The Hanged Man's Tree

I have always thought that Mobile, Alabama has a better Mardi Gras than New Orleans.  The floats are more beautiful, the throws are better, and there is less nudity and vomit.    So every year we travel down to the deep South where the lazy oaks are heavy laden with moss to become part of what is a cultural phenomenom.  

Like New Orleans, Mobile is filled with strange stories and has a very interesting history.   In many ways, their histories are very similar.    They both share many things and one of the things they share is an amazing abundance of ghost stories.   I was lucky in that the people we were staying with seemed to know all of these stories and loved sharing them with me.  My favorite story they told me was about an old tree by the Church Street Graveyard.

  According to legend,  there was a man who was having an affair with someone else's wife.  This man was caught in the act by the husband by the Church Street Graveyard.  Somehow, the husband ended up shot and although all the evidence pointed to the wife's lover, he swore on everything holy that he didn't do it.  He proclaimed his innocence all the way to the gallows, but no one listened.  As he stepped up to the gallows,  he said that on the very spot where he had been caught, a tree would grow.  He said this tree would bare witness to his  innocense.   The trees roots would grow deep and strong and nothing would ever be able to tear it down.

His promise came true and a mighty oak grew up from that very spot.   It's survived hurricanes and storms and downtown development and serves as a reminder of his innocence. 

Sleeping with Jesse James' Ghost

For the last few nights my family and I have been traveling off the beaten path looking at strange haunted places that we might normally miss.  We've thrown ourselves into the middle of things and slept with ghosts and found ourselves in places without internet and places that my GPS can't find.   Our first stop on our travels was the historic St. James Hotel in Selma, Alabama.

The St. James Hotel in Selma Alabama seems haunted before you even pull up to it. Just driving through downtown Selma to the steps of the hotel makes you feel as if you are driving through a ghost town. The once splendid down town speaks of better times, but has been mostly abandoned so that as you pull up to the St. James, you feel like the only person on earth.


We were the only people staying at the St. James the night we arrived. It was cold outside and the legendary courtyard fountain outside was frozen. The painting of Jesse James’ mistress seemed to follow us with her eyes as we entered. The young man who stood alone behind the desk, Josh, happily pulled out the pictures of ghosts that had been taken throughout the hotel. He also took us on a tour through the elegant dinning room and historically perfect saloon. You could almost imagine yourself stepping backwards in time and seeing Jesse James himself seated in the back corner with his gang.

The St. James was once owned by a slave who became the first black congressman. Many of the white locals avoided the hotel because they were racists, but this didn’t stop Jesse James who made the hotel his headquarters in the 1880’s.Since that time, the hotel has been sitting empty.  The hotel was abandoned for over a hundred years and has only recently been rennovated and returned to it's original state.  Many visitors have seen Jesse and his mistress wandering the corridors of the St. James. Others have heard Jesse’s dog barking. A group of psychics reported seeing an entire group of ghosts in the courtyard.

Our stay at the St. James was unnervingly quiet. The hotel groans at night and the doors open and close on their own, but we saw nothing else of the multitude of ghosts that haunt this hotel. Since the hotel was empty, we were able to roam about the place freely and explore every nook and cranny of it. Except for Josh up front, it was just us and the ghosts.

As we wandered the old hotel, we took dozens of pictures, did EMF readings, and asked questions using the EVP recorder. There was no evidence of ghosts in any of this. However, my son’s photos were again filled with orbs and odd shapes.

We slept in Jesse James’ room. Josh explained to us that it was the only room in the hotel with a window in the closet because the famous outlaw needed to have a view from all angles. Josh also told us how Jesse checked out of the hotel. He slid out the window in our room and jumped in the river just behind the hotel fleeing from the law. We slept well in his old bed, but we were all awakened on a few occasions by what sounded like a dog. We checked out early after we ate our continental breakfast at Jesse James’ old table and I must say that this old hotel was definitely one the creepiest places I’ve ever slept.

Hose Defense

From: Chen Yang
Subject: Legal Assistant
Date: February 11, 2010 8:28:23 AM PST
To: undisclosed recipients: ;
Reply-To: chenyang9@live.com

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053000 China

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MFC Attorney

From: Mfc Imports & Export
Subject: Legal Assistance
Date: February 10, 2010 2:56:49 PM PST
Reply-To: christurner1515@yahoo.com.hk

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From: Clara Jong
Subject: Divorce Settlement.
Date: February 11, 2010 5:41:57 AM PST
Reply-To: Clara Jong

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A Simple Southern Recipe for Exorcising Haunted Houses

I learned an easy Southern recipe for performing an exorcism on a haunted house today.  A few of the nurses I know gave me this wonderful glimpse into Southern culture and a way that they say always works to clear a house of dark spirits.

One of the nurses I know  learned this after her grandfather passed away.  Apparently, her grandfather  was a cranky old man who yelled a lot and called people names.  He was not the type of spirit you would want lingering in your house.  When he was alive, he used to demand people get him things.  When he was sick, he always yelled for his water.  After he passed on, his spirit kept barking orders and he was especially noisy about the water.

Her grandmother knew just what to do about the problem.  She used an old Southern remedy.  She called several of her lady friends over and they did a prayer service in the house and when they were done they used red nail polish to mark every door frame in the house with a small cross.  This ritual was originally done in the owner's blood, but her grandmother didn't want blood all over her house and she figured nail polish would do just as well.  It did work just as well and no one heard from grandpa's ghost again.

My friend was lucky she learned this old remedy, because she needed it again later on.  She bought a house that she later learned had been built on the site of another house.  The first house had been burnt down and taken a few souls to their untimely death with it.  The developers had built a new house on top of the ashes of the old house.  My friend's house was a problem because of this.  One door in particular opened on it's own and no matter how many times it was locked or latched it always popped back open.  My friend used the same ritual her grandmother had used when she was a child and the door never opened again.

The Room Where Time Moves Backwards

While I was out investigating various ghost stories,  a man pull me aside and told me a story he thinks may have something to do with ghosts.  He wasn't exactly sure what happened, but he knew it was very odd and more than a little creepy.

He told me about a hotel in some rural town in Alabama that he used to visit with his wife.  The hotel, The Tallahassee, was very old and has since been demolished.  For a long time this old hotel was one of his favorite places to go.   They went there one time and stayed in a room he had never been in before.  His wife and he settled in and then they noticed  that there was no clock.  They needed to get up early in the morning, so he called the lobby and asked for a clock to be sent up.

Someone brought a clock up immediately and they plugged it into the wall.   The clock was working perfectly, but it was going backwards.  Another hotel employee came up and together they went to another room and tried the clock.  It worked right in the next room.   Together, the men decided to switch clocks and took a working clock from the next room and brought it into their room.  They plugged the clock into a different outlet and this new clock also went backwards.

After several attempts, the man gave up on the clock.  He called down to the lobby again and asked for a wake up call.  There seemed to be no way to get time to flow in the right direction in that particular room.