Haunted Birmingham, AL: 10 Haunted Places In and Around the City
An iron works where the most famous ghost is a fake, a hotel floor known for knocking, a movie palace with a shadow in the wings and the city’s oldest graveyard. These are Birmingham’s haunted places, with what is history, what is legend and how to visit.
Birmingham grew from nothing into an iron and steel city in a few decades after 1871, and its ghost stories come from that hard, fast history: the furnaces at Sloss, the grand hotels and theaters of the boom years and the graves of the people who built it all. We have checked each place against current sources, kept the stories as stories and said where the records say otherwise, most of all at Sloss Furnaces. We have added two places just outside the city: the Homewood Public Library in a former church, and the Drish House in Tuscaloosa, an hour away. Three of the places are hotels, so you can stay the night.
Address 20 32nd Street North, Birmingham, AL 35222
Where to look The blast furnaces and hearths, the boiler rooms and the tunnels under the casting sheds
Reported ghosts Theophilus Jowers, killed in the molten iron in 1887, and the invented foreman James "Slag" Wormwood
Visiting Free self-guided visits; guided tours for a small fee
Hours and season Tuesday to Saturday 10 AM to 4 PM, Sunday noon to 4 PM
Tickets Free admission
Ghost hunting No public ghost hunts; the Sloss Fright Furnace haunted house ended after 2019
Sloss made pig iron in the heart of Birmingham from its first blast in April 1882 until the furnaces went cold in 1971, and the towering stacks, stoves and casting sheds still stand. It was named a National Historic Landmark in 1981 and opened as a museum in 1983. Entry is free, and the work was brutal: the company leased convicts for its mines, and men died in the heat and machinery.
Its most famous ghost, the cruel foreman James “Slag” Wormwood, is not real. Sloss’s own director told Bham Now in 2023 that the story is untrue and that most online hauntings were made up to sell tickets to the old Fright Furnace haunted house. The older story is documented: foundryman Theophilus Jowers fell into the molten iron in 1887, and workers later said they saw a man walking on the hearth.
What investigators report
On Ghost Adventures, the crew focused on the underground tunnel and boiler room, asking questions and provoking during solo sessions, and reported EVPs such as “Come here” plus footsteps and a mist on night vision in the tunnel.
Haunted Rooms tip: Come on a weekday afternoon, take the free self-guided route around Furnace No. 1, and read Kathryn Tucker Windham’s The Ghost in the Sloss Furnaces for the Jowers story.
Dr. John R. Drish’s enslaved artisans built this mansion in 1837 at the center of a 450-acre plantation, and a three-story Italianate tower was added before the Civil War. It later served as a school, a wrecking company’s parts warehouse photographed by Walker Evans, and part of a Baptist church. The preservation society saved it in 2007, and since 2016 it has been a privately owned, restored event venue.
Kathryn Tucker Windham’s 1969 story Death Lights in the Tower made it famous. Drish died after a fall on the staircase in 1867; his widow Sarah saved the candles from his wake for her own funeral, but they could not be found when she died in 1884. Since then passersby have reported fire in the tower when there was none. Visitors also tell of ghost lights inside, and the house has hosted Halloween ghost hunts.
What investigators report
Tuscaloosa Paranormal report EVP sessions here in which questions asked during interviews drew replies, including a faint “Yes” and the number “Thirteen” in answer to direct questions, along with children’s giggles and humming on the recordings.
Where to look The sixth floor (rooms 604, 613 and 615), room 416, the bar and kitchen
Reported ghosts Major Edward Tutwiler, the Knocker, a little girl in pigtails, an older woman in a turquoise choker
Visiting A working hotel; book a room to stay the night
Ghost hunting No public investigations; you can stay the night as a guest
The Tutwiler is Birmingham’s best-known haunted hotel, a Hampton Inn & Suites inside the 1914 Ridgely Apartments on Park Place. The original Tutwiler Hotel stood two blocks away until it was imploded in 1974; the name moved here when the Ridgely reopened as a hotel in 1986. Staff still say good night to the Major at closing time, a habit that began after a bartender’s strange week in 1995.
Most reports come from the sixth floor, where guests describe rapid knocking on their doors in the small hours and nobody in the corridor when they look. A Birmingham paranormal group says it recorded a little girl’s voice saying “knock, knock”, and ghost tour guides add sightings of a girl in pigtails on the security cameras. Ask for a sixth-floor room; it is a request, not a guarantee.
Haunted Rooms tip: Request the sixth floor (rooms 604, 613 or 615 are the ones named in local stories) when you book and again at check-in.
Address 2101 5th Avenue North, Birmingham, AL 35203
Where to look The ninth floor, the room Hank Williams stayed in, the corridors and the lobby
Reported ghosts Hank Williams, former owner Clifford Stiles, a woman in white, a small dog
Visiting A working hotel; book a room to stay the night
Ghost hunting No public investigations; you can stay the night as a guest
The Redmont opened on May 1, 1925 with a private bath in all 200 rooms, and it is Birmingham’s oldest operating hotel. Businessman Clifford Stiles bought it in 1946 and turned the top floor into a penthouse for his family. After a long restoration it reopened in March 2016 in Hilton’s Curio Collection, with 120 rooms, a block from the Tutwiler.
Country star Hank Williams stayed here on his final road trip in late December 1952; he died in the back of his car on New Year’s Day 1953, not in the hotel. Guests say they have heard a guitar picking out his songs. Others report a woman in white on the ninth floor, Clifford Stiles walking the halls and locking doors, and a little dog trotting along the corridors.
Haunted Rooms tip: Ask staff which room is linked to Hank Williams; they tend to talk about it only if you ask.
Address 331 Cotton Avenue SW, Birmingham, AL 35211
Where to look The upstairs rooms and the front hall
Reported ghosts Doors slamming and rocking chairs rocking on their own, as docents tell it
Visiting House museum with guided tours
Ghost hunting Occasional public ghost hunts run by the Southern Ghost Girls Tours
Arlington is Birmingham’s only antebellum mansion, built between 1845 and 1850 for Judge William S. Mudd by enslaved laborers in the old town of Elyton. Union troops used the house during Wilson’s Raid in 1865, and the raid that burned the University of Alabama set out from here. The city bought it in 1953, and it is now a house museum with gardens on the National Register.
Folklorist Alan Brown records docents’ stories of doors slamming and rocking chairs moving by themselves. Arlington is also one of the few Alabama house museums that lets ghost hunters in: medium Lesley Ann Hyde’s Southern Ghost Girls Tours run public investigations here, and WBHM reported in 2025 that the first one, in 2018, drew about 200 people, with proceeds helping preservation.
Haunted Rooms tip: Watch for the Southern Ghost Girls’ public investigation, usually one night in late summer, or take a daytime tour and ask the docents what they have heard.
Where to look The balcony, the stage wings and the organ loft
Reported ghosts A construction worker in the balcony; a shadow some believe is former organist Stanleigh Malotte
Visiting Open for films, concerts and events; occasional tours
Ghost hunting No public ghost hunts; buy a ticket to a show
Paramount opened the Alabama on December 26, 1927 as a Spanish Revival movie palace, and it still has its original Mighty Wurlitzer organ, nicknamed Big Bertha. Saved and restored by Birmingham Landmarks, which owns it, the theater now hosts films, concerts and shows under its famous vertical ALABAMA sign. It has been on the National Register since 1979.
Staff stories go back decades. During a 1986 rehearsal, organist Cecil Whitmire and a singer said a shadowy figure stepped from the curtain and vanished; some believe it was Stanleigh Malotte, house organist from 1936 to 1955. Others tell of a construction worker who fell from the balcony, seats folding down on their own and a 2006 investigator pushed back on the balcony stairs. None of it is documented beyond the stories.
Haunted Rooms tip: Go to a classic film night and get there early to hear the Wurlitzer before the show, then look up at the balcony rail.
Visiting a haunted place by day is one thing. Investigating one after dark is another. On a Haunted Rooms ghost hunt our team takes you through a historic building with professional ghost hunting equipment, runs EVP sessions and vigils, and gives you time to explore on your own. These are the nearest ones we run.
Where to look The Erswell vault and the 2024 marker for Emma, May and Irene Hawes
Reported ghosts Catherine Erswell whispering in her husband's vault; May Hawes, said to haunt East Lake
Visiting City cemetery; grounds open to visitors in daylight
Tours Occasional guided history tours by the cemetery
Ghost hunting No ghost hunting; history tours only
Birmingham’s oldest cemetery was already taking burials by 1869, two years before the city was founded, and it holds nine of the ten landowners who started Birmingham, early mayors, Governor William Hugh Smith, industrialist Henry DeBardeleben and civil rights leader Fred Shuttlesworth. It has been on the National Register since 1977 and sits on a wooded hill just north of downtown.
The ghost story told most is about Catherine Erswell, who wanted to be buried at Elmwood but was put in her husband Edward’s vault here; people say whispers come from the tomb at night. In 2024 the cemetery finally marked the grave of Emma Hawes and her daughters May and Irene, murdered in 1888. May’s body was found in East Lake, where locals still tell of a little girl seen by the water at dusk.
Haunted Rooms tip: Join one of the cemetery’s history tours, often run in October, and look for the 2024 Hawes marker before walking out to the Erswell vault.
Where to look The third floor, the stairwells and the elevator
Reported ghosts Former library director Fant Thornley, known by the smell of cigarettes
Visiting Public research library, open during library hours
Ghost hunting No ghost hunting in the library
The Neoclassical Indiana limestone building on Linn Park was finished in 1927 as Birmingham’s Central Library and served as the main library for 57 years; it now holds the Birmingham Public Library’s archives and research collections, along with its celebrated murals. It sits a block from the Tutwiler Hotel.
Its ghost is a polite one. Staff and visitors have long credited Fant Thornley, director from 1953 into the 1970s, with the smell of his cigarettes in the elevator and on the stairs, doors opening on their own and pencils that roll across desks. An electrician is said to have seen him. Like most library ghosts, he exists only in staff stories.
Haunted Rooms tip: Visit on a weekday, look at the murals in the main reading room and then take the stairs to the third floor.
Address 1023 20th Street South, Birmingham, AL 35205
Where to look The main-floor waiting area, guest rooms and the basement fitness room
Reported ghosts A nurse on her rounds, a girl playing jacks, a man who orders guests out
Visiting A working hotel; book a room to stay the night
Ghost hunting No public investigations; you can stay the night as a guest
This 63-room boutique hotel in Five Points South fills the Art Deco Medical Arts Building of 1931, which began life as doctors’ offices; its Rx Lounge and the medical insignia over the door are nods to that past. It became the Pickwick Hotel in the late 1980s, then the Hotel Highland in 2008, and reopened as a Hotel Indigo in September 2018.
The stories here are local lore rather than staff accounts. Guests have described a nurse who seems to be checking on patients, the sound of a girl bouncing a ball and playing jacks near the lobby seating, and a man who appeared in one room and shouted at the guests to leave. The basement, said in some tellings to have held a morgue, is now the fitness room.
Haunted Rooms tip: Sit in the main-floor waiting area late in the evening: that is where the girl with the jacks is said to be heard.
Where to look The adult reading room in the old sanctuary and the basement rooms
Reported ghosts Women's voices in the basement, books falling from shelves, doors that open and close after hours
Visiting Public library, open during library hours
Ghost hunting No ghost hunting in the library
Homewood, just south of downtown Birmingham, bought the former Homewood Church of Christ on Oxmoor Road in 1984 and opened it as the city library in 1986. The adult reading room fills the old sanctuary, and the basement rooms were once Sunday school classrooms.
Staff have long said the building is haunted, mostly after hours: women’s voices talking in the empty basement, books flying off shelves, doors opening and closing and lights switching on by themselves. A local paranormal group says two mediums each counted nine spirits, and that an unexplained “Amen” answered a mock sermon. It is a busy public library, so keep any curiosity quiet and polite.
What investigators report
The library has hosted nighttime investigations with local team S.C.A.R.E., where attendees are encouraged to bring audio recorders and cameras. Staff report voices like a group of ladies talking in the basement rooms that were once Sunday school classrooms, mostly after hours.
Haunted Rooms tip: Visit during opening hours, sit in the reading room under the old sanctuary vault and ask at the desk if anyone has a story to share.
Visited one of these places? Tell us what happened
We collect first-hand accounts from visitors and add the best ones to our guides, with your first name and the date of your visit. We read every story before it’s published.
Frequently asked questions
What is the most haunted place in Birmingham?
Sloss Furnaces is the most famous, though its Slag Wormwood story is invented. The Tutwiler and Redmont hotels, the Alabama Theatre and Oak Hill Cemetery are the other places named most often.
Is Sloss Furnaces open to the public?
Yes. Sloss Furnaces is a free museum, open Tuesday to Saturday from 10 AM to 4 PM and Sunday from noon to 4 PM, with paid guided tours. The Sloss Fright Furnace haunted house closed after 2019 and was not brought back.
Which Birmingham hotel is haunted?
The Tutwiler, now a Hampton Inn and Suites, is known for knocking on sixth-floor doors. The Redmont, Birmingham’s oldest hotel, is linked to Hank Williams’s last road trip, and Hotel Indigo in Five Points South has its own nurse story.
Can you go ghost hunting in Birmingham?
Arlington Antebellum Home has hosted public investigations run by the Southern Ghost Girls Tours. Haunted Rooms does not run events in Alabama yet; our nearest ghost hunt is in Lynchburg, Tennessee.
Who is buried at Oak Hill Cemetery?
Oak Hill is Birmingham’s oldest cemetery and holds nine of the ten landowners who founded the city, early mayors, Governor William Hugh Smith and Fred Shuttlesworth. In 2024 it finally marked the grave of the Hawes murder victims of 1888.
Sources and how we research
Every place in this guide is checked against its official website, historic register listings and news coverage, and we confirm whether it is open, closed, private or gone before we list it. Ghost stories are reported as staff, visitors and local historians tell them; we say so where records contradict a story. Each place shows how many independent sources we checked it against; our own Haunted Rooms pages are not counted.
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About the authors
The Haunted Rooms Team runs public ghost hunts and overnight investigations at historic venues across the United States. We research every place in our guides using official sites, historic registers, local archives and news coverage, and we report ghost stories as the stories they are. We review each guide regularly so you are not sent to a place that has closed, changed hands or banned visitors. Spotted something out of date? Let us know.
