Haunted Dalton, Georgia

INTRODUCTION

Whether or not you believe in ghosts, know this: everything you are about to read is real. At least it’s real to those who were brave enough to share their strange stories and to those who did their part in paying homage to the time-honored tradition of handing down the same terrific tales that were told to them. In addition to sharing those accounts with you, I have logged untold hours prowling through old newspapers and records, reading history books, conversing with area historians and exploring the haunt-filled locations you will read about.

Nestled in the foothills of the spectacular North Georgia mountains, Dalton is perhaps best known as the Carpet Capital of the World, producing 90 percent of the United States’ carpet. It is also a thriving tourist town, offering unique shopping opportunities, mouthwatering local cuisine, performing arts, exceptional architecture and an abundance of historic destinations with Civil War, Native American and railroad highlights. Able to boast world-celebrated trails for mountain biking and hiking, breathtaking rivers and lakes for fishing and boating, opportunities for golf and tennis and so much more, Whitfield County is a virtual haven for lovers of the outdoors. Filled with both transients and plenty of folks with deep roots, Dalton is rich in personality and diversity.

All these things sound great—and they are—but every coin is two sided. For every beautiful old home that reminds us of the city’s southern culture and charm, there’s another seeped in shadowy mystery. As we celebrate Whitfield County’s history through Civil War reenactments in Tunnel Hill, the annual Prater’s Mill Country Fair in Cohutta, the Liberty Tree Festival in downtown Dalton and other fun-filled community events, we sometimes forget the nightmarish scars left on the skin of North Georgia by a horrific war that took place over 150 years ago and, before that, the suffering of the Cherokees who were driven from their Enchanted Land in an atrocity remembered as the Trail of Tears. All too often, tragedies such as these are recipes for troubled spirits unwilling to move on to what awaits them beyond this life. Add to those monumental events the inevitable instances of murder, mayhem and madness, and it is no wonder so many people report ghastly—or rather, ghostly—activity.

I invite you to come with me on a journey that will take you deep inside Dalton’s hair-raising legends and supernatural happenings. Together, we’ll take a peek beneath life’s shadowy veil to examine some of the things we were told didn’t exist when we were children.

Through the pages that follow, I’ll lead you down the aisles and behind the scenes of one of the South’s most haunted historic theaters, inside which the restless spirit of a mystery woman reaches out to guests, ghost children laugh and play and poltergeist activity abounds. I’ll introduce you to the weeping girl, who believed she couldn’t live another day without the man she loved so she elected not to and is now held captive within the walls of the former Hotel Dalton by her own fear. We’ll retrace the final steps of a murderer who was hanged, drop in on the tormented soul of a lynched man and step inside haunted houses. You’ll meet a long-dead fireman who gets a kick out of playing tricks on the living. Take my hand as we tiptoe through cemeteries where some of the dead refuse to rest. Hold on tight while we explore war-tainted fields and woods so riddled with rowdy spirits that grown men have refused to return.

Oh, the places you’ll go!

I’m going to educate you with history, entertain you with lore and keep you up at night. So, are you ready?

CHAPTER ONE

THE VERY HAUNTED HISTORIC WINK THEATRE

I don’t believe in ghosts, but I’m afraid of them.

Mark Twain

J.C.H. Wink had a dream. He wanted to create a place for the citizens of Dalton to meet up and relax and enjoy popcorn and a soda while watching a movie, a place that would transport patrons away from the worries and tragedies of World War II, if only for a few hours. He dreamed of creating a small-town version of Atlanta’s Fox Theatre.

Construction began on the Wink Theatre in 1939 on the ground where the Shadowland Theater, a silent film house, had stood for many years. Gertrude McFarland, born in 1926, remembers walking around downtown Dalton when she was a child and stopping in the entrance of the Shadowland, by this time already closed. I would press my nose up so I could see in the distance the seats and I could imagine what it was like when it had been a theater, she once told me.

The doors of the Wink opened to the public for the first time on a Monday night, September 7, 1941. Excited patrons flocked to the town’s first air-conditioned building with 1,550 luxurious body-contoured chairs and the most up-to-date sound system available to see Joan Crawford and Melvyn Douglas light up the silver screen in They All Kissed the Bride. Tickets were eleven and thirty cents.

Opening night was a success, but sadly, J.C.H. Wink was not in attendance. Or, perhaps he was. Later, some would wonder if he had not, quite literally, been there in spirit. Mr. Wink passed away before the theater was complete, but generations of Whitfield County residents would grow up enjoying the fruits of his dream.

They All Kissed the Bride was the first movie shown at the Wink in 1941. Photo courtesy of Columbia Pictures.

The Wink Theatre was the fabric of your entire life if you grew up in Dalton, Flora Caldwell once told Daily Citizen-News reporter Nancy Carney.

They built the Wink when I was in high school, Gertrude McFarland shared with me. We had our baccalaureate ceremony at the Wink. Dalton High School, class of 1943. I graduated right during the war. Half of my class went on to World War II and didn’t come back.

Attorney Randy Bates told Scotti O’Neill of the Daily Citizen-News in February 1990 that the Wink is the place where most of us either received our first kiss or first slap; it’s more than just brick and mortar.

News editor of the Daily Citizen Wes Chance remembers spending Saturday afternoons at the kiddie matinee feasting on Jerry Lewis and Elvis Presley movies, getting to buy a pickle for a nickel and once watching a live stage show staring Bob Brandy and hoping he’d be picked to sit on Brandy’s horse, Rebel.

Wes also remembers a stern-looking woman to whom nobody dared give backtalk. She manned the concession stand in the mid- to late ’60s. Sometimes accompanying her was the man who never spoke, Wes wrote in a column published in the ’90s. The man was mute, and his job was to tear tickets and police the theater with his dreaded flashlight, making sure all feet were on the floor.

I too have memories of the Wink. In the ’70s, my mother often took my sister and me to see Disney classics, such as The Rescuers, Escape to Witch Mountain and Bambi. Once, I watched a scary movie about killer worms with my mom and dad and their ever-present friends Ronnie and Brenda Houston. As a couple of fishermen in a rowboat conversed on screen and I waited in terror for their fishing worms to escape and devour them, a plastic toy bracelet I had gotten earlier in the day snapped apart and pinched my six-year-old wrist. Certain the worms had somehow made their way off the screen and onto my arm, I began screaming and struggling to escape our aisle.

A patron of the Wink in the 1950s. This photo was shared with me shortly after the Wink reopened in 2002. Collection of Connie Hall-Scott.

It wasn’t even during a scary part, Mom later laughed, recalling my hysterics that made those seated around us either laugh or frown.

I also remember going upstairs to the bathroom. Unnecessary bathroom visits are a rite of passage for most youngsters. Trips to the Wink bathroom stand out in my mind as somehow both frightening and alluring. As kids seem to be more able to do, I sensed something a little, well, off—something ethereal. Later, I would learn that I wasn’t the only one to experience that not alone sensation in the ladies’ room.

And I remember the ornate gates leading up to the third floor that were always locked because the balcony was closed to the public sometime in the ’70s. I used to stand in front of the gate with my hands gripping the bars and my face pressed against it as I marveled what was in the darkness on the other side. I’d still like to know.

Due to urban sprawl and the opening of more modern theaters outside downtown Dalton, the Wink closed in 1981 with a final showing of Disney’s The Black Hole. Ironic, considering that’s what the theater would become—a virtual black hole—over the next decades as it rotted and decayed before an unsophisticated audience of pigeons and rats.

A Dalton Ghost Tour guest once recalled dragging Main Street in front of the Wink in the ’80s. Before the city banned the activity, masses of teens commonly cruised and parked along the streets of historic downtown Dalton to socialize.

I was talking to a group of friends, the tour guest shared. "Suddenly one of them jumped back and yelled. The dude said he saw a woman looking out one of the windows up