State file · AL
Haunted places in Alabama
What are the most haunted places in Alabama? The best-known are Sloss Furnaces, Pickens County Courthouse (The Face in the Window) and Boyington Oak.
Alabama’s ghost lore owes an enormous debt to one storyteller. Kathryn Tucker Windham, a Selma journalist, gathered the state’s old family tales and county legends into 13 Alabama Ghosts and Jeffrey in 1969 and a string of sequels, and her versions – the face in the Carrollton courthouse window, the oak on Charles Boyington’s grave in Mobile, the restless worker at Birmingham’s blast furnaces – are still the ones most people know.
- 3 hauntings
- 12 recorded sightings
Haunted places in Alabama
Sloss Furnaces
Birmingham’s preserved blast furnaces, where workers’ ghosts are said to walk – though the site itself says its most famous ghost was invented. Regional legend
Pickens County Courthouse (The Face in the Window)
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. Regional legend
Boyington Oak
A live oak in Mobile said to have grown from the grave of Charles Boyington, hanged in 1835 for a murder he swore he did not commit. Local legendThe ghost lore of Alabama
Behind many of those stories lies hard history: antebellum courtrooms and public hangings, the plantations and river ports of the Black Belt, Civil War occupation, and the industrial boom that made Birmingham the iron city of the South on the backs of underpaid and convict labourers. The best Alabama ghost stories are worth reading alongside that record, because the record often tells a darker truth than the legend – and sometimes shows the legend was invented outright.
Ghost hunters gravitate to Mobile’s old cemeteries and downtown streets, Huntsville’s historic districts, the ruins of the former state capital at Old Cahawba, and the preserved furnaces of Sloss in Birmingham. Most of these are public places with daytime access and organised evening tours; private plantation houses and closed buildings should be enjoyed from the road.
Ghost-hunting hotspots
- Downtown Mobile
The state’s oldest city, with Church Street Graveyard, antebellum houses and regular ghost walks through its historic districts.
- Old Cahawba
Alabama’s first state capital, now an archaeological park of ruins and empty streets that features in several of Kathryn Tucker Windham’s ghost stories.
- Huntsville’s Twickenham and Maple Hill Cemetery
Huntsville’s antebellum district and its historic city cemetery are fixtures of the local autumn ghost-tour season.
- Birmingham’s industrial core
Sloss Furnaces and the city’s old railroad and steel districts carry legends rooted in the hard lives of iron and steel workers.
- Selma
Windham’s home town, with Civil War sites, old homes and a cemetery-rich history that fed many of her collected tales.
Timeline
- 16 November 1876The second courthouse burns Pickens County Courthouse (The Face in the Window)
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 1878Henry Wells dies of gunshot wounds Pickens County Courthouse (The Face in the Window)
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.
- April 1882First blast at Sloss Sloss Furnaces
The first of Sloss’s two blast furnaces was put into operation, beginning almost nine decades of pig-iron production. The workforce, largely Black and poorly paid, laboured in some of the most dangerous conditions in Southern industry.
- Late 1880sThe Jowers story begins at Alice Furnace Sloss Furnaces
According to Birmingham folklore retold by Kathryn Tucker Windham and Alan Brown, worker Theophilus Calvin Jowers died in an accident at the nearby Alice Furnace. Later tellings say his ghost moved to Sloss after the Alice furnaces were dismantled.
- 30 December 1927Hailstorm breaks a garret pane Pickens County Courthouse (The Face in the Window)
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.
- 1969Windham makes the face famous Pickens County Courthouse (The Face in the Window)
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.
- 1971The furnaces go cold Sloss Furnaces
Under owner Jim Walter Corporation, Sloss closed amid tougher air-pollution rules and outdated equipment. The property was donated for use as a museum after preservationists campaigned against demolition.
- 1974Historical marker erected Pickens County Courthouse (The Face in the Window)
The Alabama Historical Association placed a marker at the courthouse describing the building’s history and the legend of the face in the window.
- 14 November 2008Ghost Adventures investigates Sloss Furnaces
The Travel Channel series devoted an early first-season episode to Sloss, presenting it as haunted by dead ironworkers. Sloss staff later said the crew had picked up the Fright Furnace team’s invented “Slag” legend and treated it as fact.
- November 2019A book reopens the case Boyington Oak
Mary S. Palmer published The Boyington Oak: A Grave Injustice, arguing the trial was flawed. Local television interviewed the city’s urban forester, who estimated the tree’s age at 150 to 200 years.
- 2020Legends & Lore marker unveiled Boyington Oak
The Alabama Folklife Association and the William G. Pomeroy Foundation placed a historical marker at the oak recording the legend and its claim of Boyington’s innocence.
- October 2023Sloss disowns the “Slag” legend Sloss Furnaces
After HGTV listed Sloss as Alabama’s creepiest place, executive director David Arias told local outlet Bham Now that the Wormwood story was not true and had been created to promote the haunted house, which had ended in 2019.
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