Most Haunted Places in Alabama: the Ghost of Sloss Furnaces
A foreman fell into a pool of molten iron at Sloss Furnaces in 1906. Workers say his burned figure still walks the catwalks, shouting orders.
In Alabama, the scariest stories are never just about ghosts. They come with receipts, like a candle box that went missing and a tower that kept glowing long after the funeral ended. Drish died in 1867 after a fall down his own staircase, and his widow Sarah kept the candles from his funeral, planning to use them later. When Sarah died in 1884, the candles were gone, and people started reporting a phantom fire glowing in the third-story tower, with no flame to be found.
And the worst part is, the house still hosts events, so the “Death Lights in the Tower” story keeps showing up in real life.
The Most Haunted House in Alabama
Tuscaloosa's Drish House comes with a ghost story about candles. Dr. John Drish built the Italianate-Greek Revival mansion in 1837 on a cotton plantation worked by enslaved people.
He struggled with drink and rage, and in 1867 he died in a fall down his own staircase. His widow, Sarah, kept the candles from his funeral, intending them for her own someday. When she died in 1884, the family couldn't find them, and the legend says her anger lit the house, because for years afterward people reported a phantom fire glowing in the third-story tower, with no flame to be found.
The tale was immortalized as "Death Lights in the Tower" in Kathryn Tucker Windham's classic "Thirteen Alabama Ghosts and Jeffrey." The house still stands as an events venue. The candles were never found.
commons.wikimedia.orgThat candle-lost mystery at the Drish House is only step one, because Alabama’s other legends start the same way, with people swearing they saw something they couldn’t explain.
Ghost Towns, Courthouses, and a Face in the Glass
Alabama's first capital is now a ruin. Old Cahawba, founded around 1819 where two rivers meet, served briefly as the seat of state government before flooding and the Civil War emptied it out. What remains is a ghost town of chimney stubs, a slave burial ground, and overgrown streets, the sort of abandoned ruins where visitors report phantom voices and figures in the windows of buildings that are barely there.
The most famous account dates to 1862, when guests at Colonel Pegues' garden reported a glowing orb drifting through the hedges. Then there's the face. At the Pickens County Courthouse in Carrollton, a single windowpane is said to hold the image of Henry Wells, a Black man accused of burning the previous courthouse down in 1876.
As the story goes, he was cornered in the garret as a mob gathered below, and lightning struck at the exact moment he looked out, fixing his face into the glass forever. No amount of cleaning has removed it, and the county eventually stopped trying. Alabama keeps a lot of strange, unexplained legends like this one, where Reconstruction-era violence and folklore blur together until no one can fully separate them.
These stories show up on paranormal television constantly, part of the endless hunt for ghosts caught on camera, which has only multiplied the reports.
More Haunted Places in Alabama
A few more stops worth the drive:
Antebellum ghosts and a tavern skeleton in the wall, sounds like the kind of haunting you’ll find in Haunted Places in Mississippi.
USS Alabama (Mobile): a World War II battleship where visitors report a blond-haired sailor and disembodied voices below deck.
commons.wikimedia.orgBryce Hospital (Tuscaloosa): a 19th-century asylum whose cemetery holds hundreds in unmarked graves on University of Alabama land.
commons.wikimedia.orgMaple Hill Cemetery (Huntsville): the state's oldest, with an adjacent playground locals call the "Dead Children's Playground," where swings reportedly move on their own.
commons.wikimedia.orgSturdivant Hall (Selma): an 1850s mansion tied to the ghost of former owner John Parkman.
commons.wikimedia.orgThen you hit Old Cahawba, where the state’s first capital got wiped out by flooding and the Civil War, and visitors swear they hear voices drifting through the overgrown streets.
So when the Drish House tower starts glowing again, it feels less like a random haunting and more like Alabama folklore refusing to stay buried.
Worth knowing before you go: this is Alabama, a state with its own particular history and peculiar rules, and several of these sites sit on protected or private ground. Sloss Furnaces, Old Cahawba, and the USS Alabama all run official tours, which beats trespassing on a Reconstruction-era ghost story.
What ties the haunted places in Alabama together is labor and loss. Furnaces, plantations, asylums, and a first capital that the rivers took back. The ghosts here tend to be the people history used hardest, the workers and the enslaved and the confined, which is its own kind of haunting whether or not you believe the cold spots.
Alabama shares this weight with its neighbors. The same Deep South past runs through the haunted corners of Tennessee, North Carolina, and Arkansas.
The scariest part is that Alabama keeps turning its legends into places you can walk into, candlelight and all.
Want another courtroom-level scare? Read about the ghost blamed for killing a man in Tennessee.
