The Ghostly Tales of Alabama

Spooky America: The Ghostly Tales of Alabama 

By Alan Brown 

Arcadia Children’s Books/Arcadia Publishing, 2023 

Paperback: $12.99 

Genre: Juvenile Fiction, State & Local History, Folklore  

Reviewed by Barbara Barcellona Smith 

Children Beware and Read if You Dare – Once kids crack open the skeletal spine of Alan Brown’s Spooky America: The Ghostly Tales of Alabama, the journey through some of Alabama’s most historically haunted houses, universities, buildings, and bogs begins. All the “spidery-senses” awaken as readers travel through these stories down dark stairs to find a bone-chilling body in the basement, through corridors to feel a cool breeze from windows and doors creaking open then shut with no one around, and along the haunted halls of higher learning where they see and smell lilac as a lovely ghost, politely dressed in old-timey petticoats, casually strolls by. Children stay alert, tiptoeing through haunted locales, even feeling the heat from a fiery furnace where glimpses of a ghost still “stroll through the sparks!” Alan Brown enchants young, brave, literary souls with stories about Alabama history, myth, and folklore, saying, “There are as many ghost stories as there are stars over Alabama…but are they true?” Children will decide for themselves as they wonder and wander through these magical pages.  

Alan Brown casts a spell upon children in his latest page-turning terror, Spooky America: The Ghostly Tales of Alabama. Adapted from the “creeptastic” Haunted America series, Ghostly Tales perfectly reaches children interested in history, mystery, and the spooky details written between the lines. Brown masterfully recrafts his adult book Haunted Alabama, casting it into a perfect quick read for children ready for the creepiest time of the year. Brown specializes in haunted lore, mysteries, and legends with other books such as Eerie Alabama, Unexplained South, and The Haunted South, all while teaching English at the University of West Alabama in Livingston, Alabama. His primary passion for Southern ghost stories has taken him to haunted places throughout the entire Deep South, as well as parts of the Midwest and Southwest. His wife, Marilyn, accompanies him on these trips and even occasionally serves as his “ghost magnet.” Brown has incorporated some of her spirit world encounters into a number of his books. 

The time-old tale of unrequited love rings true for Evelyn almost one hundred years after an argument with her beloved fiancée, a young French officer, ends their happy marital plans. As her heart breaks and her lungs fill with pneumonia, she perishes in the lovely Gaineswood plantation house in Demopolis, far from her Virginia home. Plantation owner Nathan Whitfield wants to uphold Evelyn’s dying wish to be buried in her family’s plot, but a nasty winter sets in, making the roads to her final Virginia resting place wet, muddy, and impassable. Nathan Whitfield goes to extreme measures, preserving Evelyn’s body and storing it in the cold basement until he can move it in the spring. Perhaps Evelyn’s spirit was unhappy in that basement because servants began hearing footsteps walking up and down the stairs shortly thereafter, although no one was there. The happy tunes that once emanated from Evelyn’s fingers dancing along the beloved piano’s keys in the 1850s somehow startled servants and guests alike as her “phantom fingers” played on in empty rooms well into the 1940s.   

Doors open and close by themselves at Sturdivant Hall, Selma, or maybe it’s with the help of the ghost of bank thief John McGee Parkman, who died trying to escape prison on May 23, 1867, only to find himself eternally trapped within his Sturdivant home. Some say they see his ghost peering out of the small lookout on top of the house and hear his steps pacing above.  

More than a hundred years after Condie Cunningham’s death, windows open by themselves, and the cool breeze blows upon students at the University of Montevallo, where her apparition is still seen racing, nightgown aflame down the Old Main Residence Hall.  

The haunt of Webb Hall at the University of West Alabama, Livingston, seems to alert university employees with her lovely lilac scent when she’s on the move. In 1993, while working late one night, George Snow not only caught scent but sight of the lovely apparition strolling down the hallway wearing a late 19th-century dress with petticoats. 

Like a Phoenix from the ashes, witnesses proclaim seeing the fiery image of Theophilus Calvin Jowers “strolling through the sparks” inside the Sloss Furnace in Birmingham, where he accidentally slipped to his death, falling into the molten iron below him. He loved his job as an assistant foundryman and once said, “As long as there’s a furnace standing in the county, I’ll be there.”  That was in 1887. It seems like Jowers was a man, or ghost, of his word more than 137 years later.   

Alan Brown spins an Alabama yarn, a cotton web of mystery and truth, in his latest children’s book, Spooky America: The Ghostly Tales of Alabama. After sharing twenty-four terrifying ghost stories, Brown writes, “With centuries of history – some of it very dark, indeed – there’s simply no shortage of spookiness!” It’s that falling-leaves-early-dark time of the year, y’all. Turn the lights out and the flashlights on, grab this book with your kids, and bravely venture through Spooky America: The Ghostly Tales of Alabama together. 

Barbara Barcellona Smith’s award-winning first book, Let’s Eat Snails!, shares cultural culinary traditions and teaches the importance of being open-minded. She has a degree in journalism/public relations from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, and currently lives in Enterprise, Alabama. Visit her website at BarbaraBarcellonaSmith.com.