Visiting Haunted Shell Mound Park

Shell Mound is haunted by ancient ghosts.   They are ghosts from the Mississippian Period, 1100-1500 AD.  A lonely woman ghost haunts this historic site.  She dances on the mound at night bringing the sound of native music drifting through the hot night air with her.   When I visited Shell Mound Park,  there was no sign of any ghosts.   The only thing that haunted us is the brutal heat were the swarms of mosquitoes that descended on us in plagues.  They came and sucked us dry, sending me scurrying through my haunted exploration and making me somewhat blind to any ghosts that may have been chasing me. 

Shell Mound Park is a small park on the top of Dauphin Island.   For hundreds of years,  American Indians made pilgrimages to this site to eat oysters.   The evidence of this activity crunches beneath your feet as you walk through the park.  The hills that you walk across as you explore the park are made entirely of oyster shells.  If you dig down, you pull up a mixture of shell and soil.  This area is beautiful, if you can see past the sticky heat and mosquitoes.  Huge oaks drip with Spanish moss and hangs down so long it tickles the oyster shells beneath it.  It is easy to imagine a lonely ghost wandering this site.  It is easy to imagine an American Indian girl lingering in this swampy place, waiting to go home.

The Many Ghosts of Sweetwater Mansion

One of  my favorite chapters in my book, Haunted North Alabama, was a chapter about Sweetwater Mansion.  Sweetwater Mansion is a once beautiful plantation house in Northern Alabama.   At its peak, Sweetwater housed Governors and saw such famous visitors as president Franklin D. Roosevelt.   It is home to a warehouse full of Southern history and  many stories of sorrow and tragedy.

It is also home to many ghost stories.  I was lucky enough to be invited to do a book signing at Sweetwater Mansion this weekend.  I had never been able to enter this house before, so this was very exciting for me.   The house was opened up for tours this October by the people that are renovating it and trying to document its history.  The tours include history and ghost stories and legends associated with this old house.  All funds raised by the tours will be donated to the continued renovation of this beautiful mansion. The house is in significant disrepair and has seen much abuse.  In the 1970's, a portion of the house caught on fire and in 2007 vandals broke in and stripped the mansion down to the bones.  The renovators certainly have their work cut out for them and they have already worked so hard.

As I signed books, I was able to talk to some of the tour guides and listen in on tours.    I heard many stories I hadn't heard when I wrote my book.  For instance,  I heard the story of the porcelain lady whose face in the wallpaper becomes more defined with every passing day.  The wallpaper changes and grows and as the porcelain lady's face becomes more define new faces are appearing behind her.   I was also told about one employee who took and extraordinary picture.   Apparently, everyone became aware of the smell of burning one day.  They followed their noses to the old kitchen that had been burnt down in the 1970s fire.  There was no fire, but one woman took several pictures of the kitchen.  In these pictures,  the kitchen was on fire.  Everyone who worked and volunteered at the mansion had stories.  There were so many I could hardly keep up.  The mansion has too many ghost stories to be told in at one time.

The group is now working on a book to document the ghost stories of Sweetwater and I can't wait to read them.  I know I barely touched the surface with my book.  Being in the mansion,  I can say that there is a tangible presence in the mansion.  There is a heaviness in the air and stepping from the outside into the mansion the temperature drops over 10 degrees.  I shivered and I'm always hot.  The old house is not what it used to be, but its beauty remains.  Bits of wallpaper and old rooms whisper of days gone by when it was the most extravagant home in the South.  Old pictures, faded by time, show what once was.  The house feels  trapped in time, perhaps it is held there by its ghosts.

Notice the Green Orb at the Top of the Stairs in This Picture.  If you look closely, you can almost see a face.

The Haunting of Cedarhurst Mansion

Cedarhurst Mansion in Huntsville Alabama is home to one of the most famous hauntings in Alabama.   The mansion itself is hidden now.  It is part of a gated community and only those that live in the community can enter, but the old ghost stories linger.  They are legend.  Whenever I talk about ghost stories in Alabama,  someone always asks me if I have heard about this sad, lonely ghost.   Her story  is unforgettable and people always think of this ghost when they think of Alabama ghosts.

Cedarhurst Mansion was built by Stephen Ewing in 1823.   Since that time it has passed from owner to owner fairly regularly. Ironically,  it isn't someone who lived in this house that haunts it.   Sally Carter was just visiting Cedarhurst Mansion in 1837.  She loved the mansion and was very happy to visit it.  Sadly,  16 year old Sally died on November 28, 1937 of a fatal illness.  She died while she was at the mansion and she hasn't left it since.

Ever since Sally's death,  the stories of her ghost have been as thick as kudzu.  The most famous story was told  by a 17 year old boy visit in the house in 1919.  Alabama is prone to terrible storms and the night he stayed a storm raged outside.  He said that while he slept,  he was visited by Sally.  She came to him and asked him to fix her tombstone.  She said it had been knocked over in the storm.  Everyone laughed at him, but when they went out with him to fix the stone,  they found it had indeed been knocked over by the storm.

I love a site called citydata.com.  In that site, there are a plethora of forums on city places and event and invariably there are many postings on every haunted location.    The best thing about this site is that if you sift through the nonsense you can find people who have posted their first hand accounts with ghosts.  One posting on this site I read was posted by a woman who says her childhood friend used to live in Cedarhurst Mansion when she was a girl.   She was lucky enough to spend the night in the house with her friend and she describes seeing Sally standing above her while she was sleeping.  There are numerous stories like this about Sally.  Some have even reported seeing her walking outside the mansion.  Sally is still active,  she's just more hidden now.  But her story lives on.

Following Real Ghost Hunters

This Friday night I was lucky enough to follow a team of real ghost hunters.  I have played at ghost hunting.  I've done a few EVP sessions and walked around with my little gadgets, but after I spent a night with Southern Ghosts (http://www.southernghosts.com/) I realized that I was just playing.  The team I got to watch was lead by Steve and Angie who are known for their great blog http://www.ghosteyes.com/.  They are the Virginia chapter of Southern Ghosts.  Brett Burchfield from Georgia and Jeremy Morgan were also present during the investigations.

The first thing this team did when they got started at the South Pittsburgh hospital was set up camera's in all the major halls of the hospital with infrared.   They set up the cameras and connected them to the DVRs.  The sheer volume of equipment along made me feel overwhelmed.  Clearly, this was a very serious team.  They then proceeded to explain to all of us non ghost hunter types what we would be doing and we set up a game plan.  The team started in an old waiting room that had been decorated with antique medical equipment and set up for ghost hunters.   Vines crawled in from the outer courtyard through the windows so that nature itself seemed to be reaching into the room and retaking it.   The team started with the first of many EVP sessions in which team members asked questions and waited for several minutes and then asked another question.  This requires a lot of patience, which is something ghost hunters clearly possess in great quantities.

The team then split up and went to the third floor of the hospital.  Trigger objects had been laid around the hospital.  These were balls, boots, or bikes etc.  that had been laid in different locations that had been noted so that if they moved the team could see that something had happened.  They could then check video footage to see what, specifically had happened later.  When we went to the third floor, we noticed one of the trigger objects had moved.   Two members of the group went to the psychiatric ward and continued with what was a very successful EVP session and the rest of us went to surgery to do some psychic experiments.  These were interesting as well and were designed to draw the paranormal energy in the room to one person so they could describe the energy in the room.

The group was very methodical and hours were spent progressing through the hospital doing various EVP sessions.  The most interesting EVP session to me was done in the basement in a room filled with old church pews.   Team leader Steve noticed the ghosts were making the KP meters light up at different times throughout the room as questions were asked and he started asking the ghosts to answer questions by making the meters light up green or red.  This seemed to actually work and a partial dialogue was established using this method.

I was unable to keep up with the ghost hunting team, however, and by 3am I had to leave.  My eyes were drifting shut and I don't drink caffeine so I had to leave, proving once and for all that I don't have the stamina to keep up with the real ghost hunters.  They tell me that after I left they got some very interesting data, however.  I can't wait to hear more, but little Jessica went to her hotel and slept because as interesting as ghosts are,  my PJ's are bed are much more interesting at 3am.   What did I learn from following real ghost hunters?  I learned  that they are some of the most patient people I've ever met.  Not only did they have patience the night of the ghost hunt, but they have to have continued patience as they review hours and hours of video footage and listen to hours upon hours of EVP sessions.   I take my hat off to these ghost hunters, because the reality is,  it isn't the adventure you see on TV.  It is patience and persistence and determination that made this team work.  I'm not sure I have any of those qualities but it sure was nice watching others with it for the night.

You can follow the folks I ghost hunted with on twitter at @GhostEyes_Steve, @GhostEyes_Angie, @RCP_GatorFan .  I know I'll be following them closely waiting for the results from this trip.   I'll also be watching http://www.hauntjaunts.com/ because Courtney Mroch has a sensitive eye and she might have seen a lot I missed on this trip.

Ghost Hunting at South Pittsburgh Hospital in Tennessee

Hiding in the verdant hills of Southern Tennessee, hidden in the rural landscape of the South is a famously haunted hospital  that was once the South Pittsburg hospital.  Situated  at the base of a hill by the housing projects the old hospital decays.   You would expect it to be a silent place, filled with ghosts and old tears, but it is strangely alive, living someplace on the edge of a surreal dream.

The hospital is broken and decaying and filled with random odds and ends that don't always fit the setting.  The smell when you step in the door is so overwhelming I almost turned and headed to the first Holiday Inn available, but I pushed forward because the place was so surreal it felt like it belonged in a Tim Burton film rather that part of the real world.  This hospital isn't dead, despite the decay.   When you pull into the parking lot the front entrance has been taken over by an antique store.   Fountains and water features cover the steps that lead up to what used to be the main entrance to the hospital.   This sound of running water cuts through the loud music blaring out of the projects across the street.   It cuts through the broken, overgrown parking lot and adds a magic to the hospital that looms above it.   Only a small portion of the hospital is taken by the antique shop, and the rest sits empty, glaring out at you with vacant windows.

To enter the ghost hunting section of the hospital you must drive past the housing projects to the back of the hospital, which is pressed right up against a very steep and very large hill.   You enter through the emergency room doors.   The emergency room waiting room has been converted into a large sitting room that seems like a temple to Tim Burton.  Movie posters and art celebrating his movies line the walls.  After you get over the the heat, you move forward into a hall  with an alpha romeo parked in it.  Pressing on is imperative at this point as the oddness of the place only grows with every step forward.  

I was then introduced to the hospital's keepers.   A family lives in an apartment amidst all the rubble and stench with their little boy giving ghost hunting teams access to this strange place.   This little family was interesting and their story I will save for another day.   The ghost hunting team I joined was lead by Steve from Southern Ghosts.   His team were very professional and set up their many infrared cameras, DVRs, EVPs, etc at different points throughout the dark hospital.  Electricity was limited to only a few rooms so flashlights were imperative.   I will discuss the actual ghost hunting in more detail later too.

Exploring the hospital was like walking through a horror movie.  Walls molded and pealed.  Junk sat cluttered in rooms.  The clothes of the dead had never been removed from the hospital and sat piled up in the rooms people had died in.   As we travelled from room to room the KP and EVP meters went off from time to time, indicating some supernatural presence.  The darkness grew and stretched and your eyes played trick on you turning shadows into monsters.   The trigger items left to record paranormal activity moved.   A pair of little girls boots flipped. There was a strange mattress in the basement that lit up the EVP's like a Christmas Tree.   The hospital wrapped around a courtyard with a gazebo and an incomplete fountain that was overgrown and filled with mangy looking dogs that barked at you when your light shone out the window.  At night, when you wonder alone,  the sounds of the water outside fill the dead silence and the whispers you hear could be formed from a collection of your imagination and the ever running water. 

I was lucky enough to go to this hospital with Courtney from Haunt Jaunts!   I just hope I get to ghost hunt with her sometime again soon she was a really joy to meet and work with.  She was even more wonderful in person and I know she will have some very interesting things to say about our journey into darkness.   So,  over the next week I am going to post blogs about the different aspects of our trip to South Pittsburgh.   If you still crave more, visit http://www.hauntjaunts.com/ to hear Courtney's take on the visit.    Also visit http://www.southernghosts.com/ to see the ghost hunting data collected at the site.  Keep an eye on http://www.ghosteyes.com/ for more information too.  Tomorrow I will blog about the ghost hunting itself and then I will blog about the amazing family that calls this bizarre place home!!  

On a side note,,,, Unfortunately,  I never got to sleep here because the sleeping arrangements here were not good.   Most of the team stayed to ghost hunt all night, but I retired to the Comfort Inn at 3am and put my pj's on there.

The Horrible Ghosts of the Old South

I've been very tired lately.  I have been working hard on the deadline for my Haunted North Alabama book and between that and my day job,  I think I'm not sleeping at all any more.   Sleeplessness has its benefits, however, and one of those is that I have been reading more and more ghost stories.  I discovered a brilliant story and utterly tragic story recently.  I am including all the details for in my book, but I just can't help writing a little about it here.

I discovered an old plantation house deep in rural Alabama.   The house was built sometime prior to 1850 and housed several hundred slaves and their white masters.  The slaves lived in cabins around the  plantation and the masters lived in an exquisite mansion with imported marble.   Apparently,  these particular masters were more cruel than most and the neighbors spoke in hushed tones of how brutal they could be.  Their cruelty was so severe that the descendants of those that gossiped about this still know the stories.   When the slaves misbehaved they were chained in the basement and beaten and tortured.

The Civil War came and went and when it went the slaves were all free,  but the ex-slaves couldn't forget.  They couldn't forget nor could they forgive.  They joined together and murdered their masters in their beds and ran off into the night.   Southern justice couldn't let such an act pass.  So the Klu Klux Klan joined in and the ex-slaves were hunted down.  Lynch mob justice was delivered to the poor, tortured souls and, according to legend,  they were hung from the tree in front of the house.

The ghosts of the masters and the slaves still haunt the house today.  Their cries fill the night with their torment.   The house seems to be cursed because other tragedies have filled the house with many other ghosts that I am saving for later.

The Haunted Halls of Athens State

I travelled to Athens, Alabama today where I visited the oldest college in Alabama and took pictures of  the University's haunted halls. Athens State University was founded in 1822 and is haunted by numerous ghosts.   These ghost's story tell the the story of the history of the school.  They are stories of lost love and tragic loss.  These stories are part of the story of the South.  The first is the story of a poor stable boy who died serving the head Mistress of Founder's Hall.  At that time,  Athen's University was an all girl's Christian College and the boy died serving the daughters of the old South.   Founders Hall is also said to be haunted by the ghost of a poor girl who died in the light of her own candle.

Since the night in 1914 when the building was dedicated, folks on the Athens campus have reported seeing the ghostly form of a young lady in a formal white dress in and about McCandless Hall. This apparition, holding flowers, has been frequently observed casting a strange light from the third floor. Some students have smelled her flowers. Others have seen the ghost in the dressing rooms, as if she were preparing for a perfor­mance. Her phantom footsteps have been heard throughout the stately old structure.  This beautiful ghost is said to be the ghost of Abigal Adams, a famous opera singer who performed at McCandless Hall.   She died on her way home from the University.

There are many more ghosts that wander the grounds of Athens State, making it one of the most haunted schools and places I have ever been to.  Tonight I am posting pictures, but I will tell the many ghost stories associated with this beautiful school more in depth when I have more time.