman year at this small Alabama liberal arts college. At night in her dorm room in Old Main Residence Hall Jenna and her living roommate would hear whispering and footsteps both in her room and outside her door. These are not uncommon issues for college freshmen, though Jenna’s problem roommate was a former student who died in a fire in 1908. When the school operated as a women’s college in the early 20th century, a student, Condie Cunningham, caught her nightgown on fire while trying to heat fudge in a chafing dish. She went screaming down the hall and collapsed. She died a few days later in the hospital.
Main Residence Hall, 1993. Photo by Jet Lowe for the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS). Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
Set in the small, central Alabama town of Montevallo, the university has a wide-ranging roster of revenants, one of which even plays an annual part in one of the university’s most celebrated events: College Night. This annual event pits the students against each other producing competing musicals. Created in 1923, this event is adjudicated from the other side by the spirit of the competition’s founder, Dr. Walter Trumbauer, known affectionately as “Trummy.” According to Jenna, during dress rehearsals and performances, Trummy “gets crazy in Palmer.” Pipes are known to shake backstage and his spirit is seen in and around Palmer Hall where the competition is held. Trummy swings the battens of the curtains onstage during performances of the show that gets his approval. Usually, that show will win.
Among the many other spirits on this campus are Confederate soldiers seen in and around Reynolds Hall. The oldest building on campus, Reynolds was used as a makeshift hospital during the Civil War. Under the watch of Captain Henry Clay Reynolds, the wounded and sick soldiers were abandoned when Reynolds and his men left to defend the nearby Briarfield Iron Works. When he returned, he discovered the sick and wounded had been massacred by Union troops.
Reynolds Hall, 2014, by Lewis Powell, IV. All rights reserved.
Now home to the university’s Department of Theatre, Reynolds Hall is still plagued by spirits from that horrible, war-time event. Another student, Mia, told me she had experiences while working alone in an office on the second floor of the building. The room suddenly grew cold and the blinds started shaking violently. She fled. A visiting artist was walking backstage when he encountered a man in a Confederate uniform. He was later informed that there was no period production going on or re-enactors in the building.
By no means are these the only or most active spirits on campus, many buildings are haunted. These include the mid-19th century King House which may be one of the most active buildings on campus, Hanson Hall with its ghostly housemother and Napier Hall with its marble rolling ghost.
Sources
Brown, Alan. Haunted Birmingham. Charleston, SC: History Press, 2009.
Interview with Jenna M., Cherokee, North Carolina, June 2012.
Interview with Mia S., Cherokee, North Carolina, June 2012.
Halcyon House 3400 Prospect Street Georgetown, District of Columbia
Just as the recent real estate bubble touched properties throughout the country, this very large, imposing haunted house was also affected. The house was put up for sale for around $30 million in 2008, just as the bubble began to burst, and sold for less than half of that in 2011. Of course, such an eccentric house with the dramatic history that Halcyon House has would probably have trouble selling in good times.
This 30,500 square foot manse comes complete with a “whimsical” library, a large studio space, a ballroom, a chapel, six apartments, a very large garage and a panoply of ghosts. A sealed tunnel in the basement of the house is supposed to have been used as part of the Underground Railroad. In the early 20th century, a carpenter was asked to seal the tunnel and as he did he heard cries and mournful sobs issuing from it. Over the years, various owners have reported apparitions in the house as well as phantom knocking. In one particular bedroom, several people have reported being levitated by an unknown force.
Halcyon House, 1999. Photo by Jack E. Boucher for the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS). Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
The home’s history is just as dramatic as the hauntings. It was built in the late 18th century by Benjamin Stoddert, the first Secretary of the Navy, and was later owned by the eccentric Albert Adsit Clemons, who claimed to be a nephew of Mark Twain. Clemons extensively remodeled the house and refused to install electricity. Since Clemons death, the house was owned briefly by Georgetown University and recently by a sculptor who, with his wife, lovingly restored the home. During their residence, they claimed to have had no odd experiences within the home’s most historic walls.
Sources
Alexander, John. Ghosts, Washington Revisited. Atglen, PA: Schiffer Publishing, 1998.
Cavanaugh, Stephanie. “Centuries of Drama at Halcyon House.” The Washington Post. 30 August 2008.
Krepp, Tim. Ghosts of Georgetown. Charleston, SC: History Press, 2013.
Taylor, Nancy C. National Register of Historic Places nomination form for Halcyon House. 3 November 1970.
Island Hotel 373 2nd Street Cedar Key, Florida
Most people head to Cedar Key to avoid the crowds, though visitors to the Island Hotel may encounter a crowd of spirits. According to a number of sources including the hotel’s website, thirteen—a very appropriate number—spirits walk the halls of this hotel.
Island Hotel, 2007. Photo by Ebyabe, courtesy of Wikipedia.
The building was built as a general store in 1860, the eve of the Civil War. In 1862, Cedar Key, at that time a small railroad town, became the first town in Florida to fall under Federal occupation. Some buildings were burned, but the general store was spared and quite possibly used as a barracks and warehouse for the occupying troops. After the war, the building returned to its commercial use as a general store and operated successfully until the collapse of the cedar industry and business began to slow. In 1915, the store was purchased by Simon Feinberg who converted the building into a hotel. It has served as a hotel, under a variety of owners, for the last hundred years.
According to a recent article in the Ocala Star-Banner, the spirit of a Confederate soldier has been quite active recently. Guests have spotted him standing guard throughout the upstairs portion of the hotel. Joining the soldier is a small African-American boy, possibly the spirit of a slave who legend holds drowned in a cistern on the property. Former owners, including Simon Feinberg and Bessie Gibbs still patrol the hotel checking up on guests to see that they are being taken care of.
Sources
Allen, Rick. “Cedar Key offers island life, complete with ghosts and clams.” Ocala Star-Banner. 7 August 2014.
Lewis, Chad and Terry Fisk. The Florida Road Guide to Haunted Locations. Eau Claire, WI: Unexplained Research Publishing, 2010.
Nolan, David and Micahel Zimny. National Register of Historic Places Nomination form for the Island Hotel. 1 October 1984.
Magnolia Springs State Park 1053 Magnolia Springs Road Millen, Georgia
Of the many transgressions committed by both sides during the American Civil War, the neglect and contempt visited upon the prisoners of war looms large. Large-scale prisons were constructed and packed with prisoners who were underfed and sometimes virtually unclothed often under the open sky. Pestilence and lawlessness prevailed among the tightly packed men with death swooping among them picking off victims like a hawk.
Contemporary illustration of Camp Lawton by Robert Sneden, a Union soldier who was incarcerated here. Courtesy of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
In this sordid history, Andersonville Prison in West Central Georgia is the most tragic tale and the prison’s site has been spiritually scarred with many spirits still roaming the piney landscape. While it was possibly the worst of these horrendous prisons, Andersonville is not the only one to mar the Southern landscape. Camp Lawton, near the eastern Georgia town of Millen, was one of the largest prison camps erected by the Confederates. Encompassing some 42 acres, the camp was constructed in 1864 and used for only three months.
It was built to house 40,000 prisoners but in its short lifespan only held about 10,000 prisoners in conditions that were far better than Andersonville. However, there were about 500 deaths in the camp during its service. When Sherman found the camp during his march from Atlanta to Savannah in 1864, he burned it to the ground along with Millen. The site of the camp is now part of Magnolia Springs State Park.
Employees have reported spirits in the park, particularly around one of the cabins occupied by park staff. One manager reported being awakened by a uniformed apparition standing at the end of his bed. Another staff member approached the cabin and saw a face peering out one of the windows at him when he knew the house was empty. At night, staff members have reported that they get the feeling of being followed or watched.
Sources
Wilkinson, Chris. “Civil War Prisons.” New Georgia Encyclopedia. 9 September 2014.
Miles, Jim. Civil War Ghosts of Central Georgia and Savannah. Charleston, SC: History Press, 2013.
Hayswood Hospital West Fourth Street at Market Street Maysville, Kentucky
The large Neo-Classical building crowns a hill above West Fourth Street and turns its face towards the majestic Ohio River beyond the city’s downtown. It’s obvious that the building has been long abandoned. Windows stand open like empty eye sockets while other closed windows hold broken panes that stare jaggedly towards the river. Along the first floor, plywood covers the windows and doors, a thin barrier to intruders, both human and natural.
Hayswood Hospital has endured a long jag of bad luck since its closure in 1983. Just last year, the building was almost sold to collect on a nearly $6,000 unpaid tax bill, but at the last minute, the sale was withdrawn. Nearly a decade after its closure, the building was purchased with the intent of renovating it into apartments, though that has fallen through. In 1999, a condemnation order was placed on the structure requiring the owner to either demolish or renovate the building, but nothing has come of that. The order still stands like a death sentence over a weary prisoner.
Not only is the crumbling building a blight on the city’s face, but asbestos and lead paint within the building are a danger to the health of the community. The blight also attracts vandals and thieves including the two men who were arrested in the building as they tried to steal copper wiring. In addition to the health dangers, the building’s falling ceilings and weak floors are a physical danger to the curious who decide to investigate the building.
With the constant stream of legends flowing forth from abandoned (and even not so abandoned) medical facilities, it’s no surprise to hear that Hayswood has many of its own stories. Nothing about the reports of apparitions and voices provided in the article from the blog Most Haunted Places in America is particularly unusual. The blog reports apparitions throughout the building including that of a woman holding a baby in the old maternity ward.
A video posted on YouTube on Halloween 2006 purportedly shows a spirit in the building. The very grainy video taken of the exterior of the building at night shows a white figure appearing in one of the windows. The videographer focuses in on the figure and it appears to take on the features of a very large face then quickly vanishes. Personally, something doesn’t really look right about the video, but I cannot positively describe it as fake.
The grand hospital was constructed in 1915 and served the community well. The 87 bed hospital was bought by Hospital Corporation of America (HCA) in 1981 and it was closed when a new facility was opened nearby. The building remains in its uneasy slumber awaiting its fate and comforted only by the occasional spirit from its past.
The Hayswood Hospital building is closed to visitors, trespassers will be prosecuted.
Sources
Barker, Danetta. “Out of the hospital and into custody: Police make arrests at Hayswood.” The Ledger Independent. 22 September 2005.
“The Haunted Hayswood Hospital.” Most Haunted Places in America. 18 June 2012.
Maynard, Misty. “Video of ‘ghost’ at Hayswood Hospital getting planty of attention.” The Ledger Independent. 22 October 2007.
Toncray, Marla. “For Sale: Hayswood Hospital.” The Ledger Independent. 22 March 2013.
Toncray, Marla. “Hayswood sale plan halted.” The Ledger Independent. 26 April 2013.
Juju Road Off of Swan Lake Road Bossier City, Louisiana
Depending on the version of the legend, his crime ranged from simply looking at a white woman to the murder of two children who were simply fishing. Regardless, legend holds that he took his final breath somewhere along the road that still bears his name and possibly his lingering spirit. His name is said to be “Juju” or more properly “Juju Montgomery” in various versions of the legend, regardless, his name has been applied to this lonely country road outside Bossier City.
Like the countless cry baby bridges and haunted lovers lanes, the old dirt road is a popular hangout for local residents looking for a scare. Online accounts of the haunting describe people encountering the figure of an African-American man standing in the road or hanging from one of the trees with a rope around his neck.
Local paranormal enthusiasts, Marie Edgerly, her husband and son have formed a group called Louisiana Paranormal Addicts which explored Juju Road during the day. While they describe the location as “eerie,” they did not have any direct experiences with the spirit. Arriving home after their investigation, however, they were startled to discover a shadowy human form in one of their photographs from this location. Is it Juju?
Sources
Edgerly, Marie. “Juju Road.” Louisiana Paranormal Addicts. 31 October 2014.
Patton, Devon. “A Bossier Parish Ghost Story.” 29 April 2014.
Edgar Allen Poe House & Museum 203 Amity Street Baltimore, Maryland
Of course the home to Baltimore’s favorite son of creepiness is haunted! Why would anyone think otherwise? When Vincent Price, one of the modern masters of creepiness, visited this house he said, “This house gives me the creeps.”
Edgar Allen Poe was born in Boston and lived intermittently in a number of cities including Baltimore where he would ultimately die in 1849. There are a few buildings where he lived that remain, including this small, unassuming house in Baltimore where Poe lived for about two years. The house had been rented by Poe’s aunt, Maria Clemm, in the spring of 1832 and was occupied by her daughter, Virginia, and his grandmother. Poe probably moved in the following year and he used the garret room at the top of the house for his writing. He would remain in these cramped quarters until 1835.
Edgar Allan Poe House, 2007. Photo by Midnightdreary, courtesy of Wikipedia.
Over the years that the house has operated as a museum, some visitors have had unusual experiences, among them the feeling of being tapped on the shoulder by an unseen entity. In the mid-1980s, an actress preparing for a performance in the house had a scary encounter. As she was dressing, she noticed that the window sash was moving in the frame, then was shocked when the sash flew out of the frame and landed at her feet. A 2012 investigation by the Pennsylvania-based Ghost Detectives did turn up some odd voices on the team’s voice recorders.
Sources
Hayes, Anthony C. “Ghost Detectives investigate ghostly voices inside the Edgar Allan Poe House.” Baltimore Post-Examiner. 16 July 2012.
Hayes, Anthony C. “Is the Edgar Allan Poe House haunted?” Baltimore Post-Examiner. 11 May 2012.
Hutchisson, James M. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2005.
Mendinghall, Joseph S. National Register of Historic Places nomination form for the Edgar Allan Poe House. 11 November 1971.
Okonowicz, Ed. Baltimore Ghosts: History, Mystery, Legends and Lore. Elkton, MD: Myst and Lace Publishers, 2006.
Kuhn Memorial Hospital 1422 Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard Vicksburg, Mississippi
A Haunted Southern Book of Days–6 February
This article is a part of an occasional blog series highlighting Southern hauntings or high strangeness associated with specific days. For a complete listing, see “A Haunted Southern Book of Days.”
In a recent series on haunted Mississippi for Jackson, Mississippi’s The Clarion-Ledger, reporter Therese Apel remarks that she heard “completely improbable stories from completely sane people.” While researching for the series, Apel explored the deteriorating carcass of Kuhn Memorial State Hospital and had an improbable experience of her own. On the dusty top of an autopsy table a finger—possibly spectral—had spelled out “pleh,” the word “help” backwards.
The oldest part of this hospital was built in 1832 following an epidemic of smallpox that swept the area. In 1871, the state took over operations of the hospital rendering it a charity hospital for all those in need. During an outbreak of yellow fever in 1878, the dreaded mosquito-borne virus claimed the lives of some sixteen doctors and six Sisters of Mercy working here.
A modern wing was added to the building in 1959. The hospital faithfully served the citizens of Vicksburg and the surrounding area until the state cut funding and the hospital closed in 1989. The building has deteriorated under absentee owners for the past twenty-five years, visited only by urban explorers, filmmakers and ghost hunters. It was during a film shoot here that filmmakers may have unwittingly caught a voice exclaiming “oh my God,” upon the appearance of an evil clown, the film’s protagonist.
Further paranormal investigations of the facility have uncovered a plethora of voices in this most haunted of hospitals.
Sources
Apel, Therese. “Creepy phenomena recorded at abandoned hospital.” The Clarion-Ledger. 30 October 2014.
Apel, Therese. “Haunted Mississippi: Where are the most spiritually active places in the state?” The Clarion-Ledger. 22 September 2014.
Associated Press. “Owner of former hospital given deadline.” Mississippi Business Journal. 29 September 2013.
Russell, Randy. The Ghost Will See You Now: Haunted Hospitals of the South. Winston-Salem, NC: John F. Blair, 2014.
Stagville State Historic Site 5828 Old Oxford Road Durham, North Carolina
While psychic and author Kala Ambrose was visiting Stagville as research for her book, Ghosthunting North Carolina, she took a moment, sat quietly and opened herself up in hopes of communicating with a spirit or two. Instead, she found herself thronged by them. She described it in her book, “the crowd of people was so large that I couldn’t see all of their faces. Instead, I felt the pressure of all of their bodies coming closer to me wanting to talk.”
Bennehan House at Stagville, 2008. Photo by Cotinis, courtesy of Wikipedia.
One of the largest plantations in the South at its height, ghost stories have been a mainstay of Stagville Plantation for many years. Neighbors have reported strange lights on the property as well as screams in the night. The apparitions of an African-American girl and a group of African-American men have been reported near the Great Barn. The fire department has been summoned several times by reports of the slave quarters being ablaze. Upon arrival, there is no evidence of fire. Staff working in the remaining buildings have found that doors open and close and lock and unlock on their own. The site has been investigated by a number of groups who have captured a number of EVPs there.
The property itself has been the scene of much history. There is evidence of inhabitation by Native Americans and their possible burial on the site. Ambrose states that the remains of settlers have been found bearing evidence of attack from Native Americans. In the mid-19th century, this land was part of the huge holdings of the Bennehan and Cameron families and consisted of some 30,000 acres that were worked by some 900 slaves. Stagville State Historic Site preserves about 71 acres of the original plantation along with a number of remaining buildings and ruins.
Sources
Ambrose, Kala. Ghosthunting North Carolina. Cincinnati, OH: Clerisy Press, 2011.
Haunted North Carolina. “Historic Stagville.” Accessed 12 December 2014.
McDonald, Glenn. “Go ghost hunting with Haunted NC.” Indy Week. 22 October 2014.
Stagville. Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Accessed 12 December 2014.
Longstreet Theatre Campus of the University of South Carolina Columbia, South Carolina
The building housing the Longstreet Theatre at the University of South Carolina has seen a good deal of joy and a great deal of sorrow. According to the 1941 WPA guide to the state, the 1855 building has twice been pressed into service as a hospital: between 1862 and 1865 during the Civil War and then again in 1918 during the horrible influenza epidemic that swept the world. Legend holds that the room that is used as the theatre’s green room, where actors relax when they’re not onstage, was utilized as the hospital morgue during the Civil War.
To “ward off the Civil War ghosts,” according to a 2011 article from the student newspaper, The Daily Gamecock, students now employ a “buddy system” in the building. This may very well be a good idea as it seems that many of the reports of activity seem to stem from people who find themselves alone in the building. A secretary had her glasses “slapped off” her face as she walked through the building late one afternoon. “There was no one in the building but me, but I felt an impact on my face and my glasses flew off,” she told a reporter later.
A student was quoted as having a feeling of being watched while she was in the green room and then having the sensation of having “a wall of cold air being pushed across and around her.” Other students tend to get a very creepy feeling or even feel vibrations within the ancient structure. However, most students and professors take the spirits in stride. Alan Brown quotes a theatre professor, “I love to tease students and tell them the ghosts are real friendly unless you’re a Yankee.”
Sources
Brown, Alan. Haunted South Carolina. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2010.
Carmichael, Sherman. Eerie South Carolina. Charleston, SC: History Press, 2013.
Ellis, Sarah. “Ghost tours highlight USC’s haunted history.” The Daily Gamecock. 28 October 2011.
Kearns, Taylor. “The phantom of Longstreet Theatre?” Carolina Reporter & News. No date.
Mitchell, Wes. “Ghosts and legends plentiful on USC campus.” Carolina Reporter & News. No date.
Steimle, Douglas. “The Ghosts of Longstreet Theatre.” com. 31 October 2011.
Workers of the Writers’ Program of the WPA. South Carolina: A Guide to the Palmetto State. NYC: Oxford University Press, 1941.
Baker-Peters Jazz Club 9000 Kingston Pike Knoxville, Tennessee
It’s not hard to imagine that soldiers throughout the Civil War began to quickly feel their own mortality. As they lay wounded in the homes and taverns, churches and barns that had been hastily converted into hospitals throughout the nation, many scratched their names into adjacent plaster walls and floorboards, perhaps in hopes of gaining some type of immortality. With so much of this graffiti obliterated by the buildings caretakers and time, these exercises into immortality have become increasingly rare, despite their importance to historians and the residents of the modern age.
Graffiti House, 2013. Photo by Cecouchman, courtesy of Wikipedia.
Built near a small railroad stop on the Orange & Alexandria Railroad, Graffiti House was built by James Barbour in 1858 as a residence and possible commercial building. As battles raged around Virginia, Mr. Barbour’s building was converted into a hospital and the patients began to scrawl on the walls of the structure. In June of 1863, the war that had been trickling into the community until then arrived as a deluge when Brandy Station was the scene of the largest cavalry battle fought on American soil.
The graffiti was only rediscovered in the early 1990s and the building was later purchased by the Brandy Station Foundation, an organization devoted to preserving the local battlefield and associated sites. But it’s not just graffiti that remains in the building, spirits are still active as well. A handful of paranormal investigation organizations have investigated Graffiti House and captured evidence.
A reporter from The Free Lance-Star in nearby Fredericksburg in 2007 observed a paranormal investigation by the Virginia Paranormal Institute. About an hour into the investigation he was apparently touched by something while an investigator had something grab her hand. During a more recent investigation by Transcend Paranormal, video of an anomalous light in an empty room was captured. The video is available on YouTube.
Sources
Johnston, Donnie. “What was that touching my back?” The Free Lance-Star. 23 November 2007.
Neville, Ashley and John S. Salmon. National Register of Historic Places Nomination form for Graffiti House. June 2005.
Alumni Hall Campus of McDaniel College Westminster
As can be expected, McDaniel College, a small four-year, private liberal arts college has a number of spirits. Founded in 1867—in the turbulent years following the Civil War—the school was founded as Western Maryland College. It was renamed after a benefactor in 2002 to avoid confusion over the school’s affiliations and geography. The name change, however, had no effect over the campus’ lingering spirits.
The massive Renaissance Revival-styled Alumni Hall has dominated the campus since its construction just before the turn of the 20th century. Originally it was constructed to hold commencement exercises, serve as a meeting hall and house religious services for this Methodist Church affiliated school (the school is no longer affiliated with the church). Since the creation of the school’s theatre department, the building has come to house classes, workshops and serves as the main performance space.
Alumni Hall, on the right, in 2006, by Alan Levine. Courtesy of Wikipedia.
A McDaniel student began documenting the school’s spirits in a blog in 2010. While incomplete, the blog does provide a student’s view into the school’s myriad legends. The student recounts three spirits that have been identified in Alumni Hall: Harvey, Dorothy (or Dorthy) and Mr. Steve. It appears that two legends explain Harvey’s presence in the building. One explains that Harvey was a student torn between his love of theatre and his parents’ expectation that he become a Methodist minister. Unable to bear his life without theatre, Harvey killed himself by throwing himself from the auditorium’s balcony just before graduation. The second story involves Harvey becoming inebriated at a college party and falling out of one of the building’s windows. Apparently, it is considered a sign of luck when this former student’s shade is sometimes seen backstage before productions. It is Harvey who is also blamed when things in the building malfunction.
The other two ghosts encountered within this building are Dorothy and Mr. Steve. Dorothy, who is honored by having her portrait in the theatre’s Green Room, is believed to be the source of a woman’s footsteps heard in the hallway just outside that room. When a production is bad she is also said to cry blood, most certainly a ridiculous notion. Mr. Steve, said to be the spirit of a former costume shop foreman, still zealously watches over his former shop. He is said to occasionally steal scissors and measuring tapes while also expressing anger when students make a mess in “his” shop.
McDaniel College. “History.” Accessed 18 March 2013.
J. Richard and James F. Ridenour. National Register of Historic Places nomination form for Western Maryland College Historic District. 9 May 1975.
Avalon Theatre 40 East Dover Street Easton
The ghost that haunts the Avalon Theatre demonstrates a fascination with technology. The theatre’s elevator may be operated by an unseen force while the stage’s fire curtain was once dropped without anyone touching it. The theatre opened in 1921 and wowed the public so that one critic described the theatre as the “Showplace of the Eastern Shore.” Acquired by the Schine Theatre Chain in 1934, the theatre was entirely renovated in the Art Deco style. It remained open as a cinema until 1985 when it closed. After extensive restoration, the theatre reopened in 1989 as a performing arts center for the Eastern Shore region.
Baltimore Theatre Project 45 West Preston Street Baltimore
A mysterious man likes to tickle the ivories in a practice room of the Baltimore Theatre Project. He’s known to enter a room, take a seat and play the most wonderful music. Startled listeners have often remarked on how well he plays. Then he’ll disappear.
The building now occupied by the Baltimore Theatre Project does have quite a history. It was originally constructed in 1887 for a male fraternal order, the Improved Order of Heptasophs, and served as Heptasoph Hall until the organization moved to a new structure in 1924. The building’s new owners transformed it into a dance hall, Farson’s Dance Academy and it later became a recreation building and school for the Greek Orthodox church across the street. Its first theatrical use came in 1963 when it served as a performance space for CENTERSTAGE. The founder of Baltimore Theatre Project acquired the building in 1971 and it has served as their home ever since.
Okonowicz, Ed. The Big Book of Maryland Ghost Stories. Atglen, PA: Stackpole, 2010.
Old Opera House—Odd Fellows’ Hall 140 East Main Street Westminster
Ghost stories rarely appear in official government records, though the story from the old Westminster Opera House does. The ghost part of the story does not appear in the Maryland Inventory of Historic Properties but the story of the murder that produced the ghost does appear. So far, it doesn’t appear that anyone has looked for documentation to back up the story and even the person compiling the history of the structure for the inventory seems a bit wary of it, noting that the story only came from the owner of the building.
The ghost story takes us back to the ill-tempered days of Reconstruction (perhaps actually during the Civil War, according to some sources). Maryland, though a slave-owning state, never seceded from the Union and many of its citizens sympathized with their more Southern brothers. During this tumultuous period an Alabama comedian named Marshall Buell took the stage of the opera house to perform. Initially, his politically-charged humor entertained the audience, though they became quite restless as his feckless impersonations of Ulysses Grant and other Union officials crossed the line into insults.
As stones and other projectiles began to be hurled from the enraged audience, Buell hurried and finished his act. At the theatre manager’s suggestion he decided to leave town as quickly as possible, though he would wait in the stable until the opera house cleared to avoid unfriendly encounters in the street. This was Mr. Buell’s last decision. His body, bloodied and bruised, was found in the stable the following morning. Depending on the version of the story, his head is either missing or his throat is cut, ear to ear. In the legends where he was decapitated, his head sometimes appears—almost in the manner of the French Revolution—on a post outside of the theatre, a warning to other actors that beloved leaders should not be mocked.
In the days following the comedian’s untimely demise, he was seen on the streets near the opera house. In one description he was waving and gesticulating as if he was still performing his act. There don’t appear to be any modern witnesses to the unfortunate spirit.
The massive three-story brick structure was constructed in the mid-1850s for the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, an altruistic and benevolent fraternal organization. Space on the second floor provided a performance venue and actors and theatre companies on the road utilized this space for many years. During the 20th century, the building served a number of other uses including use as a factory and a printing company.
Sources
Carroll County Office of Tourism. Ghost Walk in Carroll County. No date.
Okonowicz, Ed. The Big Book of Maryland Ghost Stories. Atglen, PA: Stackpole, 2010.
Weeks, Christopher. Maryland Inventory of Historic Properties form for Opera House—Odd Fellows’ Hall. December 1976.
Tawes Fine Arts Building Campus of the University of Maryland College Park
Though no longer home to the Department of Theatre, the Tawes Fine Arts Building retains its theatre and recital hall. The current home to the university’s English department, the building may still also retain its resident spook. Not long after the building’s opening in 1965, students began noticing the sound of footsteps in the empty theatre and would occasionally have mischievous jokes played on them, seemingly from beyond.
With quite a population of resident ghosts on campus, the university archivists have started documenting the stories. According to one of the archivists quoted in Michael J. and Michael H. Varhola’s Ghosthunting Maryland, Mortimer, Tawes’ ghost, may actually be a dog rather than a human spirit. According to campus lore, Mortimer was brought into the theatre during its construction and would frolic on the stage. The theatre’s seats had yet to be completely installed and the house was filled with metal frames the seats would be attached to. The frolicsome canine jumped from the stage into the house and impaled himself on one of the frames. Supposedly, he was buried in the building’s basement.
Sources
Okonowicz, Ed. The Big Book of Maryland Ghost Stories. Mechanicsburg, PA, Stackpole, 2010.
Tawes Theatre. Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Accessed 5 April 2013.
Varhola, Michael J. and Michael H. Ghosthunting Maryland. Cincinnati, OH: Clerisy Press, 2009.
Weinberg Center for the Arts formerly the Tivoli Theatre 20 West Patrick Street Frederick
Among the many haunted buildings in this nearly 300 year old town, the old Tivoli Theatre is relatively new. When it opened in 1926, it was one of the largest buildings in town and the most refined theatre in the area. Uniformed ushers, refined surroundings including crystal chandeliers and marble and a Wurlitzer organ to add music to the silent films added to the theatre’s opulence. That opulence drew crowds for many years, though as downtown Frederick declined, so did the crowds drawn to the Tivoli.
Dan and Alyce Weinberg, who had bought the theatre in the late 1950s owned the theatre during its lowest period. After declining sales, and with a theatre on the verge of closure, the Weinbergs witnessed as nearby Carroll Creek flooded downtown Frederick filling the theatre with water and mud. As the flood waters receded, demolition was proposed for the theatre, but the Weinbergs saw that the noble structure deserved more than just that. The theatre was presented to the City of Frederick and it was restored as a performing arts center bearing the Weinberg’s name.
Does the theatre’s restored opulence still attract a few spirits? Perhaps.
One spirit is the rather testy spirit of a former projectionist who supposedly died of a heart attack. His lingering spirit, named Jimmy, is not happy with new employees and he is known to mess up the restrooms when employees are hired. Though, he has been appeased when the final employee to leave wishes him a goodnight. Goodnight, Jimmy!
Sources
Ricksecker, Mike. Ghosts of Maryland. Atglen, PA: Schiffer, 2010.
Rigaux, Pamela. “Walking with the dead.” Frederick News Post. 23 October 2005.
In celebration of Halloween, I’m exploring 13 haunted restaurants throughout the South. This article has two companion pieces exploring haunted hotels, inns, and bed & breakfasts: “13 Southern Rooms with a Boo” and “13 More Southern Rooms with a Boo.”
Trowbridge’s Ice Cream Bar 316 North Court Street Florence, Alabama
Walking into Trowbridge’s, one can certainly get a sense of stepping back in time. With a checkerboard floor, mint green upholstery and food prepared using original recipes; the restaurant seems to be a holdover from the first half of the 20th century. But there is something else at Trowbridge’s that hearkens back to an earlier time: a spirit from the Civil War.
Trowbridge’s opened in 1918 primarily selling ice cream and eventually serving sandwiches and hot dogs at its lunch counter. The site where Trowbridge’s would eventually stand was originally occupied the home of the Stewart family. During the Civil War, Charles Daniel Stewart left his family’s home carrying the Confederate banner for the Florence Battalion. It was that same flag that Stewart was bearing when he was wounded during the First Battle of Manassas, one of the first serious engagements of the Civil War.
The young standard bearer lived for almost a month after being wounded in the battle. Restaurant staff members in the building that now occupies the site of his home have seen a young man within the restaurant. He’s most often seen briefly in passing but when the viewer turns he has vanished. Perhaps Stewart’s spirit just enjoys the shakes.
Sources
Johnston, Debra. Skeletons in the Closet: True Ghost Stories of the Shoals Area. Debra Johnston, 2002.
Wok and Roll Chinese and Japanese Restaurant 604 H Street, NW Washington, DC
While Charles Daniel Stewart may have to develop a taste for milkshakes and hot dogs, the spirits of Mary Surratt and the conspirators involved in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln may have to develop a taste for General Tso’s Chicken and sushi. Wok and Roll Chinese and Japanese Restaurant is housed in the building that once housed Mrs. Surratt’s Boarding House where the conspirators met in the days leading up to Lincoln’s fateful night at Ford’s Theatre. Legends tell of spirits still flitting through the historic structure.
The building was constructed in 1843 as a single-family residence. Mary Surratt’s husband, John, purchased the property in 1853 and rented the building while he constructed a tavern at a crossroads in nearby Prince George’s County, Maryland. He was later named postmaster of the community that formed around his family’s tavern. After the outbreak of war, John Surratt passed away leaving his wife and family in somewhat dire financial straits. John’s son, John Junior was named postmaster in his father’s place, but he was arrested about two years later for working as a mail courier for the Confederacy with whom he sympathized.
The Surratt Boarding House, 1890, by Matthew Brady.
After the arrest of her son and being deprived of his income as a postmaster, Mary Surratt moved her family to their Washington home while she rented the family’s Maryland tavern. The family began taking on boarders and was drawn into the conspiracy to kidnap the president. To what extent Mary Surratt was involved is still rather unclear, but in the roundup that followed John Wilkes Booth’s shooting of Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre, Mary was arrested and charged in the conspiracy. She was tried before a military tribunal and subsequently found guilty.
Even after she was found guilty, many requested that she be pardoned including her daughter, Anna. Mary Surratt was executed on the hot summer afternoon of July 7, 1865, along with three of the conspirators; the first woman executed by the Federal Government. After her execution, Mary Surratt’s Boarding House was attacked by a mob which began to strip the building for souvenirs before they were stopped by police.
Wok & Roll Restaurant now occupies the old Surratt Boarding House. Photo 2008, by Leoboudv. Courtesy of Wikipedia.
Anna Surratt sold her mother’s boarding house not long after the execution and subsequent owners reported that they encountered “muffled sounds,” whispers and sobs. When John Alexander was putting together the 1998 edition of his book on Washington ghosts, he met with the owner of the Chinese grocery that existed in the building at that time. The Chinese grocer replied that he “had no complaints.”
Sources
Alexander, John. Ghosts, Washington Revisited: The Ghostlore of the Nation’s Capitol. Atglen, PA: Schiffer, 1998.
Mary Surratt. Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Accessed 4 November 2014.
Pousson, Eli. National Register of Historic Places nomination form for the Mary E. Surratt Boarding House. May 2009
Ashley’s of Rockledge 1609 US 1 Rockledge, Florida
Some believe that Ethel Allen’s rough road to her grave included a stop at Jack’s Tavern, her favorite local hangout. Last year, I wrote about paranormal investigators conducting an EVP session at Ms. Allen’s grave in the Crooked Mile or Georgiana Cemetery on Merritt Island. After asking if she was present, investigators received a reply, “yes.”
On November 21, 1934, Ethel Allen’s mutilated body was found on the banks of the Indian River in Eau Gallie, some 16 miles away. The nineteen year old had been seen just a few days before when she stopped at a local packing house to say goodbye to a friend. Ethel was leaving to visit her mother, accompanied by a male acquaintance and she may have also stopped by her favorite local hangout, Jack’s Tavern, now Ashley’s of Rockledge. The Tudor-style restaurant has paranormal activity, some of which has been attributed to Ethel Allen.
Ashley’s, 2010, by Leonard J. DeFrancisci. Courtesy of Wikipedia.
A variety of sources state that Ethel may have been murdered within the walls of the restaurant in a storeroom (possibly near the famously haunted ladies restroom) or just outside the building. A local genealogy blog makes no mention of where Ethel may have met her end, but I get the feeling it probably was not in or around the busy tavern. The stories of the restaurant’s haunting are quite readily available though they seem to sometimes perpetuate different variations of the murder.
The activity runs the gamut from simple, cold breezes being felt to voices and screams to full apparitions being seen and captured on film. Some sources also note that the activity does not seem to be limited to just the possible shade of Ethel Allen. There are other possible spirits including a child and an adult male. It does seem that Ashley’s may be one of the most paranormally active restaurants in the state.
Walls, Kathleen. Finding Florida Phantoms. Global Authors Publications, 2004.
Tondee’s Tavern 7 East Bay Street Savannah, Georgia
With the immense host of spirits that inhabit the city of Savannah, chances are high that activity may be found most anywhere. Occupying part of a mid-19th century bank building, Tondee’s Tavern utilizes the name of a important colonial era tavern that existed in the city. The building’s history dates to 1853 when its lower floors were occupied by the Central Railway and Banking Company. The upper floors of the building were used as offices for a slave dealer, Joseph Bryan.
Stories of spirits within the building have evidently existed for some time, but the spirits made themselves very well-known recently. In late June of this year, a passerby on the street left a cigarette in a flower box in front of the building. The cigarette smoldered for a few hours before erupting into flames early in the morning. Meanwhile, two employees slept downstairs; a fairly common practice when employees close the previous night and must open the next day.
A closed-circuit security camera picked up the scene at the front of the restaurant. Over the course of two hours, as the flames can be seen building outside the window, a number of white orbs are seen almost frantically zipping through the air. Something woke the two young women asleep in the basement and they were able to begin extinguishing the flames before they could do more damage. The tavern’s owner, however, is still wondering if the orbs were spirits trying to save the building and his business.
Jailhouse Pizza 125 Main Street Brandenburg, Kentucky
In a fairly creative use of a historic building, the old Meade County Jail is now a pizzeria. Built in 1906 by the Pauly Jail Company, this building was the third jail built for Meade County. The pizzeria’s website states that some of the inmates have apparently never left, including one who has been dubbed, “Bigsby.” These spirits have been both seen and heard.
Old Meade County Jail, 2011, by Nyttend. Courtesy of Wikipedia.
A recent investigation by the Hopkins County Paranormal Society was able to capture, what one investigator calls, “the best evidence ever.” Video taken during the investigation shows a blanket being pulled out and down. Audio evidence was also captured that includes footsteps, a scream and possibly a female child.
Sources
“History.” Jailhouse Pizza. Accessed 31 October 2014.
Johnson, William G. Kentucky Historic Resources Inventory form for Meade County Jail. Summer 1983.
Landon, Heather. “Best Creepy Historic Sites in the US.” The Daily Meal. 14 October 2014.
Antoine’s 713 St. Louis Street New Orleans, Louisiana
Antoine’s, 2007 by Infrogmation. Courtesy of Wikipedia.
Antoine Alciatore, like so many Europeans at that time, dreamed of making it big in the United States and immigrated in 1838 to make good on those dreams. After a couple years of struggling in New York City, he set his sights on that most French of cities, New Orleans and this is where he opened Antoine’s. In 1868, the restaurant moved to its current location that now boasts 14 unique dining rooms. Alciatore left New Orleans in 1874 bound for Marseilles where he died; his beloved restaurant was left in the hands of his son and his family has continued to own and run the restaurant. Antoine continues to return to check up on this famed New Orleans institution and he continues to be seen in the Japanese and Mystery Dining Rooms. Other specters in 19th century clothing have been seen peering from the mirrors in the washrooms as well.
Sources
Dwyer, Jeff. Ghost Hunter’s Guide to New Orleans. Gretna, LA: Pelican, 2007.
Antoine’s Restaurant. Accessed 8 January 2011.
Puccini Restaurant 12901 Ali Ghan Road, NE Cumberland, Maryland
At Puccini, patrons may get a bit of the paranormal with their pasta. With your fettuccini, you may hear disembodied footsteps or perhaps there may be some voices heard as you enjoy your vino. Don’t mind them, they won’t hurt you.
The building now housing Puccini was near fighting on August 1, 1864 as Confederates were defeated in the Battle of Folck’s Mill. Many of the wounded were brought into the George Hinkle house (as it was known at that time) where they were treated. Of course there may also have been a few deaths in the house during that time. Some of those soldiers may have also written or carved their names on the walls in the attic.
Employees of the restaurant as well as guests have reported quite a bit of activity over the years. From footsteps to shadow figures to full apparitions, people in this building have had many experiences. The restaurant was investigated a few years ago by member of the team from City Lights Paranormal Society of Easton, Pennsylvania. The investigators were able to capture a good deal of audio evidence including a number of EVPs.
Like Antoine’s in New Orleans, Meridian’s Weidmann’s restaurant was also started by an immigrant and has become a local institution after more than a century. Weidmann’s was opened by Felix Weidmann, a Swiss immigrant. While Antoine’s has remained in the same location, Weidmann’s location changed a number of times before it settled into a location in 1923.
Weidmann’s, 2010, by Dudemanfellabra. Courtesy of Wikipedia.
The haunting of Weidmann’s seems to be mostly residual activity. Sounds echo through the restaurant with no obvious source. For his 2011 book, Haunted Meridian, Mississippi, Alan Brown spoke with one employee who recalls hearing sounds associated with livestock near the restaurant’s freezers where livestock may have been kept before Weidmann’s moved in. But animal sounds are just a small part of the repertoire associated with the spirits of Weidmann’s.
At table one, a legend is oft told of a young couple visiting the restaurant during the Great Depression. The couple had recently become engaged and had enough money to treat themselves to a meal in the restaurant. Henry Weidmann, the restaurant’s owner at the time, picked up the tab and encouraged the couple to return for their first anniversary. The legend continues that the young couple did not return to their table in the restaurant in life, but they have continued to return in death. They are supposed to be seen on occasion sitting quietly at the table holding hands under the table.
Sources
Brown, Alan. Haunted Meridian, Mississippi. Charleston, SC: History Press, 2011.
Four Square Restaurant 2701 Chapel Hill Road Durham, North Carolina
Bartlett Mangum built his house in 1908 on the outskirts of Durham and the house is now the only part of his 80-acre farm that has remained standing. The house remained in the family until Mangum’s daughters were moved to a nursing home in 1956. The house passed through a variety of owners who rented out the house or used it for commercial purposes including a variety of restaurants. During the early 1960s, the house was even used as a racially-integrated church.
The Mangum daughters, Inez and Bessie, inherited the house in 1927 and tradition holds that they did not speak to each other for many years due to a feud. According to an article by Colin Warren-Hicks in the local progressive paper, Indy Week, restaurant staff believes that the spirit of Inez Mangum still flits about her old house. Cooks in the kitchen reported to Warren-Hicks that pots and pans would move on its own accord. Dinner and glassware left on a certain mantelpiece in one of the restaurant’s dining rooms would often be inexplicably knocked to the floor.
UPDATE 4/23/2018: Four Square has closed.
Sources
Dickinson, Patricia S. National Register of Historic Places nomination form for Bartlett Mangum House. 5 December 1988.
Warren-Hicks, Colin. “The Devil went down to Four Square Restaurant.” Indy Week. 22 October 2014.
Connolly’s Irish Pub 24 East Court Square Greenville, South Carolina
This unassuming Irish pub in downtown Greenville, South Carolina is a front for a secret. Just outside the pub and behind the street door that provides access to this old commercial building’s second floor is an unused floor that is supposed to have served as a brothel some years ago. A recent investigation of this building by local investigator and ghost tour operator Jason Profit produced video of small orbs of light flitting through the corridor.
It’s my sincerest hope that the victims of the horrible event that happened here in 1997 are at rest; they most certainly deserve to be. On March 23, 1997, Paul Dennis Reid forced his way into this McDonald’s at closing time. After shooting three of the employees, he stabbed a fourth employee seventeen times before leaving with the restaurant’s money. The three shooting victims died while the stabbing victim survived. Just a month before, Reid had robbed a nearby Captain D’s brutally shooting and killing two employees. Before he was captured by the police, he managed to kill a total of seven people, all fast food employees. Reid passed quietly in prison just last year.
According to the Nashville Haunted Handbook, published in 2011, this restaurant has been plagued by a general sense of unease as well as shadow figures. After viewing this location on Google Streetview, it appears that this McDonald’s location may have a new building—the chain has been tearing down older restaurants and replacing them with new buildings. Though, since the building has been replaced, it is unknown whether this activity has persisted.
Sources
“2 Slain at Nashville McDonald’s.” Chicago Tribune. 24 March 1997.
Morris, Jeff; Donna Marsh and Garett Merk. Nashville Haunted Handbook. Cincinnati, OH: Clerisy Press, 2011.
Wilson, Brian. “Tennessee mass murderer Paul Dennis Reid dead.” 1 November 2013.
Coffee Pot 2902 Brambleton Avenue, SW (US 221) Roanoke, Virginia
Just who or what is causing the odd activity at Roanoke’s landmark roadhouse, The Coffee Pot, is still a question. Primarily, the activity generally involves the movement of objects. One bartender was cleaning ashtrays and stacking them on the bar one evening after the restaurant had closed. They had already stacked a number of ashtrays when they witnessed the stack rise into the air and then drop back down on the bar. Startled, she returned to work only to have the stack of ashtrays rise and fall again. After that, she grabbed her things and left.
The Coffee Pot, 2009, by Patriarca12. Courtesy of Wikipedia.
A manager noted that spices would often disappear from their accustomed spot only to reappear in a very different location sometimes days later. Bottles of wine and other cooking utensils have been known to fly across rooms, while paranormal investigators have been able to photograph orbs and have captured EVPs within the restaurant.
The Coffee Pot, with its distinctive large coffee pot, was constructed in 1936 along what had been a fairly rural road. Over time, US 221 has grown along with the restaurant’s business. As a roadhouse, the restaurant has become known for its musical entertainment including Willie Nelson who played an impromptu concert at the restaurant in 1970s.
Sources
Hill, Helen. National Register of Historic Places nomination form for The Coffee Pot. December 1995.
Hurst, Chris. “Looking for ghosts at The Coffee Pot in Roanoke.” 24 October 2010.
Taylor, L. B. Jr. Haunted Roanoke. Charleston, SC: History Press, 2013.
Yellow Bank Restaurant 201 East German Street Shepherdstown, West Virginia
In the historic town of Shepherdstown, the 1906 Jefferson Security Bank now houses the Yellow Bank Restaurant. The bank was converted to a restaurant some years ago and now houses the restaurant where table 25 was the scene of some activity in the 1990s when a patron reported to the restaurant’s manager that she couldn’t sit at the table because of the ghost. The bartender also reported that he had glasses fall from the glass rack and break.
UPDATE 4/23/2018: Yellow Bank Restaurant has closed.
Sources
Molenda, Rachel. “Town serves as home to ghosts from past.” The Shepherdstown Chronicle. 28 October 2011.
Maryland Theatre 21 South Potomac Street Hagerstown, Maryland
Nota Bene: This is a repost. The original article was posted 31 May 2011.
Sometimes I’ll encounter an article that opens a whole Pandora’s Box of articles and hauntings. This is one of those cases. Initially, I was looking for information on the Westminster Opera House in Westminster, Maryland and decided to Google “haunted theatres Maryland.” An article from the Hagerstown Herald Mail regarding the Maryland Theatre popped up and I dutifully added it to my files and then began searching out whatever else I could find on it. A search for “Maryland Theatre ghost” turned up a few more articles, but most importantly, an article from Hagerstown Magazine detailing a number of haunts in the area. What joy! And a quick jaunt to the website of the Maryland Historic Trust et voila, I now have a copy of the theatre’s National Register of Historic Places nomination form. Thank goodness for the convenience of the internet!
Hagerstown is situated in western Maryland’s Washington County, just south of the Mason-Dixon Line in the Great Appalachian Valley. Its position brought much of the action of the Civil War to the city’s doorstep with armies of both sides tramping through its streets on a number of occasions. The Battle of Antietam—the bloodiest single day in American military history—was fought just south of the city. Hagerstown prospered throughout the 20th century and is now the largest city in Western Maryland.
The Maryland Theatre opened in 1915 as a top tier vaudeville and movie house. The structure was built in the interior of the 20s block of Potomac Street. The entrance and lobby of the theatre, located on the ground floor of an adjoining apartment building, extended towards Potomac Street. The theatre was designed by Harry Yessler, a local architect, in conjunction with Thomas Lamb, one of the preeminent theatre architects of the day. The interior of the theatre is an elegant Neoclassical design complete with decorative plaster work.
The modern entrance to the Maryland Theatre, 2014. Photo by Acroterion, courtesy of Wikipedia.
Even as live theatre became increasingly scarce, the theatre continued in business until it closed in 1973. The following year, the building lobby and entrance were destroyed when the adjoining apartment building burned. Firefighters valiantly fought to save the theatre itself and were successful, though one life was lost in the apartment building. The remains of the building and the theatre’s lobby were not salvageable and they were razed. When the theatre was reopened, a small lobby was constructed with a passage to Potomac Street. Sadly, from the outside, the lobby’s 1970s modern architecture is at odds with the opulence within the theatre. The modern theatre now plays host to numerous cultural events and is one of the premier cultural venues in the region.
Stories of the theatre’s haunting appeared quite early. The daughter of one of the theatre’s first managers worked in the theatre between the 1930s and the 1960s. Reportedly, she claimed to have encountered her father, who loved the theatre dearly, still going about his daily business. More recently, staff members have had the feeling of not being alone, but have also heard voices. According to two different articles, an investigation by the Mason-Dixon Paranormal Society was able to capture a number of EVPs in the building. It appears this historical theatre has its fair share of spiritual occupants as any good theatre should. As one of the theatre’s former executive directors remarked, “Starting with the Phantom of the Opera, every theatre should have a ghost.”
A commenter under the name “mymixedtapeforher”posted on the original entry that friends had experienced quite a bit in the theatre including the feeling of hands pushing on their backs, being told to “get the f*** out” by a disembodied voice” and finding a sandbag (used as weights on the theatre’s fly system) sliced open. These details, if true, make this quite an interesting haunting.
Sources
Coffey, Claudia. “Hagerstown Theater Believed Haunted.” com. 31 August 2009.
Finglass, Jack L. & Ronald L. Andrews. National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form for the Maryland Theatre. Listed 13 November 1976.
Hagerstown, Maryland. Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Accessed 31 May 2011.
Julius, Erin. “Is the Maryland Theatre haunted?” Herald-Mail. 30 August 2009.
Blest with vict’ry and peace, may the Heav’n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation! –Francis Scott Key, “The Defense of Fort McHenry”
One can hardly fathom the sheer terror that Francis Scott Key must have experienced as he watched the bombardment of Fort McHenry on the night of September 13 and into the early morning hours of the 14th, 1814. That evening, Key, a thirty five year-old Maryland-born lawyer from Georgetown in the district of Columbia, had dined with enemy officers aboard an enemy ship in order to negotiate the release of American prisoners. Because he was now privy to British plans for the bombardment and invasion of Baltimore, Key and American Prisoner Exchange Agent Colonel John Stuart Skinner were detained aboard the HMS Tonnant.
The guns of Fort McHenry now overlook the Francis Scott Key Bridge which carries I-695. Photo by renpytom, released under Creative Commons licensing.
Key likely knew of the systematic destruction of Washington, D.C. by the British and quite possibly worried about destruction of his own home on the opposite bank of the Potomac River. Now detained aboard an enemy ship in Baltimore harbor, it’s imaginable that he worried about the probable destruction of another American city. Below decks, American prisoners lay shackled and there was fear that the British would mercilessly hang these citizens including a respected doctor, William Beanes, from Upper Marlboro, Maryland. Key and Skinner watched with horror the bombardment of Fort McHenry with its huge flag.
A reproduction of the fort’s huge flag still flies. Photo by renpytom, released under Creative Commons licensing.
The bombardment by the British fleet in Baltimore harbor began on the morning of the thirteenth with an initial exchange. The Americans had sunk a series of merchant ships in the harbor to prevent the British from getting close enough to the fort. After the initial bombardment, the British withdrew to just outside of the range of Fort McHenry’s cannon. At 1 AM the next morning, the British began their heaviest and most long-lasting bombardment that would last most of the next day. They poured some 1500 to 1800 Congreve rockets and mortars onto the fort from a series of ships. Firing mortars onto the fort were ships bearing names like Devastation, Terror, Meteor, Volcano and Aetna. Fortunately, the mortars were poorly designed and few of them actually reached their targets while many of the Congreve rockets exploded mid-air. “…And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air…”
With dawn’s early light, Fort McHenry’s huge flag which had been sewn by Mary Pickersgill and her 13 year-old daughter was revealed to still be flying, an indication that the city and fort had repelled the invasion. Relieved, Key wrote an ode to the flag that was set to an English tune, “To Anacreon in Heaven.” The song gained popularity and was eventually deemed the national anthem in 1931. The grand flag has been cherished and preserved in the Museum of American History while Fort McHenry has been deemed a National Historic Shrine: a shrine to liberty, American defiance, hope, history and spirits.
A view of one of the bastions. Photo by Ad Meskens, courtesy of Wikipedia.
Whetstone Point juts into an arm of the Patapsco River as it meets the Chesapeake Bay. This peninsula provides the perfect perch from which to oversee ships sailing into Baltimore Harbor and it was here that a fort was first constructed during the American Revolution in 1776. Baltimore was never under British threat during that war, but the local citizens thought it necessary to expand the fort following the war using a five-pointed star design by Jean Foncin. Among the fort’s biggest cheerleaders during this time was Secretary of War James McHenry, for whom the fort was later named.
In the midst of the tumult of the early nineteenth century, American decided to finally stand up against British bullying and declared war. It was this action that brought intense military scrutiny to the region and then action in 1814. Brevet Lt. Col. George Armistead commanded the fort during the day-long bombardment and saw only four casualties among his men. Following the war, the fort resumed its duties standing guard over the harbor until the nation it kept intact was torn apart by Civil War. As Maryland remained neutral there was fear that those with Southern sympathies would try to secede, thus leaving Washington, D.C. surrounded by enemy territory. Politicians suspected of having rebel sympathies were imprisoned in the fort including Baltimore’s mayor, city council and police commissioner. Legend states that the fort’s guns were even trained on the city it had so dutifully protected.
After the Civil War the fort resumed its regular duty and when war once again tore Europe apart during World War I, the fort became a 3000 bed hospital for American troops. After medical duty, much of the fort was restored and it was named a National Park in 1925. On the eve of the Second World War, the fort was named both a National Monument and Historic Shrine, a unique designation from a grateful nation. Once again, the fort resumed duty, like many historic coastal forts. The fort was used by the Coast Guard who worked to protect American shores and shipping from German U-boats.
Under the purview of the National Park Service, the typical line is taken: there are no ghosts at Fort McHenry, though many experiences have been documented. Ed Okonowicz in his masterful Baltimore Ghosts catalogs the numerous spirits that have been witnessed through the old fort. Among them are one, possibly two spirits from the British bombardment in 1814. During one of the engagements, the British scored a direct hit on a gun emplacement on Bastion 3. The explosion killed two Baltimore merchants serving in the Maryland Militia, Lt. Levi Clagett and Sgt. John Clemm. Visitors and staff near “Clagett’s Battery” as it is now called, have spotted the visage of a soldier in period uniform. Visitors sometimes inquire at the visitor’s center as to the identity of the reenactor in that area when none are present. During preparations for a visit by President Gerald Ford, the Secret Service spotted a uniformed soldier walking the same bastion where Clagett and Clemm died.
One of the fort’s gun emplacements. Photo by sneakerdog, released under Creative Commons licensing.
The barracks hosts a female spirit who has been spotted looking out the window and who may be responsible for two “attacks” that have taken place there. An artist who was exploring the building walked through a doorway and was knocked out cold by an invisible something. He stated that it felt like he was hit in the face with a frying pan. He was discovered a short time later by a park ranger who escorted him from the building and who did not seem surprised by the artist’s experiences, replying that he had had a woman in nineteenth century clothing try to push him down the stairs. According to Okonowicz, the identity of the woman may be that of a military officer’s wife who lost both her husband and children to an epidemic sometime after the War of 1812.
The parade ground with barracks and the sally port. Photo by David Smith, released under Creative Commons licensing.
Perhaps one of the saddest spirits of the fort is the pathetic form of Private John Drew. Drew was on guard duty one evening in 1880. He was arrested the following morning when he was found to have fallen asleep on the job. Unable to deal with this horribly embarrassing episode, Drew shot himself in his cell. Drew’s form has been seen near where he was supposed to be standing guard on that fateful evening. Others have felt a chill within the cell where Drew took his life.
The statue of Orpheus with the Baltimore skyline in the background. Photo by pwbaker, released under Creative Commons licensing.
One of the more interesting experiences reported on the grounds of the fort comes from near a large statue of Orpheus honoring Francis Scott Key. The large statue stands on the grounds outside the fort and it was here that one visitor saw the figure of man in uniform seemingly floating in mid-air. It was discovered later that that particular area had been the scene of an execution in 1862. A young private had been found guilty of murdering another soldier and it was here that he made his “air-dance,” in other words, he was hanged. Most likely, this is just a sample of the spirits that roam the historic battlements of Fort McHenry; battlements that still witness “the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air,” every Fourth of July when fireworks celebrate the freedom this place helped maintain.
Sources
Fort McHenry. Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Accessed 22 November 2011.
Francis Scott Key. Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Accessed 22 November 2011.
Okonowicz, Ed. Baltimore Ghosts: History, Mystery, Legends and Lore. Elkton, MD: Myst and Lace Publishing, 2006.
