Halloween is a one-night-a-year thing, and it is play-acting. Instead of supernatural phenomenon, it is a giant costume party. Everyone knows it is a pretend fantasy.
Alabama has another spooky thing, and it is year-round. Instead of people dressing up and pretending, it is people noticing what appears to happen in nature.
Alabama is famous for scary cemeteries. The dead are laid to rest there, but some appear not to be resting in peace.
While frightening cemeteries are spread over the state from Mobile in the south to Jackson County in the north, there are clusters of more than one scary cemetery in the same area:
Butler County
This south central Alabama county is known to most Alabama folks who pass through on Interstate 65. More local travelers can go through on State highways 10 and 55. It has two cemeteries that are the subject of reports of strange phenomena, both near the town of Red Level off Highway 55 in nearby Covington County.
Consolation Church Cemetery
This cemetery has many of the things you would expect in a haunted cemetery. It is waaaay back in the woods. Far off the beaten path. On only dirt roads. Apparently no one living in the area. No street lights. Pitch black.
And an outhouse. A haunted outhouse. Reports have it that when someone entered the outhouse, the door would lock behind them, and they could not get out until someone from the outside unlocked it.
A fire completely destroyed the long-abandoned Consolation Primitive Baptist Church in 2015. The fire also destroyed the nearby outhouse. The haunted outhouse. The church’s cemetery remains. So do reports of paranormal activity.
In 2007, 13 people were arrested for breaking in and criminal mischief after the Butler County Sheriff’s Department investigated “cultish behavior” in and around the abandoned church. Symbols associated with the occult were carved into wood inside the church.
Reports persist till today of red-eyed hellhounds, screaming banshees, and a black truck that chases cars away.
A second spooky cemetery in Butler County near the Red Level area is
Oakey Streak Cemetery
At the juncture of Halso Mill Road and Oakey Streak Road, there is the Oakey Streak Methodist Church, founded in 1831, built in 1851.
The adjoining cemetery has sparked haunted tales.
Unmarked graves of slaves and early pioneers. A mass grave of 21 unnamed infants. A headstone indicates triplet boys all died on Friday, the 13th of June in 1890, at the age of 6 months.
Dallas County
Two mysterious cemeteries are in Dallas County where Selma is the county seat.
New Cahaba Cemetery, Old Cahawba
Old Cahawba was once the capital city of Alabama. Its graveyard, New Cahaba Cemetery, is more than 160 years old.
Only restored buildings, some ruins and lots of graves remain to tell the history of Old Cahawba. It is maintained as a historical site.
Reports are that visitors and workers hear disembodied voices and the sounds of children laughing.
The grave of Col. John Bell, who was killed in 1856 along with his son in a shootout on Cahaba’s main street, is a noted site. The murderers were never convicted, and the Bell family noted its bitterness on John’s grave with this inscription: “No murderer hath eternal life abiding in him.”
Adams Grove Cemetery, Sardis
This cemetery adjoins an abandoned building that was once the Adams Grove Presbyterian Church. Congregations last gathered in the church building in 1974.
Gravestones include Confederate soldiers, slaves and prominent citizens.
Visitors claim to see a “shadowy man with fiery red eyes.” They hear a Confederate soldier yelling and a baby crying.
The church, built in 1853 in the Sardis community of Dallas County, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Bass Cemetery, Irondale
Bass Cemetery in Irondale is located off a dirt road in the woods. It has been around a long time, but no one seems to know for sure for how long. Maybe 200 years?
People report all kinds of paranormal activity in this cemetery and rumors of occult rituals are widespread.
In the fall of 1987, my older brother and I (as well as another friend and three females) went to Bass Cemetery on a Saturday night to drink and hang out for a little while. As we got out of our vehicles, we noticed another vehicle on the property as well as a shirtless redneck walking out of an open crypt (above ground) near the front of the cemetery. Needless to say, we didn’t want any issues, so we got in our vehicles and left. The following morning, my brother (now deceased) realized he had dropped his asthma inhaler when we were trying to leave the cemetery. We skipped Sunday school that morning and drove back to the cemetery to retrieve it. Sure enough, we pulled into the same area we parked the night before, and the inhaler was laying on the ground, so he picked it up and we started to leave. As we began to pull out of the entrance onto Ruffner Road, we both see a guy wearing a Confederate soldier uniform carrying a napsack on a stick over his left shoulder. He looked directly at us and continued walking in the high grass across the road from us. Still remember this incident vividly…he had red hair (also wearing the infantry cap) and a red beard. The wind began blowing as we were pulling out, and we couldn’t see his legs below the knees. At the same time, we both said what is he doing here, as there were no re-enactments in the area and it is mostly industrial. We continued on to church and talked about it again afterwards. A few years before my brother passed away, we talked about it again and the memory was just as vivid as years before.
Harrison Cemetery, Kinston
Harrison Cemetery in Kinston in Coffee County is haunted by famous Grancer Harrison, known as “Grancer the Dancer.”
Harrison was a wealthy cotton planter who had his slaves build a dance hall for his frequent dances. Before he died in 1860 on the eve of the Civil War, he had the slaves begin work on an above-ground tomb. He left instructions that he was to be buried wearing his dancing clogs and lying on his feather bed.
After his death and entombment, people would report hearing a fiddle and the tapping of clogs. Some could hear a man’s voice calling square dance moves. Grancer’s tale is the final chapter in Kathryn Tucker Windham’s book “13 Alabama Ghosts.”
Church Street Graveyard, Mobile
Church Street Graveyard was founded in Mobile in 1819, the year Alabama became a state. It is said to be haunted by a wrongly convicted man who was hanged outside the cemetery wall.
In May 1833, Charles Boyington was seen walking near the graveyard with Nathaniel Frost. When Frost was later found stabbed to death in the cemetery, Boyington was accused. He was tried and found guilty of the murder and sentenced to hang, but he continued to declare his innocence. Boyington said an oak tree would grow from the location of his heart at his burial site.
After his hanging, Boyington was refused burial in the graveyard because of his conviction for murder. He was buried just outside the cemetery wall where today a tall oak tree grows.
Roden Cemetery, Marshall County
In this rural, little-known cemetery, four victims of the 1864 Buck Island Massacre are buried. The four men were shot to death on Dec. 26, 1864, after they attempted to hide their cattle on a small island to prevent rogue marauder Ben Harris and his troops from confiscating them.
Although the Roden men complied with Harris’ demands and were told they would not be harmed, they were lined up and shot.
Union cemetery Woodville
More than 1,200 graves are located in Union Cemetery in the Jackson County town of Woodville, with the earliest burials listed in the 1830s.
Legends persist that the cemetery is haunted by the spirits of Civil War soldiers buried on the grounds and that, at times, visitors can hear their dying screams.
Jim Zig Zeigler is a contributing writer for Yellowhammer News. His beat includes the positive and colorful about Alabama – her people, events, groups and prominent deaths. He is a former State Auditor and Public Service Commissioner. You can reach him at [email protected].
