Haunted Histories in 5 American Towns

History is everywhere - even in ghost stories. Every town has their local tales of ghostly happenings. They are passed on from person to person through generations. Many cities have ghost tours that squire people around to buildings, homes and parks in their area. These tours tell of paranormal activity and strange experiences. Everyone loves to be scared a little. But behind all ghost stories is history. The history of real people, real places and real events.

Ghost tours are a great way to learn local history that may not be in history books or even on the internet. Whether you believe in ghost stories or not, there is so much history to be gleaned from them. This history can allow us to see our cities with new eyes. Here are five American towns and some of their haunted history.

Angie Grandstaff explains.

Ichabod pursued by the Headless Horseman, a depiction from the 1820 book The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Irving Washington.

The Oldest City - St. Augustine, Florida

Facts about St. Augustine:

• It was the first permanent European settlement in America. Established in 1565

• It was burnt to the ground by Sir Francis Drake in 1586 but was rebuilt

• The Castillo de San Marcos was a fort constructed in 1672 to help defend against attacks

• It is the home of the oldest wooden schoolhouse in America

The oldest city has many local ghost stories. Its black and white striped lighthouse is supposedly haunted by several specters. The St. Augustine lighthouse opened in 1874. Many caretakers lived and worked here. This historic lighthouse has many spooky stories associated with it including a man seen walking up and down the spiral staircase. He is dressed in a blue jacket and mariner’s cap. Visitors say they smell cigar smoke although it is a smoke free building. Some people think it is either lighthouse caretakers, William Russel or Joseph Andreu. Joseph Andreu fell to his death while painting the lighthouse in 1859. A woman has been seen by visitors on the catwalk looking down. Locals say it is the ghostly specter of Andreu’s wife looking at where her husband’s body must have lain after his deathly fall. His wife, Maria Mestre de Los Dolores, took Joseph’s job after he died. She was the first woman to serve in the Coast Guard and the first Hispanic American woman to command a federal shore installation. This was a huge achievement at the time.

The Casablanca Inn, formerly The Matanzas Hotel, is a historic hotel with a waterfront view and ghostly residents. Many locals and visitors have reported seeing a female apparition waving a lantern or just a waving light at night in a window or on the roof. The story behind this starts in the early 1900’s. The Casablanca Inn was a popular hangout spot for smugglers. A Ms. Bradshaw owned the hotel and was struggling to stay afloat during Prohibition. So, she took advantage of her smuggler connections and her prime location near the ocean to make some money. Ms. Bradshaw worked with bootleggers by giving them a place to store their illegal alcohol and being their local lookout. She would wave a lantern at a window on the second floor at night to signal bootleggers. This would let them know the coast was all clear for them to come ashore with their illegal spirits. This Inn saw several dangerous characters and shady happenings. A woman, possibly Ms. Bradshaw herself, and a child have been seen floating around the Inn. There are other stories of disembodied voices and misty fogs from customers and staff.      

Historic Harbor Town - Charleston, South Carolina

Facts about Charleston:

• It was named Charles Town after King Charles II

• It is estimated that 40% of enslaved Africans arrived in North America through Charleston’s harbor

• It was devastated by an earthquake in 1886

• It is nicknamed the Holy City for its tolerance of all religions

Charleston has spooky happenings all over the city particularly in its oldest building, The Old Exchange. There are many accounts of hearing screams and moans of pain coming from the bottom floor of this building. Chains still on the walls of the bottom floor have been seen to swing on their own. The sound of clinking chains has been heard by visitors and workers. Ghostly apparitions in Revolutionary War clothes have been seen roaming the building. There must be some interesting history behind these stories. The Old Exchange was built in 1771. It served as a public marketplace and custom house. Slave auctions were held here as well. So, what happened on the bottom floor of this building? Turns out it was used by the British during the American Revolution as a prison and was known as the Provost Dungeon. Prisoners were chained to the walls and left to die. Conditions were horrendous and prisoners were treated cruelly. Many prisoners waited for their execution in this dungeon including pirates and Revolutionary War traitors. The infamous Stede Bonnet, a gentleman pirate, was captured and held with his crew in this prison until their executions. 

Charleston had another prison called the Old City Jail. This jail was built in 1802 and was used until 1939. Among its prisoners were pirates, Civil War prisoners and a woman considered the first female serial killer in America, Lavinia Fisher. Fisher and her husband John owned a local inn. They drugged and murdered travelers who stayed with them. Husband and wife were eventually convicted and spent their final days in the Old City Jail. Lavinia went to the hangman’s noose reportedly saying, “If you have a message for the devil, give it to me and I’ll carry it”. Many inmates died in this jail from mistreatment, disease and starvation. Not surprisingly, there have been stories from visitors and locals about strange happenings. Stories about objects moving, whispering voices and slamming doors are just the beginning for this jail. When the building was closed for renovation in 2000, workers encountered a ghostly jailer who ran at them before disappearing and footsteps in the dust of a sealed off area.

The Legendary Sleepy Hollow

Facts about Sleepy Hollow:

• It has a long history dating back to the 1600s

• There have been witches, mad monks, Revolutionary War traitors and pirates connected to this little village

• The great American ghost story, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, written by Sleepy Hollow resident, Washington Irving

• The Sleepy Hollow Cemetery is the final resting place for many historical figures such as Andrew Carnegie, Washington Irving, Elizabeth Arden, Rockefeller family members and the Queen of Mean Leona Helmsley

This sleepy Dutch village is the home of the Headless Horseman and a spooky cemetery. One of the cemetery’s spookiest residents is the Bronzed Lady. Locals have many tales involving the bronze statue of a woman who sits outside the mausoleum of Samuel Thomas. Many believe the Bronzed Lady can curse you if you touch her. She has been heard weeping by many. Some residents have stories of touching her face and feeling wet tears. The history behind these ghostly encounters starts with millionaire and Civil War General, Samuel Thomas. Thomas died in 1903 and was laid to rest in a mausoleum in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. His widow, Ann, wanted something to place outside the mausoleum to further commemorate her husband’s life so she commissioned sculptor, Andrew O’Connor Jr., to create a bronze sculpture. The sculptor created a huge bronze statue of a woman sitting. Ann felt the woman’s face was too sad and downcast. She asked for something happier. O’Connor created a new head which pleased Ann but the temperamental artist smashed it to pieces and used the original more downcast head. The sculpture was still placed outside her husband’s mausoleum.  

Another historic haunt is Sunnyside, the home of Washington Irving. It is visited by thousands of tourists every year. Irving moved into this home in 1835. He was America’s first celebrity author, and his home was in magazines and guidebooks while he lived there. His four nieces lived with him and ran the household. This home saw many notable visitors and lively meetings with Irving and his literary friends. Irving died at Sunnyside in his bedroom in 1859. Visitors and workers have claimed to witness paranormal activity in the house and on the grounds. There have been photographs taken with ghostly images appearing in them. Visitors have said they felt pinched while touring the house and ghostly apparitions of young women have been seen tidying the home. Could these young women be Washington’s nieces?

Georgia’s Oldest City - Savannah, Georgia

Facts about Savannah:

• Savannah became the first planned city. It was laid out in a grid pattern with wide streets and public squares

• Savannah has been devastated by several fires and yellow fever epidemics

• The Girl Scouts were founded by Savannah resident, Juliette Gordon Low

• The famous bus stop scene from the movie Forrest Gump was filmed in Savannah

One of Savannah’s oldest buildings is The Pirate House. It is now a busy restaurant but it started as an inn and tavern built around 1753. The inn was frequented by pirates. There are tales of underground tunnels that led to the Savannah River. Pirates supposedly kidnapped drunk men and forced them into service as crew members on their ships. This inn was so famous for its pirate clientele that author Robert Louis Stevenson used it as a setting in his book, Treasure Island. There are many accounts of ghostly apparitions moving through the building. Visitors post pictures online of these ghosts looking out through the windows. Employees have seen the ghost of a menacing sailor and hear footsteps when they are alone in the building.

Savannah has a couple famous cemeteries including the Colonial Park Cemetery. It is the oldest in the city established in 1750. It is called the most haunted place in the city. Reports of mysterious sounds, shadowy figures, green mists and a man hanging from a tree have been given by locals and visitors. What is the history that could lead to these eerie tales? This cemetery has many mass graves from those times when yellow fever hit the city. Savannah dealt with many yellow fever epidemics because of the swampy areas that were breeding grounds for the mosquitos who transmitted it. Another spooky aspect of this cemetery is the fact that voodoo cemeteries were held there at night. Human bones would sometimes be used in these ceremonies which makes a cemetery ideal as a setting. The hanging man apparition may be Rene Rondolier who supposedly lived in Savannah during the early 1800's. Rondolier was accused of murdering a young girl and was lynched by locals in the Colonial Park Cemetery in 1821.    

Queen City - Cincinnati, Ohio

Facts about Cincinnati:

• It was known as the “Queen City of the West” because it served as a stopping point for many settlers heading West

• It was also known as “Porkopolis” because it was a major pork processing center in the early 1800s

• In 1880, there were 1800 saloons in the city

• It has three miles of an abandoned subway beneath its streets

Cincinnati has many haunted places including the beautiful Eden Park. This park started as a vineyard but was bought by the city in 1869. The lands held a reservoir for the city at one point and a famous gazebo was built there in 1904. There are several stories from locals about seeing a ghostly female dressed all in black around the gazebo and nearby Mirror Lake at dawn or dusk. Photographs showing a shadowy figure have been shared. What could be behind the woman in black? Many think the woman in black is Imogene Remus. Imogene was the wife of George Remus, the King of Bootleggers. George was a former lawyer who created a very successful bootlegging operation in Cincinnati until he was arrested for tax evasion in 1925. While George was in prison, Imogene filed for divorce. After his release the couple headed to court on October 6, 1927. George had his cab follow Imogene’s car and drove her off the road in front of the gazebo in Eden Park. Imogene and her daughter were in the car. George fatally shot Imogene. George represented himself in court and successfully used the plea of temporary insanity.     

The Cincinnati Music Hall was built in 1878. This Victorian Gothic style building is the musical center for the city and is known to be one of the most haunted buildings in America. Security guards, conductors and other employees have given many accounts of paranormal activity. Soldiers have been seen walking around as well as children in period dress. Music is heard playing in the middle of the night along with doors opening and closing, knocking throughout the building. What happened here that would lead to all these stories? It turns out the land that the Music Hall is built on was once the grounds for a Lunatic and Orphan Asylum as well as a ‘plague house’ with a pauper’s cemetery attached. A plague or pest house was where those afflicted with communicable diseases were treated. The plague house was moved and a military hospital was established during the Civil War. Whenever this land has been excavated or building renovated hundreds of pounds of human bones have been unearthed. The most recent renovation in 2017 led to the discovery of more human remains.      

What do you think of these haunted histories? Let us know below.

Now read Angie’s article on 5 of the oldest breweries in the USA here.

Angie Grandstaff is a writer and librarian. She loves to write about history, books and self-development. 

Resources

St. Augustine

https://www.legendsofamerica.com/fl-staugustine/

https://ghostcitytours.com/st-augustine/haunted-places/st-augustine-lighthouse/

https://ghostcitytours.com/st-augustine/haunted-places/casablanca-inn/

Charleston

https://www.legendsofamerica.com/sc-charleston/

https://www.oldexchange.org/highlights

https://www.scpictureproject.org/charleston-county/old-city-jail.html

Sleepy Hollow

https://www.sleepyhollowny.gov/discover-sleepy-hollow-ny/pages/history-of-the-village

https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/nation/2021/10/25/sleepy-hollow-ghosts-bronze-lady-new-york/6175251001/

https://www.haunted-places-to-go.com/sleepy-hollow.html

https://visitingamuseum.com/2019/11/09/washington-irvings-sunnyside-3-west-sunnyside-lane-irvington-ny-10533/

Savannah 

https://www.visitsavannah.com/article/history-savannah

https://www.southernbellevacationrentals.com/blog/attractions/pirate-secrets-savannah-coast#:~:text=The%20U.S.%20Navy%20acquired%20the,an%20inn%20for%20visiting%20sailors.

https://www.travelchannel.com/destinations/us/ga/savannah/articles/haunted-savannah

https://ghostcitytours.com/savannah/haunted-places/colonial-park-cemetery/

Cincinnati

http://ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Cincinnati,_Ohio

https://cincinnatipreservation.org/haunted-spring-house-gazebo-in-eden-park/

https://www.onlyinyourstate.com/ohio/hauntingly-beautiful-music-hall-oh/

Communism and Race in the 1930s Deep South

The Deep South has a history of racial animosity, but what happened when somebody tried to unite whites and blacks? Well, in Great Depression era Atlanta, Angelo Herndon tried to do just that. And he did so as a committed Communist. Bennett H. Parten returns to the site and explains what happened when the authorities tried to prosecute Herndon under an antiquated law…

General Research Division, The New York Public Library. (1926 - 1947). Let me live : the autobiography of Angelo Herndon. Retrieved from http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47db-d7dc-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99

Atlanta, Georgia is an anomaly, if not an oxymoron. It’s a commercial and industrial oasis in the middle of an agricultural desert, a regional capitol with an international profile, and an emblem of the Old South with an insatiable appetite for modernity. In the early 1930s, the city’s exceptionality emerged again as it somehow juggled being both a hub for Communist activity and a bastion of conservatism. The city, sadly, could only juggle this thorny coexistence for so long.

Fueled by civic boosterism and an influx of Northern capital, Atlanta experienced a period of rapid growth during the first few decades of the 20th century; however, the dawning of the Great Depression brought the engines churning industrial development to a screeching halt. As a result, unemployment lines swelled, the number of homeless grew, and wages were cut, leaving many to survive off of the city’s limited relief budget.

Enter Angelo Herndon. Born in Ohio, Herndon arrived in Atlanta by way of Kentucky and Alabama. While working for the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company in Birmingham, he was exposed to Communism through various labor organizers drifting through the Deep South. Officially joining the party in 1930, Herndon became an organizer and gained a degree of notoriety in Alabama, prompting a string of arrests and his eventual migration to Atlanta.

A volatile city

By the time he arrived in 1932, Atlanta’s relief situation had reached boiling point. The city’s relief budget was exhausted and payments were suspended. A number of citizens pushed the county commissioners to alter the budget so that there was more relief funding, but a number of commissioners believed the level of suffering in the city had been exaggerated, demanding that evidence of such hunger and starvation be proven before altering the budget. In a show of force, Herndon organized and led a “hunger” march on the courthouse in Atlanta that, by the time it was finished, accrued close to 1,000 angry workers demanding a continuation of the relief payments.

Never before had the city seen such a concerted statement on behalf of its working men and women. The march frightened Atlanta’s conservative commercial elite, revealing to them just how volatile and unstable the city had become. What frightened them the most, however, was the social make-up of the marchers. Poor whites as well as poor blacks marched step by step with one another, breaking Jim Crow South’s rigid social hierarchy. Interracial class solidarity on the part of the working men and women would, in the eyes of the business elite, only breed more discontent and challenge the city’s traditional conservative political leadership.

Their response was to simply destroy the movement by attacking where they believed it began: the Communists. Atlanta police began targeting suspected organizers and kept a watchful eye on the post office since the only piece of evidence on the leaflets used to announce the protest was a return address marked P.O. Box 339. Eleven days after the march, on July 11, 1932, Angelo Herndon was arrested while retrieving mail from the box in question.

Herndon was formally charged by an all-white grand jury with “attempting to incite insurrection” under an old statute originally designed to prevent slave insurrections. He received legal counsel from the International Labor Defense, better known as the ILD, whom placed noted Atlanta attorneys Benjamin Davis Jr, the son of a prominent Atlanta newspaper editor and Republican politician, and John Geer at the head of the Herndon case. The two young black lawyers designed a defense that sought to attack the constitutionality of the antiquated insurrection law and Georgia’s judiciary system by calling into question Georgia’s informal practice of excluding African Americans from serving on juries; Herndon’s defense would thus be one that would attempt to strike a major blow to the justice system’s role in preserving Georgia’s Jim Crow laws in addition to exonerating Herndon.

The trial

But Georgia’s seasoned justice system would not go down without a fight. As the trial commenced, the defense team set its sights toward the legality of all-white grand juries like the one that indicted Herndon. All of the witnesses testified that there had not been a black participant on a grand jury in recent memory, but in the absence of proof that African Americans had been systematically excluded, Judge Wyatt, whom Davis had said “used the law with respect to Negroes like a butcher wielding a knife to kill a lamb,” would not be moved (Davis 62-63). The legal team left the courtroom after the first day in an air of defeat.

The second day started off much better for the defense. The duo of Greer and Davis, with the help of attorneys A.T. Walden and T.J. Henry, launched an attack on the prospective jurors, getting one to confess to Ku Klux Klan membership. The team eventually landed on twelve jurors deemed suitable. The charge of insurrection was then debated. Atlanta policemen Frank Watson was the first to testify, reading off a list of items found in Herndon’s room. The list included rather harmless materials such as membership and receipt books, but Herndon did possess two books, George Padmore’s The Life and Struggles of Negro Toilers and William Montgomery Brown’s Communism and Christianism, that emphasized the Communist Party’s policy of self-determination for the South’s “Black Belt”, a stretch of land in the heart of the Deep South that housed large numbers of African Americans. The prosecutor, accompanied by a large map of Georgia, pointed out to the jury that under this policy a large majority of the state would fall under black political leadership, all but destroying the state’s white political stranglehold. But even with this evidence, Davis’s cross examination of Watson revealed that Watson never actually witnessed Herndon distribute radical literature or give a speech with revolutionary intent; Watson had merely seen Herndon checking his mail.

When Angelo Herndon took the stand, the momentum won with the Watson cross-examination again shifted away from the defense. In the witness stand, Herndon unleashed quite an oration, one more idealistic than inflammatory. He unabashedly emphasized the interracial aims of the party, pointing out the immense levels of suffering of both poor whites and poor blacks. He described the horrid conditions of the Fulton County jail, claiming that he had to share a jail cell with a dead man whom was denied proper medical treatment. His most radical claims, though, were made when he blamed the capitalist regime for race baiting, constantly pitting white versus black as a substitute for the natural animosities between the rich and the poor. Needless to say, Herndon’s own testimony did not do him any favors with the jury.

Closing the trial

As for the closing remarks, each of the four attorneys—two defense counselors and two prosecutors—took turns. When it came time, Benjamin Davis, vaunted for his oratory skills, released an emotional critique of the justice Herndon had been served. He charged that Herndon had simply been attempting to better the conditions of Atlanta’s working people in a peaceful way as the march on the courthouse was not violent nor did it cause any harm. According to Davis, Herndon was charged not for inciting insurrection but for being black, and his attempts to unite both races for the common welfare should be lauded. Davis’s remarks drew ire from the whites in the courtroom as well as those in the jury. Whenever he approached the jury box during his summation some of the jurors refused to listen and turned their backs on him. Davis, unfazed, went on. He read from one of the radical pamphlets found in Herndon’s possession that described the lynching and burning of a pregnant black woman. The description was so graphic and Davis’s dramatization so intense, one spectator fainted.

His summation hinged on the inherent irony of supposed “justice” in Georgia: a peaceful interracial Communist protest was condemned as insurrectionary while the justice system turned a blind eye to lynchings and other forms of racial oppression. He concluded his remarks by stating that if a guilty verdict was served, it would be derived only from the “basest passion of race prejudice”, and such a verdict would be “making scraps of paper out of the Bill of Rights” and the Constitutions of both the United States and Georgia (Herndon 351-354). Sadly, such an impassioned plea for justice was rendered fruitless as the white jury found Herndon guilty as charged.

But the battle was not over. Almost immediately, Davis and company submitted their appeal. Over the course of five years, their appeals garnered almost no headway at the national or local level. Finally, in 1937, with his case in the national spotlight—and Let Me Live, Herndon’s newly published autobiography on the bookshelves of civil libertarians and liberal thinkers nationwide—the Supreme Court struck down Georgia’s insurrection stature, arguing that it violated the First Amendment. Herndon was exonerated, and Georgia, a bastion of white conservatism, was forced to release an avowed Communist and radical interracial labor organizer. Jim Crow obviously did not die with Angelo Herndon, but his victory stood as a major blow to conservative Georgia’s ability to deal out so called “justice” in the courtroom.

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Bibliography

Davis, Benjamin J. Communist Councilman from Harlem: Autobiographical Notes Written In A Federal Penitentiary. New York: International Publishers, 1991.

Hatfield, Edward A. "Angelo Herndon Case." New Georgia Encyclopedia. 03 December 2013. Web. 30 June 2015.

Herndon, Angelo. Let Me Live. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007.

Martin, Charles H. The Angelo Herndon Case and Southern Justice. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1976. 

The Great Powers – 117-second History

I thought that I would be refreshing my knowledge for this blog post. But, it would be much more than that. The Great Powers blog post took me back to the depths of organized civilization. I mused, “that’s history in a nut-shell – it goes very far back.”

That is a very obvious thing to think.

Personally, I’ve read about the great powers, most notably in Paul Kennedy’s classic, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (Amazon US | Amazon UK), but what I didn’t realize were the sheer number of Great Powers over the centuries, especially in the pre-European age (by which I mean, the age before Christopher Columbus discovered the Americas). Sure, I was aware of the Mongols and the great Ancient Empires, but there are so many powerful empires in history.

The history of the Great Powers is truly a history of the world. Even in a world as disconnected as that of 100AD. Of course, in 100AD it was hard for leaders to control territory as effectively as they do now, or to quickly send armies to far flung parts of the globe, but nonetheless there were Great Empires that controlled large parts of the densely populated parts of the earth.

There were great Ancient Empires in many parts of Asia, from Babylonia in the Middle East to China in the Far East, while there were also several great African Empires amongst others.

And then I remembered

I’ve been fortunate enough to travel quite a bit to some of the lesser visited regions of the globe. And soon enough, it hit me. I remembered learning about some of these kingdoms. Take the Axumite Kingdom (or the Kingdom of Aksum). It consisted of parts of several modern-day countries in Africa and the Middle East, and came into being sometime around 100AD. I visited the town of Axum, in northern Ethiopia, the former capital. The main site that remains from the days of the Axumite Kingdom is a series of stelae in many fields within and around the town. While there I was told about Axum’s Ancient glories, but it was hard to recognize that this was the center of a truly Great Power. It was only when I started to read more about it that I understood its importance as a base between modern-day Egypt and India.

The same thing happened when I visited Georgia (the country, not the state!). While there I was told of it’s (albeit quite brief) glorious age, but again I found myself surprised on finding out about its regional influence during the Georgian Golden Age around the year 1200.

Not truly Great Powers, but..

A great power can be defined as a country that has significant extra-territorial influence, but there is a problem that I have when thinking about countries such as Georgia in the year 1200 as Great Powers. And this is in spite of being well-read in the European Great Powers over the past centuries.

The problem is the Cold War. I compare such powers to the USSR and USA, and think of how little influence they actually had outside of their own regions. But, that is why the USA and USSR were known as super-powers, not merely Great Powers.

There’s most certainly a lesson here. History stretches back a very long way and just because things are as they are now, it doesn’t mean they’ve always been that way. By which I mean, the word super-power was coined for a reason.

Anyway, the point of this blog post was to provide an introduction to the two powers in the Cold War as an introduction to some posts covering topics in the Cold War. I guess that I will have to do a post on the super-powers first now.

“Oh, why must history go so very far back?”, I just lamented.

Is there a Great Power that intrigues you?

If so, please tell us a little about it so that we can learn something from you!

George Levrier-Jones

This post was written as part of a regular series of (sometimes) humorous introductions to topics in history as part of ‘117-second History’.

We discuss how the USA and USSR emerged as Great Powers (or super-powers), in our book, “Cold War History - To the brink of nuclear destruction - From World War 2 to the Cuban Missile Crisis - Part 1: 1945-1962 (Required History)” - available by clicking here.