BUCKET LIST UPDATE No. 126: Visit Pratt Hall at Huntingdon College in Montgomery

Pratt Hall at Huntingdon College in Montgomery.

Pratt Hall at Huntingdon College in Montgomery has the reputation for being one of the most haunted locations in all of Alabama, and it’s a place that I’ve always wanted to see for myself. I’ve been to Huntingdon College many times, but I couldn’t honestly say that I’d ever been to Pratt Hall. For that reason, I put this trip on my “bucket list” a couple of years ago and finally got a chance to scratch it off the list last Thursday.

Pratt Hall’s haunted history was made famous in the 1969 book, “13 Alabama Ghosts and Jeffrey,” by Kathryn Tucker Windham, who was a graduate of Huntingdon College. According to Windham, who died in 2011, Pratt Hall is haunted by the “Red Lady,” the ghost of a former student named Martha. She arrived at the school from her native New York dressed all in red. She also brought red drapes, a red bedspread, a red Turkish prayer rug and red figurines for her dorm room, which was on an “isolated end of the corridor on the top floor of the building.”

Martha was shy and had a hard time making friends. She went through numerous roommates and her behavior became increasingly strange as she took to walking down the halls, from dorm room to dorm room, during the night in a trancelike state. Then came the day that Martha didn’t come down to eat or attend classes.

The dormitory’s president was one of Martha’s former roommates, so she went to check on Martha to see what was the matter. As she neared Martha’s room, she saw “the first of the now-famous flashes of red shooting out into the corridor, down from the room’s transom as so many have since seen,” Windham wrote in her book. Martha’s former roommate opened the door, screamed and fainted.

When other dorm residents arrived, they found Martha “dressed in her red robe and draped in her red bedspread, with blood around her on the floor.” She’d committed suicide by slashing her wrists, Windham wrote. Since then, numerous students have reported seeing “rays of crimson light flash down from over (Martha’s) transom and the Red Lady in her bizarre clothing” on the fourth floor at Pratt Hall.

Last Thursday morning, Sparta Academy’s varsity girls basketball team played in the state basketball tournament at Huntingdon, and the arena where they played is just a five-minute walk from Pratt Hall. I arrived a few minutes early, made the short walk across campus and checked out the building for myself. I didn’t actually go inside, but I did walk around the entire building and snapped a few pictures. In the early morning light, the building didn’t look all that creepy, but I can only imagine how it must look at night.

In the end, how many of you have ever been to Pratt Hall in Montgomery? What did you think about it? Did you have any unusual experiences there? Do you know of any other “haunted” locations worth checking out? Let us know in the comments section below.