Case file · Apparition · Public building

Pickens County Courthouse (The Face in the Window)

Also known as The Face in the Courthouse Window, Face of Henry Wells, Carrollton courthouse ghost

A face said to be fixed in a courthouse attic window since 1878 – a legend that grew out of the real, violent death of a freedman named Henry Wells.

The red-brick courthouse in Carrollton, the seat of Pickens County in west Alabama, is the county’s third. The first was burned by Union troops in 1865; its replacement burned on the night of 16 November 1876, almost certainly by an arsonist. The present building went up during 1877 and was nearly finished by January 1878. In one of its small upper garret windows, visitors can make out a smudge in the glass that, from the right angle, looks like a man’s face peering out.

The popular legend, spread widely by Kathryn Tucker Windham’s 1969 collection 13 Alabama Ghosts and Jeffrey, says the face belongs to Henry Wells, a Black man accused of burning the old courthouse. In the usual telling he was hiding in the garret from a lynch mob, cursed the town, and a flash of lightning burned his image into the pane at the moment of his death.

The record tells a harsher and more ordinary story. Henry Wells was a freedman living near Carrollton. After an accomplice named Bill Burkhalter was captured in January 1878 and blamed him for the fire, Wells was arrested near Fairfield on 29 January and shot twice while trying to run. A “confession” was taken from him the next day, almost certainly under duress, and he died of his wounds on 3 February 1878. The county paid seven dollars for his coffin; where he is buried is not known.

Researchers checking the local newspaper, the West Alabamian, found that windows were only being fitted in the courtroom later that February, and the garret windows weeks after Wells had died – so the story cannot be literally true. The legend also seems to have absorbed a separate event, the September 1877 lynching of a white prisoner, Nathaniel Pierce, taken from the Carrollton jail by a mob.

The tale sits against a grim background. Pickens County recorded fifteen lynchings of African Americans between Reconstruction and 1917, among them five people shot in their cells by a white mob in September 1893. Some historians suggest that the image of Wells returning to accuse the town is, at heart, a story about guilt. The Alabama Historical Association put up a marker in 1974, and the town has since added a sign pointing to the pane.

What people report

The “phenomenon” is a single pane in an upper garret window that, seen from the street, shows a blurred shape many people read as a face. It looks more face-like from some angles than others, and it is said to be visible only from outside – from inside, the glass looks ordinary.

Where and when

One of the small garret windows high on the courthouse, viewed from the street; a reflective sign with an arrow marks the pane, and fixed binoculars across the street help visitors find it. Daylight gives the clearest view.

Timeline of the haunting

16 November 1876
The second courthouse burns Carrollton, Alabama
Pickens County’s new courthouse was destroyed by fire, reported at the time as the work of an incendiary. Henry Wells and Bill Burkhalter were later suspected, along with a store robbery the same night.
3 February 1878
Henry Wells dies of gunshot wounds Carrollton, Alabama
Shot twice while fleeing arrest on 29 January, Wells died five days later after giving a sworn statement admitting the arson. The courthouse windows where the face is said to appear had not yet been installed.
30 December 1927
Hailstorm breaks a garret pane Carrollton, Alabama
According to a contemporary newspaper report cited by researcher P.J. Gossett, a “dreadful hailstorm” broke another pane in the garret window – one more reason researchers doubt the pane people point to is original, though local lore insists the face survived every storm.
1969
Windham makes the face famous Alabama
Kathryn Tucker Windham’s 13 Alabama Ghosts and Jeffrey told the lightning-and-curse version of the story, which became the standard account repeated in guidebooks and on television.
1974
Historical marker erected Carrollton, Alabama
The Alabama Historical Association placed a marker at the courthouse describing the building’s history and the legend of the face in the window.

What could explain it?

Pareidolia: the brain readily finds faces in random patterns, and a flaw or stain in old glass seen from below at an angle is a classic trigger.
Old glass: nineteenth-century panes often contain bubbles, ripples and mineral deposits that catch the light and look like images.
Chronology: newspaper records show the garret windows were installed after Henry Wells died, so his face could not have been fixed in them at his death.
Conflated history: the legend appears to merge Wells’s shooting with the separate lynching of Nathaniel Pierce, turning two real deaths into one ghost story.

Ghost tours, books and screen

The face is one of Alabama’s most retold ghost stories, a staple of Kathryn Tucker Windham’s storytelling and of school trips and roadside tourism in west Alabama. When the courthouse faced replacement in 2001 a public campaign helped save the building and its famous pane.

Places to visit

Pickens County Courthouse Carrollton, Alabama

The window can be viewed from the street across from the courthouse, where a sign points out the pane.

Where it’s reported

Alabama