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    Haunted North Alabama
    Haunted North Alabama
    Haunted North Alabama
    Ebook142 pages2 hours

    Haunted North Alabama

    By Jessica Penot

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    About this ebook

    The Deep South reveals its dark past, as the author of the Tattooed Girl series investigates the hauntings of her home state.
     
    Nestled in the scenic foothills of southern Appalachia, in the center of the Tennessee Valley, north Alabama is known for its natural beauty. Peppered with antebellum mansions and historic homesteads, it is a region rich in history, brimming with a unique cultural heritage. Yet amidst the beauty of these rolling hills and historic features, something dark lurks below the surface. The haunted spirits of the past run as wild as the Tennessee River through the region. Join author and Huntsville resident Jessica Penot on a terrifying trip through the chilling destinations of north Alabama, teeming with ghostly activity. From Florence to Huntsville to Albertville and points in between, Haunted North Alabama offers a broad survey of the history of haunted destinations in the upper regions of Alabama. Packed with over twenty haunted locales, this book is required reading for anyone interested in learning about the history of the phantom spirits that call the heart of Dixie home.
     
    Includes photos!
     
    “Marvelous . . . Good, reliable information on a number of Huntsville’s hauntings plus information on locations that were not included in the few articles on the subject.” —Southern Spirit Guide
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateAug 27, 2010
    ISBN9781614232018
    Haunted North Alabama
    Author

    Jessica Penot

    Jessica Penot, a Huntsville resident, is a behavioral health therapist with an MS in clinical psychology. As an award-winning fiction writer, ten of her short stories have been published in a variety or magazines and journals, and she has written a horror novel due out by the end of 2010. She writes a popular blog about ghosts and hauntings, averaging 150 hits a day, and she is a member of the American Ghost Society, the American Ghost Hunter's Society, the Horror Writer's Association and the Penn Writer's Association.

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      Book preview

      Haunted North Alabama - Jessica Penot

      INTRODUCTION

      North Alabama is a beautiful and wild place tucked neatly into the rolling hills of the southern Appalachian Mountains. It spreads west into soft plains and rivers. Driving through North Alabama, there are places where you can come to believe you are the last person on earth. The trees are thick, and the undergrowth is thicker. There are many places that still haven’t been developed, and there are other places where the development is so thin you can imagine yourself back in the Old South. North Alabama is known for its hiking trails, its beautiful forests and its lakes and rivers. It is an outdoorsman’s dream.

      It is also known for its ghosts.

      Trying to capture the many ghosts of North Alabama is like trying to take a single photograph that tells the story of the history of the region. Ghost stories are history and mythology delicately intertwined. By exploring the ghost stories of North Alabama, I discovered not only its past but also its present. I learned about the spirit of the region.

      Most of the ghost stories contained here start in the past. They start with a tragedy and then are spread through oral tradition and folklore. Finding this folklore is harder than finding a book on history; one must travel and talk to the people who keep these histories and get them to share their stories. Of course, many don’t want their names known, and many don’t want to talk at all. In order to respect the privacy of the multitude of people I spoke with, I left many names out of this book.

      North Alabama’s history is complicated. Alabama’s story began in antiquity with the natives of the land. These peoples lived in the North Alabama region for over ten thousand years. The final native inhabitants of North Alabama were the Cherokee tribe. The Cherokee people were eventually overwhelmed by a steady influx of European settlers. Many of these Europeans brought slaves with them. In his book on southern economics, Randall Miller describes these Europeans as having a culture that was rooted in the countryside. He says that their values were anti-progress, as well as honor, gentility and a highly ordered social scale. Alabama history prior to the Civil War is rooted in these values; it was the Deep South and the Old South.

      Many of the ghosts found in North Alabama folklore and history are from the years that the Civil War set the South on fire. A few are from the years prior to that, when southern gentility and culture ruled. White lady ghost stories lend themselves to tragic southern belles.

      White ladies are one of the many archetypes that can be found in ghost stories throughout the world. They are tragic women. They have often died violent deaths and are usually of the upper class. They are almost always described as beautiful. There are several other archetypes you might find in this collection of ghost stories. The crying child is a common theme in ghost stories and is usually associated with the death of a young child or baby. The chained man is one of the earliest archetypes and was first seen in the Middle Ages in Europe. Soldier ghosts are some of the most prevalent in the world, and this book is filled with this kind of ghost. Soldier ghosts can be found on battlefields and in forts, but they can also be found in the soldier’s home, where he may linger long after his death.

      Alabama history is perfect for many of these types of ghost stories. The years that followed the Civil War were filled with enough sadness and hardship to generate a book of ghost stories. Following the Civil War, North Alabama had to redefine itself economically. It had prospered when cotton was in high demand in the 1820s and 1830s, but by the Civil War, the soil was exhausted and the cotton market was flooded. North Alabama was economically crippled by the Civil War, and the plantation and agrarian economy on which it was built was no longer sustainable. During the antebellum period, North Alabama embraced change and invited manufacturers from the North to help it rebuild its broken economy. Mills flooded into Alabama and dominated the North Alabama culture and economy for many years to follow.

      North Alabama was also able to use its abundant natural resources to rebuild its economy. It quarried out limestone, iron, ore and coal. Birmingham, Alabama, was able to turn itself into a steel center by the turn of the century, and many quarries opened throughout North Alabama. The area’s history began to change into a history of regional culture and economics as different areas banked on their own resources and strengths.

      Huntsville, Alabama, was able to define itself by the work of one man. It stood on his shoulders and built itself up as one of the top aerospace industrial cities in the nation. It stepped away from the rest of North Alabama and began importing its labor pool from all over the world. It now has a community and culture that is more global than southern. Smaller towns continued with their agrarian and small-town manufacturing roots. That culture remained much the same. Many towns built their economies on the growing educational demands of the region and turned their old college campuses into thriving universities where education flourishes. Towns like Florence, Alabama, were able to turn very old schools into modern learning centers. Birmingham, Alabama, on the southernmost tip of North Alabama, broke free from its steel and fire past. The construction of the University of Alabama in Birmingham would help it define itself as the biomedical capital of Alabama, where state-of-the-art medical technology and research have become defining features of the city.

      North Alabama as it is today is culturally diverse, and each city and rural community defines itself by its own history. Florence, Alabama, is very different from Huntsville, Alabama, and Huntsville is very different from Cullman. North Alabama was once unified by one set of values and beliefs, but those days have faded. In writing this book, I tried to capture a piece of the diversity that is North Alabama. I tried to explore the different parts of its history and culture and create one portrait of an amazingly diverse region. The ghosts within this book tell the story of the region’s history. They also tell their own tales of horror and sorrow. They fill dark corners with fear and give you reasons to be afraid of the dark.

      DEAD CHILDREN’S PLAYGROUND

      Maple Hill Playground is a place that has become legend. In Huntsville, Alabama, this playground has become a rite of passage for local youths, who are challenged to hop over the gates at night and creep into the shadows of the tall trees through complete darkness. The playground is pressed up against Maple Hill Cemetery, so as they walk down the road to the playground, they can see the tombstones illuminated by the moonlight. It is a short walk up the road from the fence to the playground. The playground is set off the road, and the earth curves downward into a rocky cove. It is surrounded on all sides by sheer rock cliffs that have been overgrown with kudzu and greenery.

      The youths who come here sit on the swings and wait for the legends to come to life. They wait for the dead children to come out of the shadows of night and play. They must be brave, because they all know the stories. There are literally hundreds of them. They’ve all heard about people who have vanished into the shadows of this playground and of teenagers who have never been seen again. These legends are so strong in Huntsville that the true name of this playground has been forgotten. No one knows the name Maple Hill Playground; everyone calls it Dead Children’s Playground, where the ghosts of lost children spend their nights endlessly playing in the dark.

      Dead Children’s Playground.

      The legends surrounding this playground are prolific. One local legend says that in the early 1960s, Huntsville, Alabama, was the prowling grounds of a child murderer. This murderer abducted local children and did horrible things to them before killing them. When he was done with them, he buried them in the walls of the playground. The playground is filled with the bodies of these lost children, and when darkness settles and the gates of the playground are closed, they rise up and make the playground their own. Of course, according to Huntsville Parks and Recreation, Maple Hill Playground wasn’t built until 1985, long after these murders were supposed to have taken place, but facts don’t stop the legend from spreading and growing.

      Most of the legends surrounding this playground also say that it is part of beautiful Maple Hill Cemetery. Maple Hill Cemetery is the largest cemetery in Alabama and one of the oldest. Founded in 1818, Maple Hill now covers over one hundred acres of land. It has its own encyclopedia of ghost stories associated with it that seems to seep out of the tombstones into the neighboring playground. Those who believe the legends associated with Dead Children’s Playground say that it

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