The Alabama Experience; The Ghosts of Selma

Selma is known for its role in history. This central Alabama city served as a civil war armory and the fall of Selma was a crushing blow to the Confederacy. 100 years later a bridge named for Confederate General Edmund Pettus became a battleground for civil rights when marchers led by Dr. Martin Luther King jr. were met with violence. Within the walls of Live Oak Cemetery, there are a thousand stories from Selma's past. It is said that some of these stories live on as spirits that haunt the city. Whether you believe in ghosts or not, there are things in Selma that defy explanation. Selma's downtown historic district is the largest in Alabama and Sturtevant Hall is

showcase. This 1853 home was restored through a contribution by the Sturdivant family and is operated as a museum and private meeting hall. John Parkman purchased this house for $65,000 from the original owner Mr. Watts in 1864. At that time he was only 26 years old. He was an interesting man. He had worked himself up from being a dry goods clerk to being a banker and he started out as a bookkeeper and became a teller and a cashier and eventually became the president of the bank. So at the young age of 26 he had enough money to buy this lovely home. He and his wife and two daughters lived here until his death three years later which happened under very mysterious circumstances. John Parkman was a respected businessman, but a poor investment led to his imprisonment and

death. A thriving economy based on the sale of cotton brought wealth to Selma, but after the Civil War, the price of cotton fell sharply. Parkman's investments in cotton led to the fall of the Selma National Bank and his arrest for mismanagement of funds. Federal troops imprisoned him in the nearby town of Cahaba. Once the state capital, Cahaba is a ghost town now, and only remnants remain, including a chimney from the prison where Parkman was held. The story goes that some of his friends dressed up as musicians and went to the prison and distracted the guards with their musical endeavors so that Mr. Parkman could slip over fence and run to the river and be picked up by a boat which they had engaged there to pick him up. But someone saw him trying to escape and shots were fired and he apparently

did get on over the wall but he disappeared, jumped in the river and was never seen again. Parkman was never seen again alive, but servants said they saw his ghost strolling the grounds behind the home. They also saw him looking down from the cupola high atop the house. Some people say they can still feel his presence. Funny things do happen down here and we can't explain them. mean sometimes a door will just open or close and then you go to the door and you look around and you say what made that happen you can't figure it out or sometimes you'll be giving a tour with for some of the people who come to see the house and you'll feel this sort of rush of air go by and you look around and nobody's moved.

And you think, oh well, Mr. Parkman's on the prowl. One of the hostesses who used to work here said that sometimes the beds upstairs would look as if someone had taken a nap in the bed, you know, on top of the covers. There'd be an imprint of a body. So the reason why we think he comes back to visit Sterling Hall is that he was so proud of his home and his family and that he just never was quite able to leave. When we began having things happen here and the possibility of the ghost in our mind, I was thinking Civil War, scraggly gray beards, you know, spooky, certainly not anything as temporary is the 40s. We started seeing a man, but when we started seeing that he was a very tall, you know,

well-built man, and then we started asking neighbors, and they were like, oh, you know, that's Robert. That must be, he's back. Since the Trotter family moved into this 1892 home, they say they have been visited by Robert Edgar on several occasions. But Robert died in 1941. Robert was the only child. His mother was divorced, which in the 40s was not a common thing and not really smiled upon. But this house was a boarding house owned by Robert's uncle. He and his mother shared one bedroom from the time he was six all through his teenage years until his death when he was 21. and he and his fiance were driving in his brand new car I guess he was kind of like any I was showing it off they were driving out in in the country on this

particular day when they had an automobile accident upstairs in the closet the girls were dressing for a prom and the coat hangers were rattled in the closet and they opened the door and they weren't even moving friends and I were sitting in the back room, and we heard what we thought was someone running up and down the stairs. My sister had just gotten home. We thought she was getting exercise. And when we asked her later, you know, while she was doing that, she thought we were running up and down the stairs. You know, five different people in different places heard the exact same thing, and it was no one confessed to doing it. So we assumed that was Robert. We had several people over. We were watching the Braves game. I thought I was the only one seeing it, and I didn't say anything. But a light about soccer ball size, neon yellow green in color, floated about knee-high out of my bathroom door,

across the hall and disappeared into the kitchen. And I was mesmerized. I didn't say anything. The instant it disappeared, everyone in the room was galvanized. It was, what was that? We've had a psychic come into the house. I guess if I felt like the psychic felt, I'd be real concerned. He's feeling things that we don't feel. And maybe if I felt those things that intensely, I would be very concerned. But I don't feel threatened. I don't feel any threat toward me or my family. People would always ask, how can you live there? Well, I mean I have to live here. I had to live here with my parents and there wasn't a threat, so we made the best of it. Uninhabited for many years, the Weaver House was built after the Civil War by William Weaver, who was educated in Europe.

While William was over there, he went up the Rhine to where his family was from, and during the trip, he noticed some castles and all on the Rhine, and he had kind of catalogued it in his head that when he got back to Selma, he was going to build him a house similar to a castle. William decided to build his house on that grove on top of that hill at the end of it, And he built the brick, made the bricks in a kiln behind the house, and all the wood used in the house came out of that grove that they were building it in. The house that's there now was the first stage of a two-stage building project. For some reason, the second stage never was done. One of Selma's founding families, prominent Weavers included artist Clara Weaver Parish.

Widowed for many years, Clara closed her New York studio in 1925 and planned to return to Selma. But she died while preparing for the trip. Restoration of the house is forthcoming and a construction crew storing materials here has witnessed strange occurrences. We had unloaded some lumber and everything, and all the lights was off in the house, you know, because we was going in the garage underneath, there was no lights on in the house. And so we left to go get another load of lumber, came back, and one of the middle rooms, I think it was the second floor, a light was shining, it was on, real bright, and we thought none of it, we just left it at that. But I don't think there's any electricity in the house. The strange light is not the only thing the crew has seen through the windows. When I got around to the other side of the house, I happened to look up.

And there was a female, a white female with long blonde hair. And she had on white. She was dressed in white. And I'm sure she was just staring. And so I was staring back at her. I'm not sure if she was backing away or just fading out. So we wanted to investigate. We ran back around, went up the stairs, and there was no one, you know, just an empty room. No way she could get in, no way she could get out. But once we got up there, she was gone, there was nobody. We saw her playing this day. This house needs the laughter of children again. Debbie Gresham says a voice convinced her to purchase this home, which was built by a former Confederate general following the Civil War.

One day on my lunch break I got with the realtor and I came down and looked at it and she put that key in the door, the front door, opening into the big hall and turned that key and I walked in and immediately I was communicated with and the communication was that you will buy this house, you will own this house, this house needs the laughter of children again. And from that point on, I just knew that this was it, that I would live in this house. I am Gerald. Gresham says the voice later identified itself as Gerald and became a playmate for her children. When we moved into the home, the children were two and four. And my son would start playing on the stairs a lot. He would start playing down at the bottom for a little while and then he would get real excited and go back up halfway up the stairs and he was only two and so at first I'd be

worried about him but then I realized he was playing with Gerald. Just talking away and having a great time. I have a shelf in the laundry room with a basket and a stuffed baby doll and a pitcher, a pottery pitcher and then there's a rod on the shelf with my great grandmother's quilt hung over one side and my husband's great grandmother's quilt hung over the other. One day I came home and the quilts were all pulled down and the pitcher was down in the floor on the rug and then the basket was on the floor in the rug and the doll was on the floor in the rug. All of them standing up straight right on the rug and it loves to slam the back door. The back door has a big piece of old glass in it and when it slams, it slams, it rattles and shakes the whole house. And that happens all the time. You can just door open and the door close. And we figure, well, he's either going in or coming out.

You just know Gerald's there because he just fills the room and he's communicating with you. He might be sitting in the rocking chair and the rocking chair will be rocking. There's two rocking chairs in front of the wood-burning stove. And it gets kind of cold in this house sometimes. And I suppose Gerald gets cold, too. But he'll sit in those rocking chairs in the wintertime especially, and one rocking chair will be rocking. But he used to wind up toys, little wind up toys, and play with the children, and all of a sudden there'd be just a little wind up toy coming across the road, or the floor, and you don't know where it came from, it just came. It was over there in the toy pile, and then now here it comes. He's a fun, loving, peaceful spirit that just dwells with us and keeps us all happy. Life would not have been as interesting without Gerald. Gerald has definitely brought interest and fun into this household. Grace Hall Bed and Breakfast is located in downtown Selma.

It was the mayor's home in 1865 and served as occupation headquarters for Union troops following the Battle of Selma. The spacious home was operated as a boarding house for many years by Miss Eliza Jones. It was a busy place and a happy home to many people until Miss Eliza's death. Coy and Joey Dillon restored the home as a bed and breakfast inn And many of their guests say they have been visited by the former owner, Miss Eliza. Some people come because of the ghost. Other people leave because of the ghost. We've actually had people say they can't stay here. And they don't even know there's a ghost here. We really don't greet you at the front door and say, Come on in, we're haunted. You know, we kind of downplay it. Unless someone that's making the reservation says, oh, you have a ghost, and they get excited, then that's fine.

But we have had people that have no idea, and at 10 o'clock at night, they'll knock on our door and say, I'm sorry, but I can't stay here. And we get another accommodation, of course. Miss Eliza looked like just a little old white-headed lady And she was in a white dress, and I saw someone going into a room. And then when I checked, there was nobody there. We had some people here that were writing a book about ghosts. And as I went out and cleaned their room, and they had moved different things, evidently trying to get the ghosts to appear to them. And when I came back in the house Ms. Eliza was evidently really upset. The stereo started playing, nobody turned it on. All day long doors slammed, there were just different things that happened.

So I think that whatever they did to try and draw her out made her angry. She seems to like young girls. I can honestly say that on twelve different occasions, young ladies have come to me talking about, and these are all different rooms, bedrooms all over the house, talking about a beautiful old lady in white that all of a sudden appears in their room in motions for them to come to her. On the other hand, I have had very professional men such as doctors, businessmen also tell of waking up and seeing an old lady standing there in white in their room, some of them wondering that, you know, she wandered in or wondering if she just wandered in and have no explanation but when they speak out of course she disappears. It's kind of

nice it's sometimes it's even fun because all of a sudden when something is spilled or something is mysteriously broken or you can't find something you just say miss Eliza did it. I think she likes what we've done to the house and And she knows how much I love it and how much we care about it and all of us. And we do have good times in our home. We do. And from my neighbor's description, this was always a place where people were very happy. So maybe she doesn't leave because it's still a happy place. Strange occurrences in this Selma home inspired newspaper reporter Catherine Tucker Wyndham to write a series of books that have thrilled readers of all ages since the 1960s.

Her children named their resident ghost, Jeffrey. I really became concerned over the fact that we were losing so many of the ghost stories. Television had come into our homes and people were not telling stories the way they once did. Families were not carrying on the storytelling tradition. And these great ghost stories that the older people knew were being lost because those were dying and the stories were dying with them because nobody had taken time to listen to the details and get all the stories historically accurate and do the stories justice and it just grieved me that we were losing these ghost stories by the hundreds and I always felt like I was on a to save ghost stories. And for a good many years I've traveled throughout the

South trying to save these stories that are such a rich part of our heritage. You know without Jeffrey I don't know what I'd be doing. Somebody asked my son Ben one day said, you know your mother writes those crazy ghost stories that surely you don't believe in ghosts. Ben said well they sent three of us to So, you know, I have to have some belief, and I do owe a great deal to Jeffrey here. Stretched the boundaries of my life and put me in touch with the most interesting people that I would never have met otherwise. He even went to Washington with me once and got in the Library of Congress and messed up their file and their card catalogs for the day that when everything was on computer there. They wrote me a letter on the official stationery from the Library of Congress asking me to please send for Jeffrey. These are all ghosts

that people have given me through the years. All kinds of ghosts are ceramic and wax candles, and one corn husk doll ghost. The ghost tales worldwide, so many of them have similarities. You hear the same story with slight variations. I think the phantom hitchhiker is the best example of that. That's told worldwide, the story of somebody who stops on a dreary, lonely night and sees a young girl by the road and stops and picks her up. She asks to be taken home. And when they get to the address she gives them, she's disappeared, not in the car anymore. They inquire and find out she's been

killed in an automobile accident on that spot years before and keeps trying to return home. I have heard that story nearly everywhere. I've ever told stories and Not long ago. Somebody sent me a clipping from a South African newspaper with that story in it So it had just happened there in South Africa And it's it's told worldwide. There are certain themes that run through and that's one of them the Phantom H I Bottle trees go way back in southern folklore and it is said that if you put empty bottles on the branches of a tree, blue glass bottle, it'll keep evil away because the evil spirits have a great deal of curiosity and when they see a bottle they want to go into the bottle and see what's there. And once they go into that bottle on the bottle tree,

they cannot find their way out. And so you are protected from the evil spirit. I've never seen a ghost. And actually, you do not have to believe in ghosts to enjoy a good ghost story. Doesn't matter whether you believe in ghosts or not. All old river towns have unusually good ghost stories, and more ghost stories than most other places. Why that's true, I do not know, but it never fails. All old river towns have treasures of ghost stories. I think it's the fact that we really don't know nearly everything we have a scientific explanation for and we're pretty sure about things, but we're not quite sure about cost. For a videotape of this program, send a check or money order for $21 to the University of

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