A few days ago, I took my daughter to an orthodontist
appointment in Mobile. While we sat in the lobby, I happened to glance down at
the table between our chairs and spotted the September-October edition of
“Alabama” magazine.
I picked it up and began to flip through its pages, but I
didn’t have to go far before my eyes fell on a very well-done article about the
Gaines Ridge Dinner Club written by Taylor Dougherty as part of the magazine’s
regular “Alabama Insider” feature.
Dougherty’s article let readers know that “this Southern
Gothic restaurant serves up delicious food and historical appeal in an
atmosphere that is truly haunting.” The article goes on to describe the history
of Gaines Ridge, its menu (including its famous black-bottom pie) and fine
dining atmosphere.
The portion of the article that I found most interesting
came when Dougherty began to discuss the ghostly reputation that Gaines Ridge
has garnered over the years.
“As with any old Southern locale, Gaines Ridge has its share
of reputed ghost activity, with guests claiming to have seen apparitions
floating past windows, heard disembodied screams and detected smells that seem
to come from nowhere,” Dougherty wrote. “One of the restaurant’s founders,
Betty Gaines Kennedy, has a personal story of her own that she might be willing
to share. The popularity of these legends has landed Gaines Ridge Dinner Club
on the official Alabama Ghost Trail, and it has often been called Alabama’s
most haunted restaurant.”
The “Alabama Ghost Trail” that Dougherty is referring to is
the list of supposedly haunted places published years ago by the Southwest
Alabama Regional Office of Tourism and Films as part of its popular Alabama’s
Front Porches website, www.alabamasfrontporches.org.
In addition to Gaines
Ridge, other Wilcox County locations on that “ghost trail” include Snow Hill
Institute, the “Castro Tree” in Camden, the “Unfilled Hole” in Camden, the Gees
Bend Ferry, the “Millie Hole” on Pine Barren Creek, the intersection of County
Road 59 and County Road 24 near Pine Apple, the Burford House and the Purefoy
House at Furman.
With that said, next week’s paper will mark the first paper
in the month of October, and that means that Halloween is right around the
corner. Last year, the first ever list of the “Spookiest Places in Wilcox
County” appeared in the Oct. 26 edition of The Progressive Era. Nine eerie locations
made that list, including all of the places mentioned above as well as the New
Providence Cemetery at Coy and the “House of the Dancing Skulls” at Rosebud.
Other nominees for last
year’s list included the Coy Railroad Crossing, Moore Academy in Pine Apple, Prairie
Bluff Cemetery, Dale Masonic Lodge in Camden, Camden Cemetery and the Wilcox
Female Institute in Camden.
In the coming weeks, I’ll be compiling The Progressive Era’s
second annual list of “Spookiest Places in Wilcox County,” which I hope to get
in the paper on Oct. 25, which is the Wednesday before Halloween this year.
In
the end, if you know of a really spooky Wilcox County location that isn’t mentioned
above, but deserves to be on a list of “Spookiest Places in Wilcox County,”
please let me know. Send me the name of the place, including where it’s
located, and some information about why you think it deserves on the list. More
than a few readers submitted information last year for the first list of
“spooky places,” and I’m hoping to get a whole new crop of “spooky places” from
readers this year. Please let me hear from you.
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