The Haunting of Sherrod House

This story is one I am revisiting.  I posted this early on when I had very low traffic to the blog and I don't think many people read it.  I love this story so I'm giving it a second run.  A friend of mine who lives in a small town in South Alabama sent me the most wonderful pictures. In the one too the left if you look carefully you can see the face of a ghost staring out at you.   She moved into her century old home a few years ago and when she first moved into the house it was haunted by an irritating spirit. My friend sent me the story of her haunted house and since I don't think I could possibly tell the story as well as she does I have placed it in quotes and put it word for word here.


"The house was built in 1906, and is known as "the Warren House," although there is some dispute over who built the house. The Coles or the Warrens. Because of this dispute, we decided to put the name "Sherrod House" on our historical register sign. Next door is the McCleod house, built in 1903. When we moved here, 2 elderly McCleod sisters remained. Their story varied at times, but this is the best we could come up with from them.

In 1906 the Cole family (allegedly) built the house. Sadly, they died while their children were still young, perhaps in the flu epidemic of 1918. Naomi Cole, and perhaps some of her siblings, went next door and were raised by the McCleods. When she was old enough, Naomi married a man, Mr. Warren, and moved back into her family home. When her husband passed, and her children moved, she turned the house into a boarding house, and many of the people in our town have memories of living here, or visiting their grandparents here, etc. Naomi left (died?) sometime in the early 1970's. Incredibly, the house stood vacant until we bought it in 2003.

When we first bought the house, we loved it. It needed a lot of work- but we could see it's potential. My great grandmother was just moving into a nursing home, and we were blessed enough to get her old furniture. We visited the house at least once a month, while still living in Huntsville.

Almost immediately, we felt a presence, but weren't too threatened by it. We would hear things in the middle of the night. Footsteps in the hallway, that sounded like a man's boots, slow and steady. We would groggily awaken, think to ourselves, "oh, he's just checking up on things," and fall back asleep. I don't know why we were so sure that it was ok, but we were. At other times we would hear the back door open. We would go to check it, and it would still be dead bolted.

The activity began to become more common, to the point of where Michael and I were almost too spooked to stay in the house alone. A photo frame in the living room lifted itself from the mantle and flew across the room. One night, while MIchael and I were asleep, we heard very heavy determined foot stomping, across the length of the foot of our bed. It felt strongly like the spirit was trying to wake us up. Not knowing what else to do, Michael sat up in bed, said "Stop that! You'll wake the children!" The stomping stopped, and never happened again. But on another night, Michael woke up to someone pressing down on his chest. It took him a minute or two of struggling to sit up and breathe. It felt like something was trying to get our attention.

On one night we allowed Chloe to have a friend spend the night. All 4 older children slept in the boys room, which has a closet that connects it to Lily's room. The children woke us in the middle of the night. "The ghosts are bothering us." Not wanting to scare them, we assured them that there was "no such thing as ghosts," and sought to calm them down. We all went back to bed. Early in the morning, I woke to find the kids terrified in the room. I tried to settle them down again. I looked into the mirror above the fireplace, directly beside the closet, which was latched shut with a hook and eye closure. I told them "There is no such thing as ghosts!" The minute I said that, the hook very slowly released itself from the eye, as if by an unseen hand. Then the closet door swung open and and a burst of icy air came rushing out. I looked at the kids, there was no denying ghosts now I supposed!

Soon after this incident, we moved into the house full time. Lily was 3 years old at the time. At night, before going to bed, Lily would complain that there was a "grey lady" watching her. She always pointed to the same corner of the room, and told us that the grey lady would stand there when she was trying to sleep. Finally, in an effort to calm her, we began talking to the grey lady at bedtime. We asked her to please let Lily sleep in peace. After a week or so, this seemed to work, and that was the end of all the activity.

We feel now, that whatever was haunting the house is not here anymore. The "presence" is gone. We never felt threatened, only a little spooked, and for some reason, we always felt like the spirits (one man, one woman, is what we felt) were just checking up on things. They seemed to want to know that the house would be taken care of. They seemed attracted to the children. I feel like they have accepted us here, and have moved on. We haven't seen any activity since the fall of 2005.

What we have seen is a supposed granddaughter of Naomi. She showed up unannounced at our house while I was out of town on a business trip, and Michael spoke to her. She wanted to know if we had found anything that had belonged to her family in the house. She asked Michael if he had found a box of some sort. She kept pressing the point again and again, and asked Michael if he would be willing to sell the house to her. When he declined, she left. The McCleod sisters next door got very upset over this visit. They told Michael "whatever you find in that house is yours, and she has no business coming around here and bothering you!"

We don't know why the McCleods would be so upset over Naomi's granddaughter coming for a visit. We have been all over the house, including the attic, which is almost as big as the 1st floor, and have not found any boxes. The fireplaces seem to have stopped being used at some point, there are gas lines near most of them. We don't know if there is maybe something in a chimney. We also don't know the identity of the ghosts that were here, though it seems to make sense that it would be the original owners of the house."
Although the Sherrod's say their house is no longer haunted, the picture they sent me of a lonely ghost staring out the window still sends chills down my spine

And The Loser Is...

Last week Nottingham Writers' Club held their Manuscript of the Year evening which I attended for the first time. It sounds grand but it is actually a fun affair where members can take along a piece of prose, written under a pseudonym. The entries are read out by a team of volunteers and then we all vote for our favourite, the votes are counted and the winner is announced. Maximum length is 250 words and this year's theme was 'The Darkness Came'.

The winner was a slightly racy story written from the viewpoint of a woman. It was a big surprise therefore when the big bearded chap sitting next to me revealed himself as the author.

Out of nineteen entries I didn't even make the top three but I know I didn't come last because one piece was disqualified for being a poem. That shows I can at least read the entry rules!

Anyway, as my effort will probably never see the light of day again, I thought I'd show it here:

Cold Steel

They say that if they told you what it would be like you would never go. But no-one could describe this. Not in words nor pictures. This hell-on-earth would stretch the combined imaginations of Brooke, Owen and Sassoon at their most eloquent. Where would they start? The noise? The mud? The threatening sky illuminated by exploding shells? You cannot describe terror. Only experience it.

A lone young soldier, disoriented by the smoke and commotion, is separated from his battalion. Stumbling into a bomb crater he confronts an enemy infantryman in an equally confused state. They both point their rifles but pause with fingers on triggers. He looks into the lad's face. Even younger than himself. Reminds him of his cousin, killed at Passchendaele. He tilts his Lee-Enfield down and fires. A splintering crack, a cry of pain and blood mixes with clay as the lad's knee shatters. The German goes down, dropping his own rifle.

He steps forward and leans over the figure. Not knowing whether the youth can understand he says. “You'll be o.k. Soon be home.”

And then he feels the hot, searing pain. Whoever coined the phrase 'cold steel' has never had a blade pierce his stomach. The last thought he has before sweet oblivion overwhelms him is his sergeant's voice.

“Look out for the bayonet, boys. If it isn't fixed to his rifle it's still on his belt.”

He never made a sound but his eyes cried for his mother. Then the darkness came.

Reviewing Paranormal Activity 2

There were moments during Paranormal Activity in which I was sitting on the edge of my seat.  I didn't know what was going to happen and there was a realness to the characters that made the events scary.  The movie was well paced and slowly built up to its inevitable climax with enough action and interest to make it a good movie.  I liked Paranormal Activity.  It did something new and it did it well.

Paranormal Activity 2 I did not like.  They tried to up the stakes and make it more compelling by putting a baby in the mix.  It was the baby's soul on the line and that should have made it more terrifying, but the build up was too slow.  The characters were realistic, but they were too realistic.  For fifty percent of this movie, I felt like I was being forced to watch someone else's bad home movies.  I can hardly stand watching my own family's home movies why would I watch someone else's?  The action was so slow I checked my ipone scrabble games while I waited for something, anything to happen.  They showed the same security camera shots of the pool, the front steps, the living room over and over again and you kept expecting something to happen, but nothing did and by the time something did happen I was so numb I didn't care.  What?  The demon finally dragged the mom off?  Well thank God for that.  I was getting sleepy.

So my final take on this sequel is that I really wasted seven dollars on Friday night.   I know some people loved this film, but it really lost me. The scariest part of this movie was the preview for Burlesque.  I'll be having nightmares about that for weeks.

Doesn't it seem distasteful to use the phrase "trust factor" and the word trust in the first sentence? I mean, you know I am not Robert Oerez. You have been sending me (and countless others) these emails for years. Do you want to use a company for your websites that spams lawyers? Continuously? Eesh.


From: Daniel Todd
Subject: Trust Factor
Date: November 6, 2010 5:08:38 AM PDT
To: My email

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A Ghost Story for my Son

The greatest miracle in my life will always be my children.  They never cease to amaze me as they grow into their own little people with their own thoughts and ideas.  It is always amazing to me how much I impact my boys.  How much my interests and passions shape theirs.   Sometimes I forget that I am a role model.  My son reminds me how important I am every time he goes to the library.   He brings home a different collection of ghost stories every time he goes.  Today he announced that his favorite ghost story  is from a book called Great Ghosts by Daniel Cohen.  It is the story of The Gray Man.

The Gray Man is a ghost that haunts the Theatre Royal in London.  The Theatre Royal is one of the oldest theatres in London and is filled with plenty of history.   The Gray Man haunts this old theater dressed in clothes that appear to be around 250 years old.  He is not like other ghosts.  He doesn't haunt the theater in the dark terrifying people from the shadows.  Instead he is usually seen in the afternoon during the times when the actors are rehearsing.   The actors know the gray man well.  In fact,  he is a welcomed figure in the theater.  Apparently,  he always appears to the actors if the show they are in is going to be a hit.   He is so infamous, that if he doesn't appear, the actors become anxious.   They know that their show is going to flop if they don't see him.  The Gray Man has also been known to help actors.  One actress was paralyzed by stage fright,  but when The Gray Man put his hand on her back, the stage fright vanished.

There are many theories as to who The Gray Man is, but my favorite is the most mysterious story.  In 1860 when they were doing renovations to the theater they found a skeleton bricked up in one of the walls of the theater.   The skeleton had a knife in its ribs.  No one knows who the bones belonged to but many believe that whoever he was, he still wanders the theater.

The Tragic Ghost of a Murdered Mother

In 1998, a teen named Jeffrey Franklin murdered his parents with the blunt end of an axe.  He then went on to try to kill his siblings.  One sibling was at dance and escaped the madness, but the other three were attacked with cruel brutality.  This event occured a few blocks from where I lived.  The Franklin family went to my church.  My mother taught Jeff in religious education and was friends with Mrs. Franklin.  In my small community, this was an earthquake.  A few days ago, a Huntsville local sent me this ghost story.  I've edited place and people names for obvious reasons, but left the rest of the story as it was sent to me.  The writer said I could post the story as long as I left the place names etc. out. 

"In 2005, I was working at A. Rehab  . Well, I'd heard stories of a phantom nurse who was said to walk the halls at night, but being a veteran of several nursing homes, I'd heard a lot of stories like that, seems like every nursing homes has it's resident ghost. Turns out that this one was a little different. I was speaking to a couple of the night shift CNAs, (cna, in case you don't know, is a Certified Nursing Assistant, which I was at the time, waiting on my nursing license to come through), and they had both told me of watching a nurse they didn't recognize, walk down the hall and into a residents room, when they followed after her, and entered the room, the only ones there were the two residents that shared the room and they were sleeping, but the curtain between the beds was moving as if it had been pushed or disturbed. I dismissed it as a neat story but nothing more. The next week, I was waiting to clock out after finishing up my shift, and was standing at the time clock, with about 5 minutes to go, when I noticed that across the hall from where I was, the lights were on. The room I was looking into was the physical therapy department, it had double doors, and each had a window in the center. I thought maybe someone had just forgotten to turn off the lights, so I was going to go do that. I crossed the hall and looked into the room. Now this room is a rectangular shape, and if you were looking into it from the door, you would be looking in from one of the long sides of the rectangle, and the other side of the room was lined with windows looking out on an open area outside. It was 11:00 at night so it was dark outside, making the windows into the room very reflective and mirror-like, as I was looking in, I saw the reflection of a nurse, in front of me, slightly to my left, walking very fast, moving from right to left. Well, my initial thought was that someone was in that room and they were exiting through a side door. I saw this very clearly, it was a female, dressed in a white nurses uniform, white skirt, and top, no hat, she was about 5'5" or so, with dark hair just below her collar. She didn't look left or right, but moved straight ahead, very fast and with a purpose. I grabbed the doorknob and tried to open the door, but it was locked, upon further investigation, it turns out that someone had apparently left the lights on, and that there was no other door way to enter or exit, also, after looking in for a while, I realized that due to the windows on the other side of the room, I could see the entire room, and it was completely empty. Then I remembered the phantom nurse story and the reality of what I had seen started to set in and I got creeped out, I crossed the hall, clocked out, went home, and didn't sleep well.


What does this have to do with poor Mrs. Franklin? Here's how it came together for me. 6 months later, I was now an lpn, and I worked at another nursing home in  Huntsville, one night over dinner, i was talking to another nurse and I happened to tell her this story, when I described what I'd seen, her eyes got very large, and her exact words were, "I bet that's Cynthia!". Not being from this area, I didn't know who she was talking about. She then went on to tell me that "Cynthia" was Cynthia Franklin, and that she had known her and that they worked at A. Rehab together. She went on to tell me that her son Jeffrey had, in the late '90s, flipped out and murdered her and other family members. At the time, I thought that even if this was this Cynthia, why the heck would she hang around a nursing home she worked at after her death. Jump forward a couple years, I'm currently employed at another nursing home here in Huntsville, I was telling this story to another nurse and when I got to the part where the last nurse had told me her name, the one I was speaking with told very matter of factly, "Oh, yeah, I was working with Cynthia when it happened, I knew her very well", and here's when it all clicked. The nurse I was talking too, was a lady named Jane Doe who had been there at A. Rehab , she and Cynthia worked together and she explained to me that Cynthia would often stay at work until 2 or 3 in the morning, because she was afraid of her son  and she didn't feel safe or comfortable in her own home. Stella told me that the only place she felt safe was at work, so she stayed there as much as she could. So know for some reason, I, a complete stranger to the Franklins and for no reasons other than sheer coincidence had learned the identity of the phantom nurse at A. Rehab, and as a bonus, I even understood why she was there. It was the only place she felt safe for her, so she comes back. If you ask day shift personnel, they'll tell you they've never heard of a phantom nurse, but you ask the night shift CNAs, the long time employees, and you'll get a different story, if you can get them to talk about it at all.

I have to say, I don't tell you this lightly, and I don't know if I would like for this to be made public, after all, her kids are still alive and this would I'm sure be a very sensitive subject to them and others who might have known and loved this lady. Also, it seems that I cannot escape the Franklin case as it turns out that upon over hearing me talking to Jane Doe, one of my CNAs had currently been working Huntsville Hospital at the time and she was one of the aides that helped take care of the children there. According to her, those children were the most pitiful that anyone had seen, and everyone worked very hard to help them, but they all thought those kids' story was one of the sadest they had heard, you could hear the sadness in her voice and see it in her eyes when spoke of them. I just thought it was strange how all these details kept revealing themselves to me, and how I keep getting glimpses into this case that I have no ties to, or reason to know these things."

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.