The Haunted University

According to many, The University of North Alabama is one of the most haunted universities in the country.  The ghosts here seem as common as the trees and many of the buildings have haunted histories.  UNA is Alabama's oldest four University and was founded in 1830.  It's history stretches into the dark parts of the civil war and back to desegregation.  It has seen all of Alabama's history and stood the test of time, but not without it's ghosts.

Among the many haunted locations on this campus, is Guillot University Center.  Long ago this old  building was a girl's dormitory.  Apparently,  a young woman who lived there wasn't very happy because she hung herself from an elevator shaft.  Since that time, the building has changed function but students report seeing her ghost wandering the halls.  Norton Auditorium is also said to be haunted by a ghost named George.  George was working on Norton auditorium as a construction worker.  He fell from the scaffolding and died, but his ghost lives on haunting students and visitors alike and adding his ghostly presence to the numerous phantoms that haunt the halls of UNA.

The Wesleyan Building is also said to be haunted by a civil war general's son who drown himself in a river not far away.   His ghost must have formed some attachment to the old building, because his footsteps can still be seen and heard walking the halls at night.   Additionally, the off campus bookstore is haunted by the ghost of a little girl who died of rabies.

So if you like to be surrounded by ghosts, UNA is the place to go to school.

The Jekyll and Hyde Club

Tonight's location isn't technically haunted, but it is a fun haunted attraction for a weary traveller looking for something a little bit odd and different.   The Jekyll and Hyde Club has several locations around Manhattan.   It is my sons' favorite place to eat and although the food may be nothing extraordinary, it's worth a visit just for the show.
This restaurant creates an atmosphere that is complete with a story of Dr.Jekyll travelling to New York to found the restaurant and turn it into a museum for his and his diabolical collection of friend's mad experiments and ghostly travels. 

The Jekyll and Hyde is staffed by actors and as soon as you walk in the door you are greeted by igors and vampires who keep their role on all night long.  They take you to your table and play various jokes on you that keep this already interesting place even more interesting.  Once you are in the restaurant, there are several options for seating.  There is the attic floor which is filled with goulish dolls and creepy clowns that move and reach out for you as you walk past.  A skeleton band plays for a black angel.   In the labratory, you'll find all kinds of hellish concoctions and experiments.  The library is my favorite floor with it's stacks of bizarre books and paintings that follow you with their eyes as you walk past.   On the first floor, or grand salon, you get the best view of the show.   The show pays homage to classic horror and is scary and funny enough to keep both grown-ups and kids watching.

The Jekyll and Hyde is a family friendly restaurant and if you ever take your family to New York it is a fun way to spend an evening.  You can eat, get a show, and enjoy a little scare before you return to the real world.

The Bookstore Ghost

The University of North Alabama in Florence has several ghost stories associated with it.  It's old halls are littered with ghosts and phantoms.  One of my favorite ghost stories from this University comes from the off campus bookstore.  This bookstore wasn't always a bookstore.  It was once a house and a family lived there.

It was a typical family.  There was a mother, a father, and a little girl.  They were a happy family, but the little girl was lonely. She spent her days playing alone in her room with her dolls.   The little girl's father was particularly worried about his baby's loneliness, so he went out and purchased an adorable, little puppy for her.  Of course, the girl was delighted.  It was love at first site.  She loved the puppy so much she put it in bed with her that night and the two little ones nestled up next to each other in the soft, evening light.

It wasn't long before the parents heart their little girl scream.  The wail cut through the night awaking both parents and sending them running into their daughter's room.   The puppy had bit the little girl.  Things returned  to normal, but it wasn't long before the dog and the little girl began to show signs of illness.  The parents took the little girl to the doctor and both she and the puppy were diagnosed with rabies.   Both died shortly after.

Time went on and the building was turned into a Fraternity House.  The house was remodeled and the fraternity members reported seeing a phantom girl sitting in the second story window gazing out.  It wasn't just the frat boys that saw her.  People walking by the house reported seeing her as well.   The building is an off campus bookstore now and people still see the little girl looking longingly out the window.  The women that work at the bookstore don't deny her presence.  They say she still makes her appearances, sometimes alone and sometimes with her dog. 

Abenor: The Ancient Word for Love

My father used to call my grandmother a witch.  I never listened to him because he never had anything nice to say about my mother or her family.  I took what he said with a grain of salt.  It wasn't until much later that I realized their was a grain of truth in what my father said.  

The women in my family have always had a strong connection with the paranormal and this connection was at it's strongest with my grandmother, Kay.  Kay was a passionate and needy woman who was afraid of being alone.  She was a beautiful woman that was used to being adored by the men around, so after the first few years of marriage ground the edges off of my grandfather's, Raymond's, adoration, my grandmother found herself lost in loneliness.   Raymond was a good man, but he never knew what to do with his beautiful and slightly melodramatic wife, so he retired to his study at the end of every day to find peace.  

Kay couldn't stand her loneliness and she turned to the ouiji board to find some answers to her condition.   In order to use the ouija board she enlisted the assistance of her young daughter, my mother, Robin.  It started slowly.  My grandmother would ask the spirits questions and they would answer.  Robin hated it.  She fought it.  She felt that something was wrong in the core of her being and the ritual terrified her, but Kay persisted.  It wasn't long before one spirit in particular started a dialogue with Kay.  His name was Alonk and Kay and he spent their lonely evenings together with little Robin trapped between them.   Every night the two met  and spoke over the ouija board and every night they drug Robin with them.

Alonk loved Kay and he told her that the ancient word for love was abenor.   Abenor was their secret word for love, more powerful than any English word.   So the lovers met as often as they could, but Kay was encountering a problem.  Little Robin hated Alonk.   Little Robin hated the ouija board and refused to play.   Kay was not deterred.  She turned to her youngest daughter, Kathy, to play with and the love affair continued with a frantic passion that consumed Kay and her new assistant.

My mother still remembers my aunt, a little girl of five, sitting on the bay window looking out, waiting for Alonk to come for her.  She still remembers little Kathy speaking with fire of her mother's love.   Life moved on and even little Kathy grew up, taking with her Kay's connection to Alonk.  Raymond and Kay were divorced and Kay remarried.  She married a man that adored her and gave her the love she wanted.   Alonk vanished. 

But Robin's scars remained in a deep fear of the supernatural, especially the ouija board.   Kay is old now, very old ,and alzheimers has taken many of her  memories.  She forgets who I am and who Robin is.  She forgets everything, but she insists that she was married three times and she remembers Alonk and the ancient word for love, abenor. 

The Tutwiler Hotel

The Tutwiler is one of the rare haunted hotels in Alabama.  It is located in Birmingham and was originally named the Ridgely.  Robert Jemison opened The Tutwiler in 1914 to convince the American Iron and Steel Institute to have its annual convention in Birmingham.  He built the hotel to be luxurious and inviting.  He wanted people to come from all over to stay in the overabundant luxury of the hotel.  Mr. Jemison's plan worked and for a long time the hotel was the premier location for conventions and meetings in the South.

But time takes it's toll on all things and the glory of the beautiful hotel faded as the years pressed down on her. By the 1960's, she was a faded reminder of what she had once been.    The owners attempted to give the hotel a facelift, but with skyscrapers and luxury high rises taking over, she seemed like a pale comparison.  In 1986, Mr. Tutwiler purchased the building and began a complete renovation of the hotel.  He stripped it and rebuilt it.  He took the old historic hotel and gave it all the modern conveniences and extras that would bring tourists to visit and stay in the once run down hotel.

It is after these renovations that the ghosts appeared, or maybe that the ghosts were noticed.  The story began with the bartender who was in charge of closing up the kitchen every night.   Every night he would turn off all the lights before he left.  He began to notice that the lights would turn right back on.  One night he turned the lights off five times and finally gave up and went home.  His supervisor yelled at him the next day for leaving all the lights on and the bartender explained the situation.  The supervisor stayed late and found the same things with the lights.  Both employees went home and in the morning the lights were all on, the dishes were all out, the stove was on, and food had been prepared.  The next night the bar tender tried a new tact.  He turned off all the lights and said good night to the ghost and asked it to please leave the lights and stove off and clean up after himself.   He never had the problem again.

The bartender wasn't the only one to report odd occurences.  Throughout the old hotel there have been reports of lights flickering, tunring off and on, and doors opening and shutting.  In my attempt to see as many haunted locations as possible, I have booked a room in this lovely hotel next weekend.  I'm taking my boys and we are going to stay in this elegant hotel for one night and see what we can find when the lights go out (or come back on)  More to come once I visit the hotel!

Through an Animal's Eyes: Do Animals See What We Can Not?

A coworker of mine told me a story today.  She grew up with her grandparents on a farm in rural Alabama.  Her grandfather spent a lot of time in the fields working with his mule team.  According to her, her grandfather was out working one day and the mules went crazy.  They stopped working and tried to break free from their constraints and run away.  They knocked her grandfather over in their frantic attempts to escape their bonds.  The mules were terrified.  They were acting as if they had seen a wolf or the dead.  

Her grandfather went home and told the story to his wife.  Her grandmother listened solemnly to her husband's story of mad mules and placed quiet hand on her huband's shoulder.   She had more important news to convey.   While he had been out working in the fields,  his brother had died.  In fact,  he had past away at the exact moment the mules had gone mad.

It has always been the family's assumption that her grandfather's brother had come to say goodbye to him in ghost form and the animals had seen the ghost.   I have heard many stories like this and the more ghost stories I read and tell the more I hear about animals sensing the supernatural world more profoundly and more deeply than people do.   In many ghost stories,  it is the dog or the cat that starts to go crazy first.  It is as if they see a world we can't see.

In several of the stories I have put on this blog the haunting begins with animals acting out.  In the famous haunting on Larabee Street, the cat acted so wildly after they moved into their haunted house they got rid of the cat.  In the televison show called, The Haunted, animal planet explores the connection between animals and the supernatural.  In a recent episode, a woman who owned a horse farm swears up and down that her horses were the first to know that the farm was haunted.  There are many psychics and paranormal experts that insist that animals see what we can not and my coworker's story is not the first I've heard of animals reacting to hauntings, so if your animal is going crazy maybe it's because your house is haunted!

Ghost Hunting Tips

I got my ghost hunting kit together tonight and went out into the darkness for the first time.  I violated most of the tips I am going to list in my eagerness to venture into the night with my night vision camera, electromagnetic field meter, thermometer, and electronic voice phenomena recording device. I went out alone to a lonely cemetery in the woods near my house.  I did bring my dog and I am  fairly sure he is psychic, so that does make me a little bit more professional.  What I learned fumbling around through the bramble in the dark while chasing shadows is that the cemetery by my house is probably not haunted and is definately thick with thorns.  I'll be picking stickers our of my pants and putting neosporin on my wounds for a few days to come.   With all my mistakes in mind,  I thought I would list some tips provided by the Ghost Hunter's Guidebook to help others avoid my silly mistakes.

1.  Never go alone into an investigation  (I don't think I broke this rule since I brought my psychic dog)

2.  Try to make sure that those who own the site you are going to have granted permission for you to investigate.

3.  Keep your perceptions clear prior to the investigation.  Do not drink, smoke, or use drugs before investigating.

4.  Arrive with skepticism.

5.  Make sure you bring along all of the items that you need to properly conduct your investigation.

6.  Avoid publicity and the media when starting a case.

7.  Interview any witnesses in depth.

8.  Become part of the location.  Try to blend into the background as much as possible.

9.  Always respect the location and always be polite.

I will try to follow more of these rules on my next expedition, but for tonight I just enjoyed stumbling around in the bramble, peering through my night vision camera, and hoping my catch a glimpse of something paranormal.