(JN 325)
There is finally a chill in the October air! I’m ridiculously happy about this. Fall is officially upon us and Halloween is right around the corner. The Halloween season (If it gets its own section in Target, it can be called a “season.”) brings a wealth of ghostly themed tours to Alabama every year. Huntsville, Birmingham, and Tuscaloosa, are all offering up autumnal ghost tours before the weather gets too chilly.
The Smith Museum of Natural History on campus is even giving a ghost tour on campus this weekend. I find all things paranormal to be super fascinating so I did my research to bring you a sneak peak of what to expect on this tour. What parts of campus are allegedly haunted? Where can you find a woman rumored to be the muse of Tennessee Williams? What areas are residual hauntings and where do intelligent spirits linger?
1.) Marian Gallaway in the Gallaway Theater in Rowand-Johnson Hall: As a singer, this is definitely my favorite of all the hauntings on campus. Marian Gallaway was a stage director who died in 1980, but it seems as though she’s still living for the spotlight in her theater. She has been known to slam the doors of classrooms in Ro-Jo at night and wander her stage dressed in white. In Beverly Crider’s blog post, Crimson Hauntings: The Ghosts of UA, she recounts a story her niece, a theatre major, once told her about Marian appearing in the audience during a show. Marian Gallaway is rumored to be the inspiration behind Tennessee Williams’ Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire. It would appear that she’s not entirely done creating a scene.
Marian Gallaway
2.) Dr. Smith in Smith Hall: Continuing on the theme of ghosts who haunt their namesake buildings, Eugene Allen Smith (1841-1927) was a geologist who died in his home in Tuscaloosa, but is said to still roam the halls of Smith. The Tuscaloosa News talks about various Smith Hall incidents in, Who haunts the halls of Tuscaloosa? There have been rumors of an incident involving students being killed from Students have claimed they’ve heard Dr. Smith’s carriage in the halls late at night. The carriage is displayed in the Alabama Museum of Natural History. It hasn’t been used in years.
Dr. Allen Smith
3.) Adam in Gamma Phi Beta Chapter House: This haunting is one of the more dubious ones, but it’s interesting to speculate and it’s certainly the one I’ve had the most experience with, seeing as I have lived here for the past three years. According to the stories, the current Gamma Phi house was built on an old home for children where a young boy named Adam was accidentally scalded to death in a bathtub. There are notorious water pressure issues in the house, lights flicker when lots of people get together, tap water has been said to turn on and off seemingly by itself, doors slam, and electronics will turn on and off by themselves.
Gamma Phi Beta Chapter House at the University of Alabama
I’m pretty open to paranormal activity and the only thing I’ve really experienced in my years living in the house is my printer turning on and off by itself when it wasn’t plugged in. That was weird. I said, “Good job, Adam,” when the unplugged printer came to life and it turned off.
lo & behold 