With history comes haunting, and Decatur has enough historic places to make fright lovers delight. 

There is nowhere in Decatur with more history than the Old State Bank. Built in 1833, it is the oldest standing bank in Alabama. Its walls have seen more than we could even imagine. The bank has seen the birth of a city, the hardness of a depression, the devastation of the Civil War, the rebuilding of a community, the vast changes of generations upon generations that walked through its doors. The Old State Bank has seen its share of grandeur and hope and prosperity, but it has also seen its share of heartbreak, despair, and pain. There are two known spirits that linger at the bank representing each of these. 

The Lady in White is a warm and welcoming spirit known for the happiness and comfort she radiates to visitors of the bank. She is the wife of General Washington Keyes, the first manager of The Old State Bank. Washington Keyes and his family lived in the upstairs residential area above the bank. The spirit of Mrs. Keyes welcomes you into the bank, inviting you to join in one of her dinner parties. She’s been seen wearing a white or blue dress and a warm smile. 

The other lady that lingers is sadness and despair in her black dress. Her name is unknown but her sorrow is unmistakable. The lady in black haunts the bank in search of her two sons who fought in the Civil War. She mourns the lives of her fallen sons, and you can hear her sobs echoing down the hall. You can catch a glimpse of her when you look into the large mirror on the bottom floor. Many say that when that take photos with the mirror, she is looking back at you. 

More spirits haunt in their agony and pain as they relive their last earthly moments in the bank’s vault. During the Civil War the bank’s vault was used as a makeshift surgery trying, to no avail, to repair and save mangled and broken bodies. So many perished in that dark and damp room due to the lack of modern medicine and technology. Still, late at night you can supposedly hear their pleading cries for healing and another chance at life. 

These spirits have been seen, reported, and documented for over 100 years. 

Another historic and haunted stop is The Princess Theatre. 

Built in 1887 as a livery stable for the downtown area, it was later converted into a theatre in 1919. 

In an interview with Mary McDonald (Programing Director), she shared that there are areas of the building she doesn’t like going to at night and alone. Mary and Jody Keith (Office Manager) walked up and down the halls of the second story telling me the paranormal phenomenon that they have personally experienced. Doors slamming and footsteps stomping down the hall when they were the only ones in the building. Art flying off walls right in front of them, stage lights turning off and on when no one is manning them. 

There are many stories shared of ghosts and unexplainable sounds and unusual happenings at the theatre. Everyone who has spent any amount of time there will likely have their own stories. Growing up a theatre kid, I spent countless hours and long nights at The Princess Theatre. I walked (and often wrongly ran) up and down every inch of the building. Playing hide and seek with friends during long rehearsals and hours at theatre camps both attending and later teaching, and also being an actor in its “Zombie Tour” event in 2015 as the undead pageant Queen. I’ve always felt at home in its historic halls, but also at times a slight bit unsettled. 

The ghost stories passed down to me from the older cast members, who learned them from prior cast members too, are the stories I’ll be sharing today. 

The haunting on the stage. As we all know, the Princess got its start as a stable and then a movie theatre; later a stage was added. The story claims that when building the stage, a worker had fallen and gotten trapped underneath. He was knocked unconscious by the fall and no one knew he was there. When he awoke injured, and confused, he found that he was trapped, essentially buried alive. The stage floor was too thick to hear his cries for help and he succumbed to his injuries, dehydration and starvation and perished under the floor. That is why, late at night when no one is on the stage, you can hear cries coming from deep under the wooden planks. A similar story told was that a child performing on stage had accidentally fallen into the open orchestra pit and perished, leaving everyone in the audience in horror. 

The story that impacted me the most, and one I still can’t get off my mind relates to the days when the upstairs of the Theatre had a working elevator. As a child, late one night after a long show week rehearsal, we were upstairs in the dressing room gathering our things to go home when a group of teenagers gathered around the then boarded up elevator shaft. They told a story of a young woman rushing to leave the theatre who tried to take the elevator. The doors opened and, distracted by her thoughts of getting home, she stepped into what she thought was the awaiting elevator, but instead plummeted down landing on the top of the elevator that was still waiting at the bottom. Due to a mechanical issue the elevator had not arrived, but the door had opened, leading her to her death. The woman, still trying to this day to get home, waits for someone to save her. When you knocked 3 times on the boarded up elevator shaft she would knock back. 

Whatever spooky story you’ve been told or unexplainable happening you have experienced there is a chance that those alive aren’t the only ones attending the theatre. 

One of the most infamous haunted sites in Morgan County is Cry Baby Hollow, located in Hartselle. 

There are several stories to explain these unusual incidents that occurred there. Some say a wagon overturned on the bridge; others that it was a car wreck involving a train, still some a troubled woman tossing her baby into the water, or a child being swept away in its currents with a distraught mother trying to save it, some even say a Civil War soldier taking the lives of an innocent mother and child. Regardless of the story you are told, one crucial part that never changes: the restless and frequently crying spirit of an infant or its mother. 

An eyewitness account from two Hartselle teens in 2020 said that they had always heard of the lore surrounding the bridge and had visited the location many times never encountering anything. One day after school they decided to go back and walk down the road. They said they didn’t hear or feel anything unusual but noticed someone had left a baby doll on the side of the bridge. Knowing the myths, they thought that whoever left it was trying to scare people, so they threw it over the bridge and into the waters below. That next day they went back and found that the exact same baby doll was there, completely dry and in the exact same spot on the side of the bridge. In 2009 a Hartselle man whose hobby was all things paranormal was said to have captured a clear image of the infant spirit on his camera. 

There are hundreds of reports coming from Cry Baby Hollow. Strange noises, screaming, the sound of a baby crying, a woman crying, train horns, baby handprints left on the car windows and even cars moving while in neutral. 

Some leave offerings to the infant spirit like candy and dolls to help comfort the ghost-child in the hopes of it finally finding rest. Some leave spooky items and messages around the site trying to scare those coming for a thrill. 

I visited Cry Baby Hollow for the first time close to Halloween in 2009. With two families loaded up in the car, we drove to the bridge. We got out of the car on shaking legs and walked over to the side of the bridge to peer down into the water secretly hoping to see a face peering back up at us. Nothing out of the ordinary was seen, although we might have mistaken a squirrel in the trees for a spirit but it was all in good fun. We left some candy by the bridge’s edge and then got back into the car. At the base of the slight hill, the parent driving the car put in neutral. Instead of rolling down or standing still the car went up the hill. Of course, we were convinced it was a ghost and shrieked and squealed and swore that we spotted baby hand prints on the back windshield. 

At the end of the day, once all the stories have been told, the choice is yours. You can choose to hurry past that haunted building, pretend you didn’t hear that mysterious sound, pull the covers up a little higher, double check that the doors are locked or choose to delight in the delicious terror of the things that go bump in the night.