Ghost Eyes

  Built in 1853 as a plantation home in Selma, Alabama, the beautiful Sturdivant Hall is a prime example of the grand neoclassical architecture of the time, with two stories, six front columns, and a grand antebellum style that represented wealth and privilege. The grounds also contain a smaller 2-story house that contains the kitchen, as well as storage and modest lodging. Sturdivant was sold to a new owner, one John Parkman, in 1864. He was the President of the First National bank of Selma, and his family only lived in the house until 1866. In 1870 it was sold to a new family who kept it until...

Known as either the Essex County Penitentiary or the Newark Street Jail, is the oldest public building in Essex County, New Jersey, and its state of disrepair and neglect stand as testament to that fact. It was built in 1837 on the new Morris Canal to replace an older jail/courthouse that burned to the ground 2 years prior. In a cost-cutting move, it was decided that the new jail would stand separate from the courthouse, and that it would hold offenders from both the county and the city of Newark. While the original jail was built in a pastoral campus-like setting, with the inmates encouraged...

Like so much of the Deep South, Lowndesboro, Alabama can seem to be a city that exists outside of the normal passage of time. The place is filled with old houses, old memories, and old ghosts. Some of all three exist within the halls of the city’s most famous house, which is named “Marengo”. One of the funny things about Marengo is that it wasn’t always located in Lowndesboro. It was originally built across the Alabama River just north of the city by Dr. John Howard. By the mid 1840s, however, his medical practice was floundering at the location, so he decided to have slaves dismantle the...

Originally built in 1822 as the Athens Female Academy, and then repurposed by the Methodist Church, what is now known as Athens State College is both the oldest and newest school of higher education in the Alabama state system. It is the oldest because the Female Academy opened before any other Alabama state college or university, and newest because it didn’t officially join the Alabama State educational system until 1975. The most prominent building on the campus is Founders’ Hall, home of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, the four columns that hold up the structure. Local legend states that during...