Most Haunted House

The Most Haunted House

in Carrollton, Alabama

by Tom Woodard

Chapter 1

We were warned

My former wife and I were priviledged to be the last owners of the most haunted house in Carrollton, Alabama, which is the County Seat of Pickens County. This ante-bellum Italianate Revival raised cottage style home was the Stewart-Hill-Foster House, Circa 1860, which sat perfectly and directly facing the Kelly-Stone-Hill House, which is still standing, and was on the lot facing Highway 17 North now occupied by First National Bank of Central Alabama. In the weeks and months to come, I will attempt to put in writing all of my recollections regarding the haunting of this fine old ante-bellum home, but for now I will just say that none of our ghosts there were mean-spirited (no pun intended), and I was, in fact, quite comfortable with them all. We took this house down in about 1995, and I will always deeply regret this decision. The house was very much worth saving and restoring, but we just didn't have the money. Nevertheless, I wish I had found or made a way. I still have the entire first floor of the house (the original 1860 part) in storage to this day.

The first we knew of one of the ghosts in the house was before we even purchased it. The realtor told us that she felt obligated to let us know that the house was haunted. We learned the story from her, from some ladies in Carrollton, and finally from the man who had "met" the lady in the house. He was an employee of an exterminating company, and was in the house on a very hot August day, upstairs and alone, spraying the house for insects. As he started down the stairs, and having gotten about three or four steps from the top, he suddenly stepped into a pocket of very cold air (which, by the way, is a very common characteristic of ghostly encounters). Just then, he felt a hand come to rest lightly on his right shoulder and as he turned around to see who it was, knowing full well that there was no one in the house but himself, he came face to face with a lady in a long, ankle length dress of the style of around 1890 or 1900. Although she was very visible, he could also readily see that she was "not of this world". Terrified, he RAN from the house and down the street to a little restaurant a block away, where he went straight to a corner booth and sat down. The ladies who worked in the restaurant at the time related to us that he himself was "white as a ghost" and when asked what was wrong could not speak. After a considerable period of time, he regained his composure sufficiently to relate to them the incident recited above. Sometime later, perhaps a year or so, I happened to run into this man and he told me the same story, exactly the same as he had told it to the waitresses in the restaurant the day it happened! So, back to the realtor. After she let us know the house was haunted, we told her it made no difference to us; that we still wanted the house. We purchased it shortly after, intending to restore it to its original appearance (it had, in 1900, been altered by the addition of a massive second story, in the Queen Anne style, along with a Queen Anne wrap-a-round porch, these elements largely obscuring the original Italianate architecture) and live there with our two daughters, who were then, in 1993, ages 10 and 7. Tho the children had some trepidation, we went forward with our plans.

When we purchased the house, it was fully furnished, and I do mean fully. The family, that of Dr. S.H. Hill (died in 1922), grandfather of Dr. William H. Hill, seemingly never threw anything away, so that every nook and crany of the attic was full of old treasures, in addition to everything in the rest of the house. The family, that of Mrs. Foster, the youngest of Dr. S.H.'s 13 children, who owned the house, took what they wanted, which was relatively little, and we purchased the rest, along with the house. We then went about sorting through and cleaning items, with a view toward a sale of the items we did not wish to keep. This house had five exterior doors, and only one of them, the one from the kitchen onto the rear veranda, had a modern lock with a key. All of the others were old-fashioned locks, and every door had, in addition, bolt locks on the interior. One of the funny things we experienced early on was that we would carefully secure all of these bolt locks every time we left the house, then go out the kitchen door and lock it from the outside. Thus, no one could get in the house without a key. Nevertheless, when we next entered the house we would find every bolt lock UNLOCKED! It was our first confirmation that the house was, indeed, haunted.

Just a little aside: Dr. S.H.'s father was also a doctor, the first of four generations, and was a surgeon in the War Between the States. S.H. was a cadet at the University of Alabama when it was burned (along with the Pickens County Courthouse, in Carrollton) by Croxton's Raiders in 1865, and took part in the skirmish between the cadets and the raiders. Dr. Hugh Hill, who I remember well, was S.H.'s son, and the father of Dr. William Hill, who was my doctor for most of my life. The Kelly-Stone-Hill House, mentioned above, was the long-time residence of Dr. Hugh, and was also the birthplace of General John Herbert Kelly, CSA, who was the youngest Confederate General in the War, and who was mortally wounded at the Battle of Franklin, Tennessee, where so many valiant generals, officers and men of the Southern Army at that battle were slain. Another of S.H.'s children was Virginia, who became the mother of Judge B.G. Robison, Jr., first District Judge of Pickens County. Virginia's husband, Judge B.G. Robison, Sr., was Probate Judge of Pickens County for 36 years! By the way, I still have one of Dr. S.H.'s doctor bags, made of brown leather, and several medicine bottles bearing his name, imprinted in the glass. The Hills were among the pioneer families of Pickens County, first settling in Palmetto, and later in Carrollton.

THE STORY OF THE CHRISTMAS TREE. This is a little out of chronological order, but I'm afraid that if I don't tell it to you now I might forget it. We purchased the house in the late Summer of 1993. That December first one and then another citizen of Carrollton and its environs would approach us and thank us for putting up a Christmas Tree in the parlour of the house, even tho we did not live there. They thought it was so considerate of us to do that, to make the house have the look of the warmth of the Christmas Season, and just wanted to thank us. In all, we counted a little over 20 people who thus thanked us for erecting the Christmas Tree. Each time, we would have to explain to them that there was no tree in the parlour, or anywhere else in the house. One lady was so indignant when we told her this that she argued with us, saying "I know what I saw!" But friends, there was NO Christmas Tree in that house! Nevertheless, we know that over 20 people saw what was not there! Thinking that these good folks, including some prominent people in the community, were seeing a reflection from some other source, we rode and walked around the house, looking at the parlour windows from every conceivable angle, and there were no reflections from anywhere else. Making doubly sure, we looked outward at all the surrounding area and confirmed that there was no conceivable source of any such reflection. Conclusion: The lights of that ghostly tree were coming from the parlour! Ironically, we were never privileged (or permitted by "our" ghosts) to see the tree ourselves!

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