What’s the ‘spookiest’ experience you’ve ever had?

Masonic Hall at Perdue Hill, Alabama.

Halloween is this coming Tuesday, and in the spirit of that creepy holiday, I’ve been thinking a lot about the “spookiest” experience I’ve ever had.

I didn’t have to think long as I remembered a chilly October night in 2016 when I spent an entire night in the Old Claiborne Masonic Hall at Perdue Hill. At the time I was working for the newspaper in Evergreen and had teamed up with Josh Dewberry of The Monroe Journal and paranormal investigator John Higginbotham to investigate the old building.

This old Masonic lodge, which sits at the intersection of U.S. Highway 84 and Monroe County Road 1, is one of the oldest buildings in Southwest Alabama, and is just the kind of place you’d expect to find supernatural activity.

Built in 1824 on a high bluff along the Alabama River at Claiborne, the lodge was moved to Perdue Hill in 1884. During its heyday, it was used for a wide variety of purposes, including as a Masonic Hall, by various churches, as a school, courtroom, meeting place, social hall and voting house. It also hosted famous Revolutionary war hero General Lafayette in 1825, and William B. Travis, the hero of the Alamo, practiced law in the building in the 1830s.

On Oct. 21, 2016, we arrived at the Masonic Hall around 8:30 p.m. and investigated the building into the wee hours of the night. For different reasons, Josh and John had to head home around 2 a.m., but I elected to spend the night, mainly so that I wouldn’t have to drive back to Perdue Hill a few hours later to return the building’s keys to its caretaker. As soon as my colleagues left, I locked the front door, stretched out on a bench downstairs, covered up with a sleeping bag and fell asleep.

Suddenly and without warning, around 2:50 a.m., I jolted awake to the sound of footsteps coming from the second floor. The building is so old that it’s almost impossible to move, and especially walk, without making some sort of noise on the creaking, wooden floors.

Alone there in the dark, straining my ears, my heart began to beat like a trip-hammer as, after a short pause, I heard another of these “step” noises. In all, I'd say there were seven or eight of these “steps,” and one of them - the last one - was very loud, almost a bang like someone dropped a small rock on one of the glass display cases upstairs.

Looking back, I probably should have grabbed my Maglite and investigated the source of the noise. Instead, at the time, this just didn’t seem like the thing to do, so I laid there for what seemed like a long time, listening, not moving a muscle, before eventually falling back to sleep. I awoke around 6:15 a.m., not long before the sun began to rise in the east. I packed up my gear, loaded it into my truck, and returned the key to the caretaker.

Over the years, I’ve thought a lot about that night at the Masonic Hall. Is it haunted? Do ghosts walk the second floor in the middle of the night when no one’s around? Do past events at the lodge play themselves out over and over again when the building is empty? I admit to not knowing the answers to these questions, but I can say that I do believe that few buildings in this part of the state are as ripe for supernatural activity as this nearly 200-year-old Masonic lodge.